David Anspaugh B Back in Bloomington Where It All Began
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uddiesFilmmakers Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh B Back in Bloomington Where It All Began BY Mike Leonard • PHOTOGRAPHY BY Shannon Zahnle David Anspaugh thinks for a moment and two Academy Award nominations and Warner Bros. Television and Time-Life then recalls the first time he encountered almost universal glowing reviews. The Films before making his name as a screen- Angelo Pizzo nearly 50 years ago. American Film Institute ranks it the writer. He currently is putting the final “There was this staircase,” he begins. “He fourth-best sports film of all time. production touches on My All American, came down and he kind of did this little toss The native Hoosiers went on to make based on the true story of Freddie Stein- of his hair. He was part of the new pledge Rudy, the story of a not-so-good athlete mark, an undersized, crowd-favorite class, and I just loved him from the start.” whose dream was to suit up for the vaunted football player who helped lead the Sitting across the room, Pizzo breaks out University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish University of Texas to the 1969 national into a bemused grin, as if to say, “Thanks, football team. It, too, gained widespread football championship before learning that David, I knew I could count on you to say acclaim as an inspirational film. No less a a nagging bruise on his leg was not a bruise something completely ridiculous.” star than Kobe Bryant has proclaimed, but, rather, cancer. Pizzo wrote the screen- Asking about the beginnings of their “That film changed my life.” play and, for the first time, also directed. relationship was not unwarranted. After so Anspaugh and Pizzo also collaborated to As filmmakers and practitioners of many years as friends, collaborators, and, at make The Game of Their Lives, the story of storytelling, Anspaugh and Pizzo recognize times, each other’s most blistering critic, how the unheralded United States soccer all too well that their relationship is a buddy Anspaugh, like Pizzo a decade before him, team came together to beat mighty England story — maybe not of cinematic proportions has abandoned California and come home to in the 1950 World Cup. but of a genuine close and enduring Bloomington to stay. Both men have had enviable careers friendship that has entered a new phase. The two pals will forever be linked as the outside of each other’s spheres, with a young After nearly three decades living in Santa director and screenwriter, respectively, of Anspaugh arising from obscurity to win two Monica and Ojai, California, Pizzo moved Hoosiers, the monumental film about the Emmy Awards for directing episodes of Hill back to his hometown of Bloomington in Indiana University alumni Angelo Pizzo (left) and small-town basketball team that overcame Street Blues, the 1981–87 television series 2004. Anspaugh — at Pizzo’s urging — came David Anspaugh were friends long before each pur- all odds to win a fabled Indiana state TV Guide called the best police series of all here from Los Angeles in June. sued careers in film and television. Their first project together was the sleeper hit, Hoosiers, which enabled championship. The low-budget film earned time. Pizzo rose rapidly through the ranks at them to use their innate understanding of Indiana na- tives and their love for basketball. 86 Bloom | October/November 2014 | magbloom.com magbloom.com | October/November 2014 | Bloom 87 always from the Greek system. And all of a [Sigma Alpha Epsilon] and Sigma Nus that sudden, Guy Loftman, the opposite of a fled the fraternities,” says Spyridon “Strats” fraternity guy, starts running for president, Stratigos, an SAE in college and friend of and he’s got an anti-war point of view — a Anspaugh and Pizzo. “We melded into an bagger point of view — and that’s when the incredible group that’s close to this day. shit started to hit the fan at our fraternity. He David and I moved into a farmhouse with was the enemy, he represented all things evil, Harry Gonso, a star of the 1968 Rose Bowl and David and I were supporting him. We team. Angelo moved into a house with some were all about wanting to be a part of that. of my fraternity brothers.” We wanted him to be student body president It was late in the decade, but the free- and not the Greek god who was up for it.” wheeling, psychedelic ’60s finally arrived in Anspaugh says there was a defining the Midwest. “When we had our parties, it moment in his transition from frat boy to the was like the Rainbow Coalition. We had frat hippie type. Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, guys, sorority chicks, Buddhists, jocks, director of the Selective Service system, was Communists,” says Pizzo. “It was crazy, and scheduled to give an address on campus and we all had weed and whatever anyone else the fraternities heard that the baggers were wanted to do. For us, that was just natural. It planning a protest. Remembers Anspaugh, was like, this is what the real world is like.” “The fraternities decided they weren’t going Pizzo already had his mind on film studies to let that happen, and so they came up with and scholarships, but had no thoughts at all this plan that spread like wildfire. They got about writing scripts or making movies. ‘When we had our parties, it was like the Rainbow Coalition. We had frat guys, soror- ity chicks, Buddhists, jocks, Communists...’ all of their pledge classes and loaded them up Anspaugh, on the other hand, embraced the with raw eggs. The plan was to circle visual imagery he learned from his father, a Showalter Fountain, where the baggers professional photographer, and creative would be, and pelt them with eggs. I mean, endeavors generally. “David started making there were probably a hundred protesters films in ’68 and ’69, and I think I’m in just and they were outnumbered five-to-one. about every one of them,” Stratigos says. “So I’m watching this unfold, and I’m “David always had an artistic bent. watching the baggers walk, and I see that one “David’s nickname in college was ‘Crazy.’ (above) Friendships that remain intact to this day were formed at Indiana University. (front row) Spyridon “Strats” Stratigos, Jade Butcher, Bruce Earhardt, Pete Poolitsan, of them is a guy from my high school, a guy a It wasn’t so much that he was insane crazy, and Mike McConnell. (back row) Angelo Pizzo, Mike Snyder, Eric Stolberg, and David Anspaugh. Courtesy photo (opposite page) Boys will be boys. year older than me. I saw him and said to but he always walked to the beat of his own myself, ‘That’s it. I’m supposed to be with drummer. It was like, ‘Where’s Crazy? He’s them, not on this side.’ I slowly backed away, gone — off doing his own thing.’ There was a The seismic ’60s availability of marijuana and other illegal whole way — coming that’s going to drown and I ended up walking back to the house. I point when David abhorred that name and Anspaugh and Pizzo became friends as drugs had begun creating fissures in the your ass, and you are going to have no idea guess they did egg them, but I was ashamed insisted we call him David. members of Sigma Nu fraternity at Indiana brotherhood. Pizzo remembers, “I got pulled what’s going to hit you, things are changing of myself, and I knew from that day on that “Last week we went up to Morse Lake University. Anspaugh arrived in 1965 from aside by the president of the fraternity and so fast.” things in my life had to change. And of with some old buddies and they didn’t call Decatur, Indiana, and Pizzo, a graduate of the told, ‘I just want you to know that word got Counter-culture types were already course, a year later, everything did change. him anything but Crazy,” Stratigos laughs. “I old University High School in Bloomington, back to me that you were at a party and present on the IU campus. “We called them There were thousands of people in Dunn got a kick out of that. David just cringed.” started IU in the fall of ’66. “My dad was everybody there was smoking marijuana. I the baggers,” says Pizzo. “They wore old Meadow protesting the war.” Pizzo will always be “Andy” to the people really from a poor Italian immigrant family didn’t hear that you were doing it, but I heard Army fatigues, and they carried their books who grew up with him and knew him in high — nothing remotely close to being a fraternity you were at that party.’ around in green satchels. I can’t speak for the Moving on school and at IU. It wasn’t until he got to Los guy. I mean, my reason for joining a fraternity “I said, ‘Well, I was there,’ and he said, sororities, but the fraternities hated the “It was our choice to leave but also their Angeles that people started calling him was girls and parties. That was pretty much ‘That is unacceptable and you will be baggers. choice not to have us,” Pizzo says. Angelo. “Whether people call me Andy or the motivating factor,” Pizzo says. removed from the household if you continue “You have to remember this, too. The Anspaugh, Pizzo, and others moved out of Angelo makes no difference to me,” he says. At the time Pizzo and Anspaugh joined, to attend these types of parties.’ I’m thinking, Greeks ran the campus; the president of the the fraternity houses and distanced them- “It’s like hearing your given name or a fraternity parties were still strictly booze ‘Who are you, my fucking dad? Don’t you Panhellenic council was always a big deal selves from them in various ways.