David Anspaugh's Style In Hoosier, Rudy, And Little Red Wall

Dreamers that will not Back Down: Director’s Style in Hoosiers, Rudy, and Little Red Wagon Director David Anspaugh does not suggest the usual underdog film in Hoosiers, Rudy, and Little Red Wagon. Instead of just a film with a character chasing their dreams to play on a team or to prove the world wrong, Anspaugh’s films display collective human behavior. David Anspaugh uses main characters with resembling personalities in Hoosiers, Rudy, and Little Red Wagon. This personality type combined with the narrative structure adds suspense an emotion to the main character in each film. According to authors Dennis Petrie and Joseph Boggs, “No other element reveals more about a director’s style than the choice of subject matter” (313). Hoosiers,

The men in the community have a meeting with Norman and jump right to the point. They ask him about his basketball coaching techniques. Norman with no hesitation walks out of the meeting. Later in the film Norman lets his athletes know that if they are not willing to respect him, he has no problem kicking them off the team. Throughout Hoosiers, Norman’s personality grows with him as a character. In a review by Rodger Ebert, an American film critic, he states, “Hoosiers is a comeback movie, but it is not simply about the comeback of this small team, the Hickory Huskers. It is also about the comeback of their coach, Norman Dale” (Ebert). Rudy, a 1993 football story about a young man who dreams about playing football at The University of Notre Dame. The film shows Rudy as a kid and as a young adult. Rudy and Norman have a large age gap between them, but their personality does not have a gap. Like Norman, Rudy shows a strong, stubborn, independent dreamer. Anspaugh is speedy to let the audience in on Rudy’s dream. In the beginning of the film, Rudy states to his family, “After high school, I am going to play football at Notre Dame”. A similar shot, like the one of Norman looking at the basketball trophies introduces how determined Rudy is. After Rudy gets laughed at about wanting to play football at Notre Dame his dad flips the television channel to Notre Dame football. The camera quickly zooms

In the begging of Hoosiers, the character, personality, and dreams of Norman Dale are established. Norman faces conflict and doubtfulness by other characters throughout most of the film. He has to use his personality to push through. In the middle of his conflicts he builds new relationships that last a lifetime. Norman eventually gets closer to his dream of coaching a winning basketball team. The simple narrative structure in Hoosiers pushes the underdog theme aside and instead focuses on coming together as a community and family. Anspaugh makes it clear that his goal when directing Hoosiers was to inspire a human behavior theme and not a sports movie theme. An article by newsman Greg Evans, talks about Vice President and his love for the film Hoosiers. Vice President, Mike Pence showed the film to a group of Air force men. Pence stated, “We are about to watch the greatest sports movie of all time”. The hype from Mike Pence later released to David Anspaugh and he replied in an email to the Air Force men. The reply from Anspaugh states, “I would hope that the Vice President talks to his boss about the most important thematic through line in the movie, in that nothing can be accomplished without working together for the same goal, pulling in the same direction” (Evans). Although Anspaugh may be politically biased in the response, he makes the films intended theme