'Hoosiers' screenwriter offers advice to IU students

Like most university lectures, Angelo Pizzo's began with a lengthy introduction with an academic lauding of the speaker's accomplishments Tuesday night.\nBut Pizzo, the screenwriter of the beloved 1986 movie "Hoosiers," about a small-town high school basketball team's journey to the state-title game, delivered a speech that wandered far off the path of the usual academic lecture.\n"Pizzo shows us how very unsimple these times were for men and women who wanted to make something of themselves," said Director of the Institute for Advanced Study Alfred Aman in his description of the film's 1950s setting.\nPizzo seemed unimpressed with his own work as he took the stage of the School of Fine Arts Auditorium to address more than 100 students and faculty members.\n"People who do creative things don't try to analyze their own work," he said. "I think you're in trouble if you do."\nAs part of the Branigan Lecture Series, Pizzo, who grew up in Bloomington and received a bachelor's degree in political science from IU in 1971, gave a speech titled "Running the Gauntlet: From the Movie in My Mind to the Movie on the Screen." Pizzo, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie, "Rudy," about Notre Dame football, described his writing process, which has earned him much acclaim ("Hoosiers" was recently ranked by USA Today as the greatest sports movie of all time) but has also cost him jobs in Hollywood.\nAfter graduating from IU, Pizzo studied film at the University of Southern California for three years and even wrote his master's thesis but dropped out when he was offered work on a sitcom.\n"I went to tell my counselor, and he said, 'I'll never see you again. This has happened too many times,'" Pizzo said. "I thought there's no way. I'll be back. I've done too much work. So I packed everything in a box, and I've never opened it since."\nPizzo said that during this period, he spent so much time analyzing films he wasn't able to fully enjoy them. He said he doesn't think screenwriting classes are necessary, as long as writers' work is about something they love.\nWhile writing "Hoosiers," Pizzo said he found himself unable to get past the first 15 pages of his screenplay. He had outlined the plot as he had told writers who worked under him in the past to do when a friend suggested another route.\n"Never look back," Pizzo said. "Never reread anything you've ever written. That way I don't have to second-guess myself."\nNow, he writes films starting with only the most basic premises.\n"I know where the movie is going to go," he said. "I know what the protagonist wants, but I don't know what's going to get in his way."\nAnother problem screenwriters face is that the movies they write are often changed by directors and producers into something completely different unless screenwriters are willing to take on those roles as well, Pizzo said.\nPizzo suggested that aspiring screenwriters write about what they know and avoid sticking to the traditional formula of three acts with rising and falling action.\n"I've seen so many screenplays that are written from the outside in," he said. "The structure is dropped in on the story rather than letting it grow organically. Good writers write from the inside out. They don't write from the head; they write from the gut."\nPizzo will be on-hand for a special presentation of his latest film "The Game of Their Lives" at 7 p.m. today in the Whittenberger Auditorium.