William Friedkin's Blue Chips Was Perfect – And Almost Ruined By Bobby Knight
In 1994, professional basketball was all the rage, largely thanks to the rise of Michael Jordan and the historic run of three back-to-back NBA championships across 1991, 1992, and 1993, as chronicled in "The Last Dance" documentary series. Before his domination of the NBA, Jordan was considered a blue chip player, an athlete regarded as a hot prospect to be drafted into a professional franchise. Jordan gained blue chip status out of high school in the early 1980s, but he'd go on to attend college at University of North Carolina before being drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1984. It wouldn't be until 10 years after Jordan's draft that "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection" director William Friedkin would direct a movie about the corrupt and complicated practice of college recruitment for sports in the perfect basketball movie, "Blue Chips."
"Blue Chips," released in 1994, follows Nick Nolte as Pete Bell, head coach of the fictional Western University Dolphins in Los Angeles. Though once a winning coach with a team full of blue chip prospects, the recruitment game has changed for the worse, with colleges secretly giving prospective players illegal gifts and bonuses in order to convince them to join their team. Bell has long been resistant of these corrupt practices, but after a losing season, he gets desperate and reluctantly accepts the help of "Happy" Kuykendahl (played perfectly by the late J.T. Walsh), a "friend of the program" with all the right rich connections to bring the best players to Western University.
Though "Blue Chips" doesn't focus on Michael Jordan's meteoric rise in college basketball, the film features a few recognizable faces from the world of the NBA, including the legendary Larry Bird, broadcaster Dick Vitale, and Orlando Magic duo Shaquille O'Neal and Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway, who actually cultivated their camaraderie on set. Western's rise in the college basketball arena eventually brings them to a major nationally televised game against Indiana University, the famed Hoosiers coached by the infamous Bobby Knight and his trademark red shirt. Knight was another one of several key figures to appear as themselves, but the legendary coach almost derailed the entire production while filming the big game against IU.
'We played three full games in front of a live audience'
For the uninitiated, Bobby Knight is known as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all-time. At the time of his retirement, Knight had won 902 NCAA Division I men's college basketball games. Though that was enough to hold the record at the time, he now stands in fifth place as most winning coach in that division. Knight is most famous for coaching Indiana University from 1971 to 2000, typically seen in a signature red sweater, shouting at officials, and occasionally throwing chairs in anger. Nick Nolte shadowed Knight while preparing to play Pete Bell in "Blue Chips" and borrowed some of his saltier traits, so it only seems appropriate that his Western University team eventually came to square off with the Hoosiers. However, Knight's reputation for winning wouldn't be sidelined simply because the film's script said Indiana University had to lose.
Basketball games for "Blue Chips" were filmed in Case Arena in Frankfort, Indiana, with thousands of extras in attendance as the crowd. The location was actually suggested by Knight himself. Friedkin explained to Grantland:
"I told Bobby Knight, 'I want to play real games. Where do I go where I can do that, draw a crowd, and not pay the crowd?' Without a blink, he said, 'You go to Frankfort, Indiana. Go to Frankfort High School.' Frankfort was almost like the spiritual home of Indiana basketball. They had about five or six thousand seats. We played three full games in front of a live audience from which I was drawing all the basketball footage. We drew the audience just because of the caliber of the players and coaches, like Rick Pitino, Jim Boeheim, Jerry Tarkanian. We had turn-away crowds and something like 10,000 visitors and out-of-towners in Frankfort who came in to get a glimpse."
'Knight almost refused to come out. He almost ruined everything'
However, though Knight suggested the location and agreed to appear as himself in the movie's climatic game, it almost didn't happen. Jim Moyer, the scorekeeper for Frankfort basketball for over 40 years, who actually appears in the movie as himself, recalled to The Indy Star:
"We didn't know whether that game was going to happen. Knight almost refused to come out. He almost ruined everything."
In fact, even after Knight acquiesced to bless everyone in attendance with his presence, the coach made it supremely difficult for Friedkin to get what he needed for the movie. In the script, Western University is supposed to beat Indiana University, which prompts Bell to feel guilty about the shady practices he approved to assemble his winning team and admit the illegal activities that he allowed to happen in a press conference afterwards. But Bobby Knight wasn't about to lose a basketball game, even if it was fake.
The games featured in the movie were mostly unscripted. Players were instructed to simply play while being filmed, which is why professional players like Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway were hired for supporting roles, with real college basketball players in the game as extras. The games simply had to look as real as possible. However, Knight wouldn't let the fictional Western University win. "He kept taking the lead," Moyer said. Friedkin explained further to Grantland:
"I had them play full games except for the set plays that had to end the sequence. The game that ends the movie ends on a play Nolte draws up that is a pass in to Shaq for a dunk. That was set. Before I shot it, while we were rehearsing it, Knight told his team, 'Don't let this motherf***** score.' And they f***ing blocked Shaq! Finally, after two or three takes, Knight let me run that play. But Bobby was a guy who loved to take the mickey out of everyone."
'It was based, to a great extent, on the late Jim Valvano'
Knight's passion for winning the faux game was captured by the mic he was equipped with when the assembly of former Hoosiers who made up his team huddled at the bench (via The Indy Star):
"Let me tell you something, boys. We've got 24 seconds to play and fate's got us up by three. We sure as hell aren't going to lose to a bunch of [derogatory term] from Hollywood now."
It's that kind of dedication to winning that also drives coach Pete Bell, likely informed by the roughly two weeks that Nolte spent following Bobby Knight and his coaching antics. Nolte doesn't throw any chairs on the court, but he does grab the basketball out of an official's hand and kick it across the arena, leading to Pete Bell being ejected from the game. Another scene finds Nolte throwing one of those big water jugs in the locker room while yelling at his team for losing. But Nolte's character wasn't just inspired by Bobby Knight. As Friedkin explained to reporter Bobbie Wygant in an interview:
"It was based, to a great extent, on the late Jim Valvano, who coached and won a championship at North Carolina State and was later suspended for these same violations. So he was a model for the writer, Ron Shelton, who wrote the script, much more than Bobby Knight was, who has never been in a program where there were violations and has never been accused of it. So it's based more on Valvano."
'He's very down to earth. He's very open'
For Nolte's part, he didn't see Knight as the publicly wild and abrasive coach. When asked if Knight really is as wild and irratic as he seems, the actor told Bobbie Wygant in another interview:
"He's not at all. He's very down to earth. He's very open. He invited us in to all his practices, to the games, to his before-the-game locker room speech, halftime, everything. Spent 12 days with him, we discussed the whole situation of this coach. We discussed the relationship of the athlete and the coach. We discussed mentorship, the whole thing. We ran the whole story by him and not only set up what kind of team I would have, we just covered everything. I even went on a recruiting trip with him."
Of course, watching Nolte in the film, it's easy to see that the actor picked up on plenty of Knight's more abrasive traits. Nolte's tendency to have a gruff nature in various roles on the big screen made for a great performance, one filled with as much vigor as there is passion for the game of basketball, and something that makes the entire film resonate outside of its chronicle of the corrupt college recruitment practices. Perhaps that's why, despite getting rather unfavorable reviews from critics, it's now regarded as one of the best basketball films of all time.
Fun fact: William Friedkin was once in a position to buy the Boston Celtics, which is perhaps how he was able to get Larry Bird to make a cameo appearance in "Blue Chips," which filmed on location in the player's home town of French Lick, Indiana.