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| "Blue Chips" movie stars Matt Nover and Larry Bird are driven by actor Nick Nolte in a parade scene during filming of the movie in July of 1993. Nearly 6,000 actors, crew and extras descended on French Lick to shoot the movie in Larry Bird's hometown. |
Any sports fan can dutifully tell you all about French Lick being the hometown of basketball superstar Larry Bird. But another hoops story about French Lick that deserves to be told: July of 1993, when Hollywood crashed the scene for two weeks to film the movie “Blue Chips.”
It’s estimated that 6,000 actors, crew and extras flooded
French Lick for the movie centered on a college basketball recruiting scandal.
It featured both prominent Hollywood stars and famous players and coaches
portraying themselves — from Nick Nolte, to Rick Pitino and Jerry Tarkanian, to
Calbert Cheney and Shaquille O’Neal, who are all on the Wall of Fame inside
French Lick Springs Hotel as a result of their pit stop in French Lick nearly
30 years ago.
Cheaney, who’s now an assistant coach for the Indiana Pacers,
won both National Player of the Year awards in 1993, when he finished as the career
scoring leader for both Indiana University and the Big Ten. A few months later,
he was staying at French Lick Springs Hotel during the movie shoot.
Pitino had just guided the University of Kentucky to the
1993 Final Four a couple months prior. Not that he needs it, but Pitino still gets
about $25 annually in royalties from the film for his brief cameo appearance.
Tarkanian was nearing the end of a coaching dynasty at UNLV,
where he captured a national championship in 1990. Tark had a role in the movie
playing himself – a college basketball coach who loses a recruiting battle to a
coach played by Nolte. The fictional Tark finds out he has lost a recruiting
war for standout Indiana player Ricky Roe (Nover) when he sees the player
riding in a parade through French Lick with opposing coach Nick Nolte in the
car.
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| More parade scenes, with the above photo featuring the Paoli High School marching band in back. (Photos courtesy French Lick West Baden Museum.) |
Filming took place in downtown French Lick on a steamy
summer day that had Tarkanian complaining to an Associated Press reporter: “It’s
not this hot when it’s 110 in Las Vegas. The humidity is terrible here,”
Tarkanian said. But a little Midwestern heat didn’t scare off the locals.
“It’s unbelievable how many people showed up for this,” he
said of the crowds that filled the town during filming. “Las Vegas is a great
basketball town but after the basketball season is over, you couldn’t get
anyone involved in something like this.”
The huge flock of extras was needed for a scene you might
remember from the movie: the community parade where Nolte was chauffeuring
Larry Bird and Matt Nover in an aqua blue convertible. Folks came from all over
just to be in the outskirts of the scene — some even came from Canada, just to
be able to get a glimpse of Bird in his hometown.
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| Hall of Fame coaches Jim Boeheim (left) and Jerry Tarkanian (middle right) outside Larry Bird's former high school gym at Springs Valley. |
Also in the crowd that day was Carole Thoman, who’s been coming to French Lick Resort every summer as part of a girls’ family reunion. After filming was over, they bumped into Tarkanian and another famous coach who was part of the movie, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim.
“We invited Boeheim and Tarkanian, just kind of
sarcastically, up to our party room and they came up there. Had a beer with
us,” Carole recalls with a laugh.
Proof that you’re always bound to be surprised by what you
find in small-town French Lick, whether it’s world-class hotels or chance
encounters with Hall of Fame basketball coaches.