'Blue Chips' put Case Arena on big screen. Frankfort celebrates 30-year anniversary of movie

The Western Dolphins had seen better days.

Nick Nolte looked like a beaten coach, at one point slumping back on the bench with a white towel covering his face. On the other sideline, Texas Western coach Rick Pitino smiled smugly as his star, Rick Fox, made jump shot after jump shot.

Finally, Nolte had enough. The Dolphins’ coach got face-to-face with referee Eric Harmon. Nolte turned away from Harmon, snatched the basketball from another referee, Mark Masariu, and punted the ball into the corner of Western’s home arena.

Harmon gave Nolte the heave-ho and Masariu escorted the still-enraged, still-muttering coach off the court, toward the locker room.

End scene.

None of this was real, of course. Nolte was playing the role of Pete Bell, a coach under pressure to win at any cost and bring fictional Western back to prominence for the movie “Blue Chips.” But the game that day, played on Western’s “home floor” of Case Arena in Frankfort, was about as realistic as possible.

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The only part that was scripted, Masariu said, was that Nolte was going to get kicked out of the game. The actor had shadowed Indiana coach Bob Knight for about two weeks during the 1992-93 season in preparation for the role and “coached” against Knight for the scenes in the movie the previous two nights at Case Arena.

"(Director) Billy Friedkin told us to go talk to Nolte,” Masariu said. “At some point, he was going to get kicked out of the game. So, we told him, ‘Near the end of the half, you need to go irate, and you and Eric will get nose to nose, and I’ll try to be the nice guy and separate it and you grab the ball and kick it. We’re getting close to halftime about three-and-a-half minutes, and it was like, ‘We’re going to have to get this thing done.’ We made some sort of call, and they got nose-to-nose and (Nolte) grabs the ball and kicks it up into the corner of the arena.”

It took one take. Friendkin, an Oscar winner who had directed “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” told them it was perfect.

“They wanted the basketball to be as realistic as possible,” Masariu said. “So, we worked 40-minute games like they were real games. They told us they could make the score whatever it needed to be.”

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Masariu, 76, will be back at Case Arena on Saturday night as Frankfort celebrates the 30-year anniversary of the release of “Blue Chips.” The Frankfort team will trade in the blue and white of the traditional “Hot Dogs” uniforms for the blue and gold of the Western Dolphins in its game against Rossville at 7 p.m. (junior varsity at 5:30 p.m.).

Eric Farley, the Frankfort chief academic officer and assistant boys’ basketball coach, was in high school at Frankfort when the movie was filmed. He mentioned to Frankfort athletic director Ed Niehaus that it might be a good opportunity to recognize the 30^th anniversary of the movie since they had missed the 25-year anniversary.

“Kind of like a gnat on a banana,” Farley said. “I kept mentioning it. I threw it out there on Instagram to see what kind of reaction it would get and within 24 hours one of the actors from the movie reached out.”

Anthony C. Hall, who played role of Tony, a point-shaving player in the movie, talked to Farley about possibilities for the anniversary celebration. About a week ago, Hall reached out to Farley asking for shoe sizes for the team. The players in the movie, including Shaquille O’Neal, wore the Reebok pump shoes in Blue Chips. With O’Neal named president of Reebok basketball in October, Hall was able to outfit the Frankfort team with the new “Above the Rim Pump Vertical” shoes from Reebok.

“Super cool of Shaq to help us out,” Farley said.

1993 Frankfort filming brings Shaq, stars to Case Arena

The filming of the movie was a phenomenon in Frankfort for four nights in July of 1993. Two of those nights were against Knight’s “Indiana” team, another night against Pitino’s team and a final night against George Raveling’s team. Players like O’Neal, who was coming off an All-Star rookie season with the Orlando Magic, Anfernee Hardaway and Matt Nover played major roles in the film, while Bobby Hurley played on the IU team with actual former Hoosiers Calbert Cheaney, Eric Anderson, Keith Smart and Greg Graham.

“I was a sophomore on the (Frankfort) basketball team at the time,” Farley said. “There was so much excitement about the movie and all of these people coming to Frankfort. There was a lot of buzz about the movie itself, too.”

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Also starring in the movie, of course, was Everett Case Arena – the entire reason why producers picked Frankfort as the home of the Western Dolphins. The 5,000-plus seat arena opened in 1963 and named for Case, who coached the team for 17 seasons, winning state championships in 1925, ’29, ’36 and ’39.

Fred Carter, a 1949 Frankfort graduate, was tabbed by then-Frankfort mayor Harold Woodruff to lead a steering committee and aid the Hollywood producers, who picked Case Arena for its size and its home appearance from the outside, resembling a college arena.

“One of the main concerns they had was getting people into the arena,” Carter said. “We tried to explain that this is Frankfort, Indiana. It’s kind of a basketball town. Of course, the whole community wanted to be involved.”

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'Here's our arena'

As Carter remembers, the Paramount paid $14,000 or $15,000 for four nights of filming at Case Arena. While that might sound like a low amount, the opportunity to see the hometown arena on the big screen was worth it.

“From our town perspective it was like, ‘Here’s our arena,’” Carter said. “It looks like a college arena anyway. Making that transition from the Hot Dogs in the center of the court to the Dolphins it was like, ‘Wow, they really did it.’ The magic of the movie business. As we found out later, they were very pleased with Frankfort and the people here.”

Though it has been a generation now since the movie was filmed, Farley said he has heard many stories from people in the community who remember those four days in 1993 with pride. The varsity game against Rossville will begin Saturday at 7 p.m.

“The most rewarding experience for me has been hearing those behind-the-scenes stories,” Farley said. “Almost everyone who was here in the community at that time has some memory of the movie. For me, it brings back a lot of nostalgia. When I showed pictures of Case Arena to my college teammates at Dubuque (Iowa), they could not believe it was a high school gym. I told them basketball was a little different in Indiana.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.