[Opinion] Eternal Coach: Remembering Gene Hackman for his role in ‘Hoosiers’

Actor Gene Hackman (1930-2025): A great American realist

Hackman brought an acute, artistically informed urgency and honesty to his roles that often transcended the conceptions and methods of the filmmaker in question.

Eternal Coach: Remembering Gene Hackman for his role in ‘Hoosiers’

Like many of his fans across the land, I dialed up “Hoosiers,” the 1985 film about small-town Indiana basketball, to honor the film’s star, Gene Hackman, and to remember him after his passing at 95 in his acting glory. He comes into the story right away, during opening credits, arriving at Hickory High School in a gray Chevy Styleline after a long drive across wide, flat farm country in the autumn of 1951. Immediately, we understand Hackman’s No…