Rudy (28 page)

Even with all those thoughts rattling around my brain, I never could have imagined just how much of an influence
Hoosiers
would have on my life. A few years later, that film would be the key to everything. Everything.

Life in South Bend for me was a lot like life at Notre Dame: I was happy to be there, appreciative of the whole situation, and able to share my enthusiasm just about everywhere I went. I talked to people. Everybody. The shop clerks, the waiters and waitresses, the Notre Dame faculty, the townspeople, the garbage men, the legendary local barber, Armando, who cut all the football coaches' hair in his old-fashioned meeting-place style barber shop. I introduced myself to new Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, and I got to know some of the legendary players from my youth, including 1966 champion Bob Gladieux, who became my roommate at the condo that year. A lot of people I met around town knew my story. They knew the legend of Rudy. They wanted to help me. There was a priest from outside of Notre Dame who offered to help me turn my story into a book. Players wanted to introduce me to people they knew who were involved in the movie-making business. It was great!

In fact, it was another legendary Notre Dame player who suggested I bring my story to Jason Miller.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Did you ever see
The Exorcist
?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Jason's the guy who played the priest.”

It struck me as a little strange. I remembered the movie really well. I remembered what the priest in the movie looked like, with his dark hair and big soulful eyes. But why would some actor be the right guy to write my movie?

Turns out that Jason Miller won a Pulitzer Prize for writing
That Championship Season
, the 1972 play that had recently been turned into a film starring Robert Mitchum—the story of four guys who get together with the old coach of their championship basketball team to relive their glory days back in the '50s. A sports movie that wasn't really about sports at all, but about life and drama and who we are as people. It was really deep stuff. Jason Miller was a personal friend of this new acquaintance of mine, and he was a Notre Dame nut!

I was floored. The idea that I might be able to get my story into the hands of a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer never even occurred to me. Maybe I hadn't been dreaming big enough!

A little time went by and we set up a meeting. I drove to Scranton, which is this scrappy, blue-collar place full of brick buildings and big old stone churches, and when Jason Miller came around the corner I thought I was in
The Exorcist
! It really took me back. He looked just like the priest in the movie. I don't know what I expected, but it really knocked me over for a second. “Hey, Rudy,” he said, and he was a real nice guy. No twisting heads or projectile vomiting. “Let's go to my favorite bar,” he said, and we went off to this real working-class place full of coal miners. Rather than tell him my story in a private corner where no one could hear us, I started telling my story within earshot of all these hard-working guys with beers in their hands—and they were riveted. I built the whole thing, just telling my story from start to finish, and when I got into the stadium with those last five seconds to play, and the crowd chanting my name, and I dove in to sack the quarterback, those coal miners cheered!

It was awesome.

“You got a story, Rudy,” Jason said to me, grabbing my hand in a big, firm handshake. “We're gonna write it.”

I wasn't sure who the “we” was at first, until he introduced me to his ghostwriter. Jason's talents were in storytelling and acting, so the way he liked to work in those days was to dictate to a ghostwriter who would then go off and write and polish the raw ideas. They were right in the middle of working on another movie project at the time, but they promised not to put mine on the back burner. They loved the story, and Jason insisted he could handle it.

I went home feeling like I'd just sacked the quarterback all over again. Truly, I couldn't have imagined a better outcome, a better meeting, a better plan, a better alignment. It's like everything fell into place. Jason really was a Notre Dame nut. He knew Ara Parseghian backward and forward and could stand up and imitate his mannerisms, his voice, everything! It was uncanny. I remember thinking he should play Parseghian in the film. But mostly, I thought he was the perfect guy to get inside my story and bring out the heart of it. He was passionate. Creative. Perfect for this. I felt it in my bones.

Six months went by, and I never heard another word. I kept calling Jason to see what was up, and he kept saying he needed just a little more time. I was so impatient! This was my life story. I felt like I'd already been waiting ten years for this thing to get off the ground. I didn't want to wait anymore!

Finally, Jason came to visit me in South Bend. He brought his son, Jason Patric, along and the whole gang had tickets to a Notre Dame football game. It turned into quite a party, actually. Jason Patric, of course, is a talented actor in his own right, the maternal grandson of Jackie Gleason, and one heck of a good-looking guy. He was dating a young actress named Julia Roberts at the time—yes,
that
Julia Roberts!—and he brought her along to a little post-game gathering at my condo. I really didn't know who she was at the time so it didn't affect me. I didn't talk to her all that much, but she seemed real nice. And who could ever forget that smile, or that laugh of hers. When I found out later who she was, I almost fell out of my chair! Seeing her on screen, I remember thinking her smile was as big off screen as it was on. Their agent was with them, who was a really powerful person in the film business at the time. It's like all of Hollywood came to my doorstep! Some people might get nervous in that kind of a situation, but not me. I think it goes back to the fact that I just like talking to everybody. It doesn't matter what people do for a job or how successful they are. At the heart of it, we're all people, and we've all got our struggles and passions. They were all passionate people, which is always fun to be around, and they were so fired up about my story. It felt like progress. I felt like this whole movie thing was really on the verge of taking off.

The very next day, Hollywood left town and the excitement seemed to leave with it. As the weeks flew by, it simply felt like Jason might never get around to writing, and a call from his ghostwriter basically confirmed my hunch. He just had too many other things going on. So I wound up hiring that ghostwriter myself. He moved into my condo in South Bend, and I agreed to pay him one-thousand dollars a month to work on the script. I was still selling insurance, traveling around to twenty-six different car dealerships spread over three states. It was exhausting. But knowing that ghostwriter was back at my place working diligently on my real dream kept me going.

There was just one problem: after a few months, it became clear to me that the “work” that ghostwriter was doing wasn't so “diligent.” His girlfriend had moved in with him. The progress on the script was way too slow. Then one day I came off the road to find him and his girlfriend fighting in my kitchen . . . and my kitchen was on fire. Literally on fire! They were yelling and screaming at each other while the stove burst with flames behind them. I grabbed the extinguisher and put it out, and right there in the middle of that hazy cloud of white and smoke, I told him he needed to leave. “Forget the screenplay,” I said. “Just get out of here.”

The two of them packed up and left the next day. I was floored. I felt like a fool.

It seemed every attempt I made to partner up with someone to get this movie made turned out to be a mistake. And yet, there were always moments that kept me going. Even with that ghostwriter, the journey wasn't over. We reconnected, and he apologized, and he wound up bringing a major producer on board: Frank Capra Jr., the son of the great director of
It's a Wonderful Life
, among other classics. After feeling so low, that lifted my spirits right up!

Capra wanted to meet with the powers that be at Notre Dame to make sure we'd have all the clearances we would need to shoot this film on campus. After all, Notre Dame was as big a character in the movie as I was. We would need to capture the look and feel of that campus, and there was no way to reproduce that anywhere else—especially in what would be viewed as a fairly low-budget movie. This wasn't
Star Wars
. We weren't going to be building a fake Notre Dame set on a studio lot somewhere. Without the real Notre Dame as the setting, the whole film just wouldn't work. Everyone agreed on that.

I put in a call to University Relations, told them Capra was on board, and asked if they'd take a meeting to discuss the project. Lo and behold, they agreed!

Capra took the red-eye in from L.A. just for the meeting. A bunch of us sat in this little conference room at Notre Dame, pumped up about the possibilities and psyched to get this thing off the ground, when suddenly a Notre Dame official came in and said the meeting was over. They were sticking by their original decision not to let any more movies be shot on campus.

My emotional whiplash continued.

We all sat there in stunned silence. I think I was the first to finally speak up and apologize to everyone. I had no idea that meeting would go the way it did. I felt like a fool. Like I'd wasted everyone's time, not to mention their money.

After a bit of discussion, Capra looked at me and said, “Rudy, they're not going to listen to us. The only person who can get this movie done is you.” He told me I shouldn't rely on ghostwriters or anyone else to get the deal done from this point forward. I was the one with the connection to the school and to the football team. I was the one who had the perseverance to make my story a reality, and I was the only one who would have the perseverance to see to it that my movie would ever get made.

I knew he was right. I had been leaning on the knowledge and experience of others. I had been leaving my fate in the hands of other people, just because I was too naive and too busy with the rest of my life to take the time to really do my due diligence and figure out how to make my dream a reality on my own. I needed to take charge.

I never heard from Capra again after that. I simply retreated into my life and started thinking about what would come next.

The first thing I had to do was find a way to stabilize my day-to-day existence. I was on the road too much. The insurance business was eating me up—the same way it had been eating me up back in Baltimore. I loved going to sales meetings. I loved standing in front of a bunch of guys who were eager to make some money, and getting them fired up about the job. I would talk to 'em like a coach at halftime, digging deep, pulling out all sorts of energy and feeding off of their energy in return. But when it came to the rest of it, the organization and paperwork, the constant traveling, it wasn't my calling. I needed to find a way out.

Funny how when you really need something, when you're asking for it and praying for it, certain opportunities will fall right into your lap. It might not be the exact thing you were imagining. But as long as you're paying attention, that thing could be the opportunity that rescues you and sends you in the direction of your dreams.

No sooner did I start thinking about getting out of the insurance business again than the owner of a car dealership right there in South Bend offered me a job. He saw what kind of a salesman I was. He knew my reputation. He knew my story. He had heard about the way I fired up my sales team—and he wanted me to pour that energy into his business. He asked me if I'd like to become the new car sales manager at his dealership. A dealership that was two miles from the Notre Dame campus. The one dealership in town where all the coaches and Notre Dame staff seemed to go for all of their new-car needs.

“Heck ya, I would!” I said, and the deal was done. No more traveling. No more wasting hours and hours driving all over creation. No more insurance.

For a while, my film dream went back under the frost. I knew spring would come again. I never let the dream die. In fact, I kept a copy of the latest script that ghostwriter and I had put together tucked in my top desk drawer at the car dealership. I wasn't sure when it would happen, but I knew that at some point, my movie dream would sprout up from the ground once again. In the meantime, I dedicated all of my energy to being the best new car sales manager that dealership had ever seen. Part of me knew that it still wasn't my calling. It wasn't what I was meant to be doing in life. But it was good work. Solid work. It provided me with a really good living. In fact, I earned enough that I bought myself a much better condo, a townhouse with a deck just perfect for barbecuing. I made friends all over town and stayed in touch with the Notre Dame crowd by hooking them up with the best deals I could.

One day, toward the very tail end of the 1980s, one of my salesmen came to me all worried and upset, looking for help. “I can't close this guy,” he said. He had a customer on the floor who really liked a particular car, but he didn't like the price and was ready to walk out the door. This salesman really needed this sale. So I told him to bring the customer in to see me.