Rudy

by Rudy Ruettiger

  “Can I help you?” Beauchamp’s secretary asked. I asked if I could see him. “Father’s very busy right now,” she said.

  “No disrespect to you, but I can see him right there,” I said, and I just walked past her and barged into his office. I had nothing to lose and no time to waste.

  “Father, hi, I’m Rudy Ruettiger.”

  “I know who you are,” he said.

  I hoped that was a good thing!

  “Come in. Have a seat.”

  We chitchatted a bit and then I told him I was hoping for his guidance. “I’ve had this project that I’ve been trying to get done for I don’t know how many years now,” I said, and he told me he knew all about it. “Well, what have you heard?” I asked.

  The story he had heard came from folks in University Relations. It involved a lot of negativity, and this vague idea that I wanted the university to fund my movie. “Can I tell you my side? The movie’s been approved by TriStar Pictures. We don’t need any money from you. The money is there. The power is there. It’s the team behind the movie Hoosiers. Have you ever seen that film?”

  He hadn’t.

  “They’ve set aside about twenty-five million dollars for this movie, Father,” I told him.

  That impressed him. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Well, tell me about the story. How will it reflect on the university?”

  I told him it was a message everyone needed to hear. I explained how Angelo Pizzo had taken my personal story and distilled it into a message of hope, perseverance, and never giving up on your dreams. I explained how Notre Dame was like a character in the film, a powerful presence that inspired me to keep going, one that never gave up on me. It was a place that welcomed the underdog and helped someone like me find a place of glory and confidence in the world.

  “Rudy,” he said, “I feel it. Let me look at the script and let’s have the meeting on Monday—10:00 a.m. I can’t promise I’ll get to read the whole thing this weekend, and I certainly can’t promise we’ll let you shoot here, but I’ll consider it and we’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Father. Thank you. Just give us a chance. If you say no, I won’t ever talk about it again. But they will not shoot this movie unless it’s shot here at the University of Notre Dame. They’re set on that.”

  We shook hands, and I left that building with hope.

  That weekend I picked up Angelo and David at the airport, and we went out to grab some dinner. I recognized a long-time Notre Dame professor at another table at the restaurant and we decided to chat him up. I introduced the guys, and the professor was real excited to meet them. He loved Hoosiers.

  “So what do you think the chances are that Notre Dame will allow us to shoot our movie on campus?” I asked.

  “Ha! About a million to one,” he laughed. “They’ll never let it happen.”

  It wasn’t exactly the pep talk we were looking for. On the drive back to my condo, we tried to reassure each other that it was just one guy in a bar. No need to worry. We had magic in this script and this story. Still, David was real nervous.

  “Rudy,” he said to me, “I gave up another project to take this on. I don’t know what I’ll do if it falls through.”

  He was just as nervous as he sat in the front seat of my car on the way into campus the next morning. Angelo sat in the back, much more confident. David wore his heart on his sleeve; Angelo didn’t. Maybe there was something about that balance that made them such a good team.

  As we walked toward Father Beauchamp’s office, it struck me just how great a team they were. They were the pros here. It was my story, sure, but so far my past attempts to woo Notre Dame had failed. I suddenly had a strong gut feeling that I needed to bow out of the meeting. “You guys go in without me,” I said, as painful as I knew it would be to wait outside and not hear what was going on. “I think it’ll be better that way. He’s already heard what I have to say. Let him hear you guys without any distraction from me.”

  David and Angelo agreed and stepped in; I waited outside for what seemed like forever. When they stepped out, I couldn’t really tell what the outcome was. Their heads were down. They didn’t say anything. Then Father Beauchamp emerged with a Notre Dame picture book in his hand. “Wouldn’t this look great on the silver screen?” he said to them, holding up a picture of the Golden Dome. They both agreed that the dome would look amazing.

  “Alright, let’s go over to University Relations,” Beauchamp said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve been rejected too many times.”

  Father Beauchamp looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, Rudy. I’m their boss.” He gave me a great big smile.

  As we walked over, I whispered to David, “Do we have it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but don’t get too excited. Play it cool.”

  Wow! I thought. Just wow. What the heck had they said to him to sway it our way? This was fifty years of restrictions against movie making on campus about to come to an end—for my movie!

  I still almost didn’t believe it, until we got to the office and the man in charge came right over and shook my hand. “Rudy,” he said, “congratulations.”

  “For what?” I asked. I really wasn’t sure about this whole thing yet.

  “We’re a part of your team now.”

  What a turnaround! I could hardly believe it was true. This was it. With Notre Dame in my corner, this was a done deal. There was nothing to stop us! I found out what really sold Beauchamp too: after I saw him in his office before the weekend, he went home, had some dinner, and then sat down to watch Hoosiers. He was so moved and inspired by that film that when he met David and Angelo, he really only had one question for them: “Can you give us that type of movie in a Notre Dame story?” They promised they would. He had already spoken to University Relations about it before the meeting, and since there were plenty of Hoosiers fans in that office too, that pretty much sealed the deal. They knew how powerful a little film could be, and how much it could do for the reputation of Notre Dame. They saw that the message wouldn’t be all about me. I think that was the thing they feared most—that all I was doing was trying to promote myself. Why would Notre Dame want to promote some messed-up kid who came into their great university through a side door? What they needed to understand, and what they finally understood, was that my story was about a message, a feeling. We wanted to show other kids that they could make it too, if they followed their hearts and followed their dreams. Once they understood that, and once they had the confidence of the team behind Hoosiers, there was simply no stopping us.

  Or so I thought.

  Nothing in life is easy. That sounds like a sweeping statement, and maybe a flat-out cliché. But it’s true. The more I’ve come to accept that truth, the easier it has been to deal with the roadblocks and difficulties that get in the way of my dreams. Once you recognize the fact that nothing—nothing—is easy, you just come to accept that the hardships are part of the job. Whatever that job is. I didn’t know that when I first got started. Every time a roadblock popped up, I got mad. Sometimes that was okay, because I used my anger to propel me forward. But there’s something to letting that anger go. There’s something to dealing with the roadblocks, taking them one step at a time, thinking of them as little tests to make sure you’re really ready for the reward at the end of the path God lays out for you. There’s some peace in that, but it’s a peace I certainly didn’t have as we got ready to make this movie.

  The fact is, my own naïveté, my running around like some chicken with his head cut off desperately trying to get my film made, had set up a whole bunch of roadblocks and problems—going all the way back to the very beginning. The biggest problem of all is that I got involved with people from time to time who didn’t have my back. They were out for their own selfish interests. I assumed they were good people with good intentions, whether by association or my own easygoing nature. But once a big Hollywood studio was involved and this movie was really getting made, all of those faulty associations came
back to haunt me.

  Right in the middle of the preparations, Angelo called me, just beside himself. “Rudy,” he said, “they’re not going to give me screen credit. I’m not going to get credit for this movie.”

  I didn’t understand. He wrote the script! What did he mean they wouldn’t give him credit?

  “You wrote an earlier script with a ghostwriter, right? Well, he registered it with the Writers’ Guild, Rudy. Whoever wrote the first script gets the credit. That’s how it works. It’s the Guild’s call.”

  “What?!” I was flabbergasted. “He had no right to do anything with that script. I’ll fix this, Angelo. Let me call my lawyer. I’ll get in front of the Guild, or SAG, or whatever I have to do.”

  I couldn’t believe that old stuff was still haunting me. As if the fire in my kitchen weren’t bad enough, I soon learned that not only had the ghostwriter taken our script and registered it with the Writer’s Guild, but he had taken my name off of it entirely! As if it were purely his own original screenplay. He then went and optioned that screenplay to two or three different production companies through the years, making a little money for himself all along the way—money that should have been shared with me. It was my story. He was still stealing from me!

  I was livid. I went out to Hollywood and spoke to the Guild; my lawyer stepped in, and we took care of it. I couldn’t believe how much that one guy had taken advantage of me. Clearly I needed to do a little more due diligence in checking out the people I partnered up with. This one guy had now caused me problems for years! Not to mention nearly destroying the screen credit of a genius writer who had come through for me. I felt awful. And it was just the start.

  TriStar kept calling me with all kinds of problems and clearance issues. I had to pay back an earlier producer who was involved with the Frank Capra Jr. deal a total of $20,000 before the production could move forward, and he was still included and credited in the movie. Even after all he’d done, that ghostwriter stood up and claimed I owed him money for the work he had done in story development. There were a couple of other producer types who had attached themselves during the Frank Capra Jr. period who claimed some ownership as well, and my attorney basically told me I had no choice but to write everyone a check. “You could fight it, and you’d win,” he told me, “but while you’re fighting, they’ll cancel the film. The movie will never get made.”

  The most important thing to me was to see this film come to completion. I wound up spending nearly every penny TriStar had agreed to pay me for the rights to my life story before the film even started. Nearly every penny went to pay off this series of guys who claimed they had rights to my story. So all those riches people assumed I was making, the piles of cash everyone expects to gain from a big Hollywood break like this, wasn’t anywhere near the millions, or even high six figures people assume you get. And no one ever could have imagined the payouts I’d have to make just to keep the film alive. I basically made no money from the film. My only income at this point, still, was from mowing lawns and fixing stuff up around the condo development! It didn’t matter. The excitement of it all fed me more than any money ever could.

  Throughout the summer there were panic calls from TriStar because they hadn’t received official word from Notre Dame about the right to shoot Rudy on campus. I started making phone calls and pestering everyone until, finally, University Relations sent me an official letter on September 3, noting that they had agreed to allow filming but asking to have a meeting with me to discuss it before it all became public. They were still worried about it right up ’til the eleventh hour!

  On October 14, 1992, Variety—the official trade magazine that documents all the business happenings in Hollywood—printed an article titled “TriStar Pix kicks off ‘Rudy’ film,” highlighting the fact that the film had overcome all kinds of rights hurdles at the last minute. Little did anyone know that most of those hurdles were put there by me and my business dealings with all of these hangers on!

  Scheduled for a fifty-day shoot, TriStar set a start date of October 26.

  A start date. For the movie I’d been dreaming about since the late 1970s.

  I could feel it, deep in my gut: my life was about to change. Everything I had been preparing for and aiming for, the summation of everything I had been learning in all of my flailing around, for all those years, was about to come true. It was that same sort of feeling I had in the locker room before the final game. That feeling of knowing it’s real. It’s all about to start. My whole life was about to change.

  It felt big. It felt scary.

  It was awesome!

  16

  Making Rudy

  A law student. A janitor. A hotel manager. A mailman. It’s astounding when you stop and think about the people who show up in your life when you need them. As October rolled on and the first day of shooting was upon us, it was those people I wanted to focus on. I tried to let go of all the negativity and the problems and the hangers on who had basically taken every penny out of my pocket.

  But God had one more little test for me.

  On the first day of shooting, first thing in the morning, I received an angry call from the head of TriStar and producer Rob Fried. “We’ve got a problem, Rudy,” they said. “There’s a priest threatening to shut the film down. Says he’s filing a lawsuit and will get an injunction to shut us down today. Did you write a book about your life with some priest?”

  I couldn’t believe it. The priest from outside of Notre Dame whom I shared my story with, who talked about writing a book with me but never lifted a finger to actually do anything, had suddenly come back to haunt me like all of those other hangers on. A priest! Never in a million years would I have expected that kind of behavior from a priest. But by this point, nothing totally shocked me anymore. I asked them to give me his number and to give me a little time. I promised he wouldn’t sue them. I promised he wouldn’t shut the film down. I told them to just move ahead and I’d handle this guy. I knew him. No problem.

  In reality, I had no idea if I could stop him. I couldn’t even imagine what this guy was up to. I got him on the phone right away.

  “Father, what is going on?!” I said.

  After some hemming and hawing, he basically told me that he was in some financial trouble. He really needed the money. “You’ve got to get me some money from this. Please, Rudy.”

  I said, “Look, you know this movie was not your idea. You know none of this was your effort.”

  “Well, we talked about it. We shared ideas, Rudy. I deserve something for this.”

  He didn’t “deserve” anything, but I needed to save the movie. It was all that mattered.

  “What do you need?” I asked. “Just tell me how much you need.”

  “I need ten-thousand dollars.”

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and said, “Fine.”

  “And I also want a part in the movie,” he said.

  “What?!”

  I didn’t know if I could deliver that. I wasn’t in charge of casting. He insisted he would fight me if he didn’t get a part.

  With no choice, I hung up the phone and called David Anspaugh. Fortunately, there was a bit part that hadn’t been cast yet. We were using lots of locals and townspeople for little parts in the film. It was cheap, made sense, and gave the whole production a good feeling. David agreed, and I called that priest back, and we put the whole thing to rest.

  That priest was the last of the hangers on who nearly messed up the movie. The last obstacle. Yet another lesson for me to never blindly trust anyone who tried to become a part of my life and a part of my dreams. It wasn’t a lesson that sat well with me. I didn’t want to be a hesitant, distrustful person. But perhaps I needed to be a lot less naive about the ways of the world.

  It just goes to show, even the people who show up in your life in a negative way are really positive: they teach you a lesson, every one of them, as long as you’re open to learning. The lesson I needed to heed, and a lesson I would continue to stru
ggle with for many years to come, was not to blindly trust in everyone I met, but to verify. To do my due diligence. To be careful that the people around me were really who they said they were, that their actions matched their deeds, and that their intentions were honest and forthright. It’s up to each and every one of us to be careful with whom we align ourselves.

  Once that priest was paid off and out of the way, I felt as if my alignments were finally, finally in place. My life’s story was now in the hands of an incredible ensemble. They were a group of people who would wake long before dawn, raring to go, day after day, ready to throw their hearts and souls into making the most out of my life story for the next two months.

  While I had been busy sorting out the various payoffs to get the film off the ground, the movie-making machine had forged ahead. The power of Angelo’s script attracted the best of the best at every level. The crew was phenomenal. All of them. Truly. I’ve never seen such a well-oiled, professional bunch of people so dedicated to their work in my life. It was like a navy crew, but every one of them wanted to be there and truly loved what they did. They all seemed happy to just be a part of the movie-making process, and every one of them played a vital role. What an awesome way to live! Watching the sensitivity and brilliance of David Anspaugh at the helm, I saw the way he worked as both an artist and a leader at the same time. I don’t think I had ever seen that combination in a human being before. From the moment that first camera rolled, it was simply a thrill.

  Of course the cast, which I had some input into selecting, was nothing short of sensational. First off, Sean Astin—a talented young actor who had just appeared in Encino Man and Memphis Belle, and who made a big impression even as a youngster in The Goonies, was awesome. I was thrilled to have him play the on-screen version of me. The guy really gave it his all too. He had two stunt doubles at the beginning of the shoot, and the football sequences were so hard, both of those stunt doubles got injured. One of them broke his hip! So Sean had to jump in and do all of that stuff himself. Now get this: Sean Astin had never played football in his life. He didn’t know how to get in a stance before he started rehearsing for this film. You would certainly never know it by looking at the finished product, and that’s a testament to what a strong actor he is and what a dedicated, focused guy he is. He learned more about football in two days than some kids learn in their entire high school and college careers! It was awesome to watch.