It’s never a wrap for actor from ‘Hoosiers’

Holed up in a Bradenton, Fla., motel Sunday night, I did what any tourist would do who’d traveled cross-country for vacation -- I turned on the TV.

The gods smiled; “Hoosiers” was on the air again. Man, how many ways do I love that movie? How many times have I seen it? And it’s not just me. A couple years ago, ESPN dubbed it the best sports movie of the last 25 years.

I spent four boyhood years in small-town Nebraska where my father coached the Marquette Cubs and took them to the state basketball tournament, so it’s no surprise that “Hoosiers” moves me. Every time the camera shows Gene Hackman throwing a chest pass in practice or the single-file line of cars making road trips over Indiana country highways or those 1950s gyms and Midwestern farms, it all comes back.

Now it’s March again, meaning that hoops madness is back.

And who better to share the feeling with than Jimmy Chitwood, the sharpshooter who made the last-second shot in “Hoosiers” that won the state title for the fictional Hickory Huskers?

Yes, Jimmy Chitwood lives on, even if he goes by the real-life name of Maris Valainis, a 45-year-old father of two who lives in Costa Mesa. Over the years, reporters would track him down in March and ask him all over again about the movie.

Premiering in late 1986, “Hoosiers” was loosely based on the 1954 small-school Milan team that knocked off big-city schools en route to the Indiana state title.

And while the filmmakers took liberties with the characters, the real-life Milan team did win the game on a last-minute shot.

I caught Valainis, the former actor who now works for a development company, on the fly Wednesday morning while he was in Rancho Cucamonga on a project.

“My 15 minutes of fame that’s lasted 20 years,” Valainis jokes. But rather than being bored with dredging up thoughts of yesteryear, he summons the memories easily.

So, did he watch the movie again last weekend? Has he seen it over and over?

“If I’m flipping through channels, I’ll watch a little bit,” he says. “I’ve probably watched it all the way through one or two times. I guess I’m a little uncomfortable watching myself on film. I’ve gotten more comfortable as the years have gone on. A lot of actors are like that. But I remember Dennis Hopper. He’d get the dailies [the prints of previous day’s shooting] and he’d close himself in a screening room and watch for hours and critique himself.”

The film had big-name stars, including Hopper as the town drunk who helped coach the team, but the Hickory “players” were unknowns. Their personalities meshed, and filming was fun.

“At the time, it seems like everything we did for the movie kind of fell into place,” Valainis says. “The way they cast it was part of it. . . . The way they shot it, I think, was key. A lot of other sports movies before that were very choreographed. With us, they put us out there, we practiced a couple weeks before filming and ran some plays as our team.”

Valainis, the son of Latvian immigrants, grew up in Indianapolis and knew the history of the Milan team. “Growing up in Indiana, everyone knew about that team,” he says.

When cast at 22, it was his first movie role. “I was pretty naive,” he says. “I didn’t understand the implications of what was happening to me, being chosen and all. I just considered myself one of the members of the team, and I think that helped that part of the movie.”

But he’s the one who made the big shot. How many takes did he need?

“I kept missing in practice,” he says, “and we were getting ready to film. They filled half the fieldhouse [at Butler University] and everybody had to run out on the court [to celebrate the game-winner], so I was feeling a little pressure to get it right. But I kept missing and missing. I don’t know what was wrong with me that day. The casting director, who knew nothing about basketball -- I don’t think he ever picked up a basketball in his life -- said, ‘You’re not even looking at the basket.’ So, we filmed it and I got it on the first take.”

In another scene earlier in the movie, Hackman conducts a one-way conversation while Valainis drains shot after shot on an outdoor basketball court.

“That’s one of the vivid memories I have,” Valainis says. “It was getting late in the day, we were about to wrap up and they decided to get that shot. So we went out there, set up, it started to sprinkle a little bit, it was getting dark and we ended up doing it in one take again. I remember shooting and not paying any attention to a word he was saying.”

Valainis has come to realize that many people, like me, connect part of their past to the film.

“I don’t want to say I was modest, but I didn’t understand why people wanted to keep talking about it,” he says in the years after its release. “A movie that happened 20 years ago, and five years after, they were still talking about. At one point, I remember saying to someone that maybe, like “The Wizard of Oz,” it’ll become a classic. I said that a long time ago. It seems to be turning into that.”

To his distress, Valainis learned that being a cinematic sharpshooter imposes a special burden. He still plays three times a week, often at Sports Club/LA in Irvine. “I was what you’d call a streaky shooter,” he says of his younger days. “Over the years, I’ve improved. Carrying a reputation, you have to.”

Younger players often don’t recognize him, but older ones do. “I try to keep it in perspective,” he says, “but when you’re on the court and you’re recognized, you have to live up to it. That’s the hardest part of it. People have expectations of you. As you get older, it gets a little harder on you to do it. Thank God, most of the time I do.”

Valainis’ acting career spanned a few years and a few movie roles. “I don’t know if my personality was suited for Hollywood,” he says. “I’m more laid-back, more private than most people. Over the years, I’ve gotten less that way.”

He never “latched onto Hollywood” the way an ambitious actor needs to, but he has no laments. He’s been married eight years, and his daughters are 5 and 3.

Valainis stands a notch under 6 foot 3, and I ask if he’s still got that lean farm-boy body.

“At the time of the movie,” he says, “I weighed 170 pounds. I was a rail. Now I’m about 215. And I’m probably chopping off a few pounds when I say that, just to be kind to myself.”

Come on, man, don’t burst my bubble. I’m taking memories of Jimmy Chitwood to my grave.

As if to salve me, he quickly adds: “All muscle.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.