How does that song go? If...

How does that song go? If that’s not lovin’ you ... God didn’t make little green apples/And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

And the folks in this Hoosier state are loving a Hollywood movie that bears the state’s nickname--or the Lord didn’t make the apples and it don’t rain here. Uh-huh.

“ ‘Hoosier’ Hysteria--Hollywood Style.” That’s what the Indianapolis Star called Monday night’s world premiere of “Hoosiers,” the $6-million film from Orion Pictures starring Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey and Dennis Hopper. King of the festivities was visiting celeb Hopper, who plays the alcoholic dad of one of the young basketball players in the film.

If recognition in a Hollywood movie wasn’t enough--”Hoosiers” is all about a little-town Indiana high school basketball team that. . . . Well, we can’t tell you what happens but, suffice it to say that basketball and Indiana go together like . . . . Well, a reporter was told that in this state, the definition of a pervert is someone who likes sex more than basketball.

(Now playing throughout Indiana, where it was filmed, “Hoosiers” doesn’t open in the rest of the country until Jan. 23--except for a one-week engagement in Los Angeles in December in order to qualify for Academy Award consideration.)

To accommodate the hoopla here, they picked the city’s historic Circle Theater, home to the symphony orchestra, across from the towering Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Before its $7-million refurbishing, the Circle was a once-glorious movie house that had slipped to showing exploitation fare. Its last official picture show was the triple bill: “Cooley High,” “Truck Turner” and “Shanghai Killers.”

For the night, organizers had to bring projectors in from the Shadeland Drive-In, which is being leveled for new development.

Staged as a Variety Club benefit (all 1,700 tickets, at $30 apiece, were sold out), the premiere was replete with red carpet, searchlights, balloon clusters and the Southport High School Marching Band performing the Hickory High School fight song.

Hickory High is a fictional high school featured in “Hoosiers” and inspired by the real-life rural Milan High. Back in 1954, Milan (pop. 600) snared the Indiana State basketball crown. Which is a bit like Rocky Balboa going 15 rounds with Apollo Creed.

“Hoosiers” director David Anspaugh (he’s been a producer and Emmy-winning director of “Hill Street Blues”) and screenwriter/co-producer Angelo Pizzo (former vice president of production for Time-Life Films) say they first talked about a film based on the miracle of Milan when they were frat brothers at Indiana U.

Among the celebrities at the premiere: Bobby Plump, whose last-second shot won that 1954 championship season.

But if Plump was the star way back when, it was Dennis Hopper who carried the ball during the burst of publicity in Indianapolis.

(Ironically, in the movie Hopper explains how, as a young man, he could have won the state tourney. But he missed that last shot. Thus, his downfall.)

Sure, there was lots and lots of press for Anspaugh (from Decatur) and Pizzo (from Bloomington), “young Hoosiers we can all be proud of,” applauded Lt. Gov. John M. Mutz. The film makers received keys to the city and were named to the state’s Council of the Sagamores of the Wabash. (“I don’t know exactly what the Sagamores of the Wabash is, but I do know that it’s considered a terrific honor here,” said Pizzo, who wound up getting a free taxi ride when a cabbie learned he’d been named to the exalted council.)

And the opening-night audience cheered wildly for the young locals who play the basketball players. (During a newscast, one of them declared that, despite his boffo film debut, his future was still as a fourth-generation farmer.)

But Hopper was The Movie Star.

The excitement over Hopper seemed due to much more than just his availability. (Hackman, who plays the coach, is in England playing Lex Luthor in “Superman IV” and Hershey, who plays the suffering teacher-lover, is in Louisiana filming “Shy People.”)

For a change in his career, Hopper plays an enormously likable character--Shooter, the town drunk who tries to go sober when he is hired on as assistant basketball coach. The performance is generating supporting-actor Oscar talk: Politician Mutz declared him a “cinch” as a nominee.

There is also the attraction of Hopper’s “survivor” status. “I just turned 50, so maybe I’m an antique that’s come back in style,” he said.

Then there is the film itself. “I’m not usually in one of those movies that leaves you feeling good when you leave the theater,” laughed Hopper, adding, “In a way my role in ‘Hoosiers’ balances out my role in ‘Blue Velvet.’ ” He referred to his portrayal of Frank Booth, the psycho-sadist who brutalizes Isabella Rossellini. Booth is, Hopper casually surmised, “perhaps the most vicious person who has ever been on the screen.”

Sports movies don’t always win at the box-office.

Various movie marketing consultants are working on the “Hoosiers” campaign, which will stress the film’s “people” angle over its dramatics on the hardwood. “It’s about friendship. And redemption. It’s about a father and his son (Hopper and his screen son),” stressed one consultant.

The consultants (three flew in for the premiere) are concentrating on what is called segmented marketing. “Nothing can express this movie as well as word-of-mouth,” explained a “Hoosiers” rep. “What we’re going to do is saturate the state with this film. It will play every little town. We’re hoping that the people here will tell their friends and relatives in other states. What we’re doing is similar to a grassroots political campaign.”

That means downplaying the sports. (Trailers running in Indiana include more basketball scenes than trailers that run elsewhere.)

Admitted Pizzo: “When we went around, trying to sell this picture, the studios kept telling us that the sports angle would kill us.”

It remained for producer Carter De Haven and executive producers John Daly and Derek Gibson (and their Hemdale Films) to believe in the film’s “people” theme.

Basketball came up, anyway, during interviews. “When I was growing up in Kansas, we had a hoop over the barn,” Hooper told reporters.

His current basketball interests? “Well, I go to the Lakers games with my friend Jack (Nicholson).”

After a half dozen interviews, Hopper was getting tired of the same old questions. (“Kind of like watching paint dry, isn’t it,” he asked a reporter. But he quickly added, “Just kidding.”)

By late Monday, he was a touch rowdy--enough to tell an all-state media press conference that he and Hackman hadn’t understood, at first, when the director and screenwriter had insisted on filming “all those damned basketball games.”

Quipped Hopper, “We were sitting on these wooden benches, saying, ‘ Here’s the big money. Why aren’t you shooting us.’ ”

The Indianapolis Star had three “experts” review the film.

Bobby Plump, whose final shot helped itty bitty Milan beat powerful Muncie, wrote, “The movie does a nice job of emphasizing the powerful influence a coach has on his players and community . . . to me the film was highly enjoyable.”

North Central High senior Ken Turner (at 17, and 6 foot 6, he has been named one of the top 50 high school players in the nation) didn’t think Hackman was a convincing coach (“The way he talked to his players pre-game was unrealistic”) and he didn’t approve of the romance between Hackman and Hershey (“She looked entirely too young for him. No offense, but that coach could be like a father figure . . . “) but, he applauded the film for its enthusiasm toward basketball.

Ed Siegel, coach at Pike High since 1970, analyzed Hackman’s controversial decision to have his team play man-to-man defense. (In the ‘50s, when the film took place, said Siegel, zone defense was more typical because of the small gymnasiums.) He found the selection of the town drunk (Hopper) as assistant coach strictly Hollywood but nonetheless, “ ‘Hoosiers’ will warm the heart.”

Local critics had been asked to hold their reviews of the film, until the day of their premiere. But more than a week before this Big Day, the Star’s Rita Rose ran her critique. (It was positive).

A day later, Patty Spitler of the local CBS affiliate WISH chided her colleague for breaking “a gentleman’s and lady’s agreement.” Then she delivered her thumbs-up review.

An “A.M. Indiana” anchor later joked that “Hoosiers” was opening to “mixed reviews.” “They are ‘super,’ ‘great’ and ‘excellent’ ” beamed Dick Wolfsie. (With Hopper and Angelo Pizzo seated beside him, he tore up a negative review from the Hollywood Reporter.)

Later in the week, “A.M. Indiana” planned to introduce the original Milan team members.

Meanwhile, the folks at WRTV, the local ABC affiliate, had sent a satellite truck to Milan.

Who were they interviewing?

“Whoever they can find,” said a station rep. “They say that anybody who’s over 40 saw the game.”

“Hey, Dennis, that guy wondered where you were partying tonight.”

The limo driver was talking about a blonde teen-ager, who had peered into the car carrying Hopper, his production assistant-girlfriend Jamie Thompson, a marketing consultant and the reporter.

“Partying?” Hooper shook his head. Then he cracked a grin.

“Hasn’t he heard?”

Everybody laughed. The reason: Just about every interviewer had asked Hopper about his famed days of drink and drugs--and the new, improved, sober Hopper.

Hopper’s candor about his past sins made for dramatic copy.

Not that he didn’t reiterate the near-stock answer in interview after interview. (The Hopper reply: “I’ve been without a drink for four years. Drugs were a little tougher. It’s been three years since I’ve done them.”)

Most interviewers were awed by Hopper’s tale.

But radio disk jockeys Bob and Tom (of station WFBQ), famed for their notorious on-air antics, were largely unimpressed. After Hopper had decried his drug days, Tom shot back, “Well, Dennis, thanks for that downer.”

Hopper laughed loudly.

One of Hopper’s liveliest (and more raucous) press forays, the visit with Bob and Tom got under way after the duo held a drawing for a classic Corvette. (Intoned Tom, “You win this car, you will become a chick magnet.” Along with attracting women, Tom “guaranteed” that the ‘Vette would mean a livelier sex life for the lucky winner.)

It closed with the jocks playing a couple of favorite oddities for Hopper--but these songs and their subject matters aren’t discussable herein.

Hopper did some crazy promoting with Bob and Tom.

“Hackman’s great, Hershey’s great, I’m not bad .” Then he went to work chiding his friend Bob Dylan, “because he keeps showing up and telling me about movies we’re going to make together. Then I never see him again. I mean, you can’t find the guy. He has eight or nine homes and no phone numbers. You know what I mean?”

When a station employee who’d seen “Blue Velvet” ambled in the room, the talk turned to Hopper’s portrayal of Frank Booth.

The employee called the film “the perfect date movie.” That is, “in case you never want to see that person again . . . You got a blind date coming up? Take them to ‘Blue Velvet.’ I mean, it’ll be stone quiet all the way home.”

Hopper got an idea for a gag. He had Bob and Tom call his home in Venice. Hopper’s voice was on the answering machine, explaining that he wasn’t in, because Frank had taken him for a joy ride to Indianapolis. (To understand the significance of the joy ride, one must have seen “Blue Velvet.”)

“They’re coming at me.”

Hopper was talking about the nine movies he has completed in the past two years.

Upcoming titles include “The River’s Edge,” in which he plays a psychopath (Hopper admits to liking this one more than “Blue Velvet,” “which I felt had a naive point of view”), “The Pickup Artist” (he plays Molly Ringwald’s alcoholic father), “Black Widow” (he’s a wealthy executive caught in the web of a dangerous seductress) and the now filming “Blood Red.” In the latter, he plays an Irish railroad builder (“Let’s just say I’m a man who takes care of business,” smiled Hopper) who squares off against Italian grape growers. Hopper also insisted he is negotiating to direct a film. “But I can’t tell you what it is. Not until I get the financing.

Hopper has not directed a movie since the prophetically-titled “The Last Movie,” made in 1971 in Peru, about the making of a film.

Never properly distributed--due to Hopper’s battles with Universal Pictures--the film was dismissed by some film critics for its self-indulgence. But it also won a prize at the Venice Film Festival.

“How could it have won that award and not be a great film,” Hopper asked. A reporter pressed Hopper. Why is it a great film?

“Because,” said Hopper, “people said so.”

A reporter was flipping throught the pages of Hopper’s just published book of black-and-white photographs, “Out of the Sixties.”

It includes portraits of various artists of the time--ranging from Andy Warhol to Janis Joplin to Ike and Tina Turner. (Spying a photo of the rock duo, Hopper joked, “Doesn’t he look as if he’s saying, ‘I sure wish I hadn’t been beatin’ on her!’ ”).

The book also includes a section on the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Asked about the era that he has, to a large degree (largely due to “Easy Rider”) come to symbolize, Hopper said, “Well, the ‘60s were the most far out time I’ve ever lived through. We used ourselves as guinea pigs and as cannon fodder. I know there was a lot of confusion, but, there was also a lot of looking for the answers . . . I say the ‘60s will do until the real thing comes along.

A lot has been written about Hopper’s friendship with James Dean.

Because Dean was a native of Indiana (and a basketball player at Fairmont High), most Indianapolis interviewers quizzed Hopper about the legendary actor.

“He was more intense than anybody I’ve ever known,” said Hopper, who recalled a time when Dean told him, “I’ve got Marlon Brando in one hand, saying ‘Go screw yourself.’ I’ve got Monty Clift in the other, saying, ‘Please forgive me.’ In between, I’ve got Jimmy Dean. And that’s how I’ll be remembered.”

Then there was the time, Hopper said, when he was with Dean in Will Wrights’, a Hollywood ice cream parlor. “And this girl came up to Jimmy and asked for his autograph and he gave it to her. Then she ripped it up right there saying, ‘You think you’re really something, don’t you?’

“I couldn’t believe what had happened. But Jimmy didn’t say a thing. So I said, ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ He said it didn’t--as long as the shredded paper didn’t get in his ice cream.”

A limo driver who had been driving Hopper and the rest of the Hoosiers gang around gave them mostly high marks.

He also gave high marks to the members of Van Halen. (“Very classy and low key. Does one of them have a baby? Because they had a baby with them.”) And he was impressed to report that David Letterman travels all by himself. “And, he’s a trip.”

The members of Neil Young’s band Crazy Horse awed him in another way. “Oh, they were such crazy animals!

“They had me stop at the store and they went in and bought a case of champagne. Do you believe it--24 bottles of Dom Perignon.

“They had women handcuffed to the car! Handcuffed to the car! This guy had a box of handcuffs in his gym bag.”

A reporter was not startled by the news. This caused a publicist (who had overheard the exchange) to declare, “In L.A., the limos come with handcuffs--right?”

Movie stars are no big deal in L.A. But you don’t come across them every day in Indiana.

When Hopper surprised an audience at the 300-seat Lafayette Square Theater, following a special screening of “Hoosiers” (the audience had won their tickets via the Bob and Tom Show), he was met by a burst of applause and then, a reverent silence.

Taking his place in front of the theater, Hopper told of “all the love” that had gone into the making of the film. “If you like this movie, it’s real important that you call your friends and tell them to go see it this weekend,” said Hopper, who went on to explain how a movie’s first weekend can affect its chances for additional weekends at the box office.

He told how much he’d enjoyed playing Shooter.

His words were interrupted by a member of the audience who yelled out, “You’ll probably get an Academy Award nomination for it!”

The crowd applauded.

Hooper smiled broadly, shifted, and said “Well . . . that’d sure be different.”