Back home again in Indiana
And it seems that I can see
The gleaming candlelight still burning bright
Through the sycamores for me..."
- '(Back Home Again in) Indiana',
Louis Armstrong
I'm sorry to be leaving Illinois. I loved the movies I watched there and am aware that there are so many more I could add to my list. But we're not travelling very far, just circling east around the bottom of Lake Michigan to the neighbouring state of Indiana.
Indiana is the Hoosier State. The folks of Indiana are known as Hoosiers. No one seems to know why (maybe it is because, as Professor Henry Jones Senior once pointed out, "Indiana was the dog's name!"). Nor does anyone seem to be able to say who they are Hoosier than or, indeed, who is the Hoosiest. But at least they're happy.
Other than their odd demonym the only thing I can immediately think of about Indiana is that it is the home of the Indianapolis 500, a 500-mile speedway motor race. Now I tend to find Formula 1 racing where competitors speed around twisty-turny tracks 70-odd times pretty dull so I find it hard to believe that I would be enthused by drivers simply having to keep their left hand down for 200 laps of a perfectly oval circuit. But American sports are strange things, as we may soon discover...
I've had a touch of trouble getting hold of films set in Indiana. It is not that there aren't any, It is just that none of my original three choices are held by Lovefilm. So I have had to wave farewell to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in the Oscar-nominated Some Came Running (1958), Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005), and Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck in the comedy In & Out (1997). And instead we have:
- The Magnificant Ambersons (1942)
- Hard Rain (1998)
- Hoosiers (1986)
Hoosier daddy!
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