Editor's note: This story was originally published in 2021. Some references may be out of date.

Larry Bird was an Indiana University, coach Bob Knight basketball dropout. He was back home in French Lick working as an 18-year-old garbage truck driver.

He was behind the French Lick Springs Resort shooting hoops with the cooking staff that spring day in 1975. Out of college ball, that's where Bird got his basketball fix, practicing his game with the kitchen crew.

A cluster of bushes grew back by that basketball goal. And, unbeknownst to Bird, there was a man in those bushes watching, a man named Bill Hodges.

Hodges was a college basketball coach down on his luck. He was coming off a job as an assistant at Armstrong State in Savannah, Georgia. His dreams of being a big-time coach seemed unlikely at best. Until he concocted an idea: Larry Bird.

Bird was available.

Hodges packed a suitcase, tossed it in the back of his rundown Dodge Dart and turned to his wife, Connie. "If I don't make this work, then you have my word," he told her. "No more basketball. I'll sell insurance, or cars, or whatever it takes to keep a roof over our heads."

He drove from Georgia to French Lick to find Bird, to try to convince him to play for Hodges, who would be an assistant at Indiana State.

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The story of Bird's college career is woven into basketball lore now, of Bird going undefeated in the regular season at Indiana State in 1979, leading his team to the NCAA finals and losing to a Magic Johnson-led Michigan State.

But how did Bird end up at Indiana State? Did Hodges emerge from the bushes that day? How did Hodges persuade a stubborn introvert to give basketball another shot?

"Wouldn't that make a great movie?" Patrick Wood said, laughing.

Indeed, it would. And that movie is in the works.

Wood, along with Steve Zukerman, two Indiana natives with star-laden careers in Hollywood, are in the midst of making a movie about the untold story of how Hodges persuaded Bird to play for him.

The "Untitled French Lick Project" — yet to be named — will be filmed in Indiana and Georgia this spring. The finished movie will be a sports drama, a film that conjures up the same emotions as "Hoosiers," "Rudy" and "Rocky," Wood says.

But this movie isn't the story of Larry Bird. Wood and Zukerman want to make that clear. This is the story of Bill Hodges.

"Getting Bird, this was Hodges' Hail Mary," said Wood, writer and director of the film. "This was his last chance at greatness."

Somehow, Hodges got to Bird

Hodges was from Zionsville and went to Purdue. In the spring of 1975, he was a 30-something who had spent the past 10 years as an assistant basketball coach at Marian, Tennessee Tech and Armstrong State in Savannah, Georgia.

He and his wife, Connie, had a toddler daughter.

"He was not happy with his life, the life they had," Wood said. Connie was a nurse and Hodges had moved his family around for a coaching career too many times for their liking.

When Hodges went to Indiana State coach Bob King with his idea to recruit Bird, he had no idea how he would do it. But Hodges knew he had to.

He made his way to French Lick with the sole mission of getting Bird to play for him. If he did, he would jump from a lower-level program in Georgia to Division I at Indiana State.

He had two weeks to persuade Bird to come to Terre Haute to play; the signing deadline was approaching. The movie takes place over a period of a week and a half as Hodges plots to land Bird.

"Bill thought he had a chance," said Wood. "Bill grew up on a farm in Zionsville. Bill talks like a hick. Zionsville is not that far from French Lick and it felt like he could talk to him."

But when Hodges got to French Lick, things were much tougher than he had envisioned, said Wood. The town was protecting Bird, whose father had died by suicide when Bird was 18.

They were protecting this basketball star who had made it to the premier college team at IU but, unexpectedly, quit. Some believed Bird left Bloomington because he was still grieving his dad's death. Others thought the campus was too large. Others suspected he didn't get along with Knight.

"Nobody knew why he quit," Wood said. "A lot of people assumed things. He was kind of a broken kid, in a way."

Once he was back in French Lick, major colleges came calling on Bird, who was collecting garbage and mowing grass for the town.

"The college recruiters descended on Bird for a second time, but this time the whole town protected him," Wood said. "They couldn't find him. How hard could it be to find a  6-foot-9, blond-haired, blue-eyed guy?"

Very tough. The townspeople shut their doors in recruiters' faces. They wouldn't budge with information on his whereabouts.

"It was a real trick even to get to talk to him," Wood said.

But Hodges got to Bird. Somehow.

'That's when I knew I had him'

Hodges, now 78, has told the story many times in media interviews about the talk he had with Bird, the one where he knew he had convinced him to play at Indiana State.

But how Hodges got to him is a mystery the movie will solve.

When Wood decided to write the movie, he made a phone call to Hodges, who now lives in North Carolina. The two have become good friends. Hodges was thrilled to have his story told and Wood has learned many never-before-told stories of the coach recruiting Bird.

But one story Hodges is adamant that the movie tell is the moment when he knew he had convinced Bird to play at Indiana State.

It happened once Hodges got to Bird in French Lick. Bird was talking to Hodges about a buddy who was the best player he had seen in high school, who ended up not going to college, how nobody knew about him now.

"Bill looked Larry in the eyes," Wood said, adding that he's paraphrasing Hodges' words. "'You don't go to college, Larry? That's exactly what people are going to say about you.' Bill said at that moment, as Larry looked at him, he thought, 'That's when I knew I had him.'"

Hodges gave Bird some time to think about what he'd said and then came back two days later.

Yes, Bird told him. Yes, he would play at Indiana State.

While Hodges started out as Bird's assistant coach, he ended as his head coach. King suffered a brain aneurysm before the 1978-79 season and Hodges was named his replacement.

Hodges was Bird's coach for that undefeated regular season and that matchup with Johnson in the NCAA finals.

It's the kind of story movies are made of.

"Bill needed Larry and Larry needed Bill," said Wood. "There is no doubt in my mind, Larry would have gone on to something great in basketball at the right time, at the right place. But Bill was the father figure he needed to get him through a very difficult time in his life.

"And Larry was the player Bill needed to finally make it as a coach."

The Hoosiers behind the movie

Wood and Zukerman met at Ball State University as fraternity brothers and, eventually, made their separate ways to Hollywood. When Wood started working on the French Lick script, he reached out to Zukerman.

"He's a creative force," Wood said. "I would not want to go into battle with anyone else."

Zukerman didn't think twice about saying yes.

"I've always been a story teller, stories like this, triumphs of the human sprit and the human will," said Zukerman, executive producer of the movie. "I just love what Patrick did with the script, coming from Bill's point of view. It's about Bill, this guy who is trying to make his own way in life, almost like this was his last shot to do something significant. It's such a great way to approach this story because it's not what you expect."

Zukerman is an award-winning writer, producer and director, and a digital and social media entrepreneur. He said he believes that a good story has the power to inspire action and impact communities, ultimately affecting how people navigate their world.

He is in post-production on his film “One Moment” which chronicles the life of Millard Dean Fuller, founder of Habitat For Humanity. He is also working on the “The Pink Virus," which reveals the story behind the history of breast cancer, and a vaccine that has been developed to eradicate it in its deadliest form.

Zukerman's experience extends to companies such as Fox Television, ABC, CBS, NBC, Bravo, MTV, Sony Pictures and more.

A native Hoosier and lifelong basketball fan, Wood was born and raised in Fort Wayne. Too short and uncoordinated to make the basketball team, he did what most “little guys” did and took up wrestling. He went on to become city champ and a semi-state qualifier.

Wood attended Ball State University, where he discovered a love for theater. He directed and performed in several award-winning plays while in college, and was a two-time finalist in the American College Theatre Festival Irene Ryan scholarship competitions. He also workshopped original plays with NYU’s Tisch School, and later, SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

After finishing his studies and graduating with honors, Wood was accepted into the Sanford Meisner School in Los Angeles, where he studied performance and directing. Soon after graduating from the two-year program, he became one of the original founding members of the Sanford Meisner Center for the Performing Arts in North Hollywood where he went on to direct and perform in original world premiere productions for the next five years.

It was then that Wood began to fall in love with storytelling through the optics of cinema. He’s gone on to become a creative media professional with more than 20 years of content creation experience across all media platforms.

He has also developed, produced and directed hit television shows, including ABC’s "Shark Tank" and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Movie: How Indiana State coach Bill Hodges recruited Larry Bird