I don’t care about the predictability of the movie, some of the inaccuricies or how much effort it took the man it’s about to have it made, I’m a “Rudy” apologist.
Work hard, keep working hard, don’t take “no” for an answer no matter how many times you hear it and prove your doubters wrong no matter how long it takes. Since I saw it in theaters in the fall of 1993 I’ve been a fan and that hasn’t wavered.
The only thing I don’t like about the movie is how they throw Dan Devine in front of the bus, run him over, back him over, run him over again and again and again. I know every movie needs a villain but my goodness that seemed excessive.
But I digress from Devine, back to actual “Rudy” we go.
Ryan McGee of ESPN caught up with the actual Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger recently and wrote an extensive piece.
I won’t ruin the whole article for you, if you’ve got the ten or so minutes it takes to read at any point do yourself a favor and go read it. I did have a few thoughts from it however.
The man didn’t shack up in Notre Dame Stadium, instead he lived and worked in the Joyce Center where he’d mop floors and do janitorial work. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a result and once gave Elvis a t-shirt that “The King” would often wear around Graceland.
There was no jersey moment on Dan Devine’s desk and it wasn’t exactly the whole team that carried him off the field after-all. But for a former Holy Cross student that spent time beating up Notre Dame football players in the annual Bengal Bouts on campus, that story sounds even better than the one Hollywood came up with.
His friend didn’t die in a steel-mill accident, instead he died in a coal power plant incident where Ruettiger tried saving his life, somehow more intense than how things go down in the film.
I’ll forever be a “Rudy” apologist and you can call me corny as much as you like, but after reading the piece the actual story of “Rudy” sounds more like “Forrest Gump” than it does of a walk-on football player and that’s perfectly OK.