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Friday March 29th 2024

Breaking Away | 1979

Breaking Away location: Lincoln Street, Bloomington, Indiana
Breaking Away location: the home of Dave Stoller and his long-suffering parents: Lincoln Street, Bloomington, Indiana | Photograph: wikimedia / Nyttend

Made by the British director of Bullitt, entirely on location in Bloomington, Indiana, 40 miles southwest of Indianapolis, this enormously likeable little movie – a sort of Rocky for cyclists – got a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Picture and actually picked up an Academy Award for for Steve Tesich’s quirky script.

The house of wannabe-Italian Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher) and his worried parents is 756 South Lincoln Street, at East Dodds Street, southwest of downtown Bloomington.

A few blocks further southwest, ‘Campus Cars’, his father’s used car lot is 1010 South Walnut Street.

Breaking Away location: Rooftop Quarry, East Empire Mill Road, Bloomington, Indiana
Breaking Away location: Dave and his mates swim in the quarry: Rooftop Quarry, East Empire Mill Road, Bloomington, Indiana | Photograph: wikimedia / Sphinxcat

Dave and his ‘Cutter’ pals swim in the steep sided Rooftop Quarry, off East Empire Mill Road a few miles south of town, and fiercely defend it when it’s discovered by local students. There a plenty of old limestone quarries in the area, a legacy of the town’s past, which gives rise to ‘Cutters’, the nickname given to locals. Please be aware that diving here is extremely dangerous, and there have been fatalities.

As rivalry builds, Dave and his mates go looking for a fight with the college boys at Indiana Memorial Union, 900 East 7th Street on the Indiana University campus, north of 3rd Street.

It’s just a little to the south, on 3rd Street itself that, to the displeasure of the college boys, Dave serenades his ‘Katarina’, in Italian naturally, at her sorority house, Delta Delta Delta Sorority, 818 East 3rd Street.

Dave and uni student Katherine (Robyn Douglass) get to know each other a little better in Thai restaurant Siam House (formerly the Magic Horn), 430 East 4th Street, west of the campus.

Breaking Away location: Monroe County Courthouse, Bloomington, Indiana
Breaking Away location: Moocher and his girlfriend get a marriage licence: Monroe County Courthouse, Bloomington, Indiana | Photograph: wikimedia / Nyttend

Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley) and his girlfriend go to get a marriage licence at Monroe County Courthouse, 100 West Kirkwood Avenue, at North College Avenue.

The pizza restaurant on Bloomington’s downtown square, outside which the four mates are hanging out, when Mike (Dennis Quaid) gets a warning from his cop brother, on Bloomington’s downtown square. It’s still there, now Opie Taylor’s, 110 North Walnut Street.

Breaking Away location: Rose Well House, Dunn Woods, Bloomington, Indiana
Breaking Away location: the home of Dave Stoller and his long-suffering parents: Rose Well House, Dunn Woods, Bloomington, Indiana | Photograph: wikimedia / Nyttend

In Dunn’s Woods, on the Old Crescent on the Indiana University campus, Rose Well House is the stone pavilion (built using old stane gates of the university) where Dave finally plucks up the nerve to reveal to Katherine that he’s not in fact Italian at all, but a ‘cutter’.