The Church of Baseball: Making Bull Durham
Ron Shelton's Introduction
John Huston once said that directing a movie is like going to war. Calling it war may be going too far, but it’s sure as hell a contact sport. Why it has always been so is a mystery to those in the trenches--why it seems as if those writing the checks and the producers midwifing the project are always throwing obstacles in the way. The fact is that sometimes those forces are actively fighting against the birth of a healthy movie, explained simply by that supreme engine that drives Hollywood--the megalomaniacal ego. The financier is determined to prove they are not just “about money” but they have a “creative bent” as well. Then again sometimes it’s just politics as usual, or the star’s girlfriend once dated the financier, or your agent hates my lawyer--the usual stew of cheap soap opera except money and careers and possibly good movies are at stake. Art patrons have always wanted to be heard--from Pope Julian telling Michelangelo he thinks Moses’s thighs are a little meaty to Robert Evans driving Francis Coppola insane as he tried to make The Godfather. The sublime or maddening irony is that sometimes the Pope and Robert Evans are right, though mostly they’re not. The Sistine Chapel and the Paramount movie came out pretty well. The director has to listen and fight back--it’s a curious behavioral contradiction where you’ve got all your nerve endings open for discovery while you’re circling the wagons to defend your vision. Sometimes it helps to have an enemy and if none exists it’s the director’s job to invent one to have a bogeyman to rally the troops against. Long ago these enemies, real or imagined, were dubbed “the suits” and have taken on mythic status as the antagonistic other. There are legendary directors, here unnamed, who invent the other as part of their daily bread, the oxygen they breathe is the war they imagine they’re involved in. The making of Bull Durham was a miserable exercise at the time but in retrospect, several movies later, it was a pretty normal series of fights, lies, clashing egos, and bloodshed all leading toward a fun and life embracing movie. Another one of John Huston’s observations claims that “directing is 50% the script and 50% casting” and while that’s excessively reductive it’s also loaded with truth. You can’t overcome a casting mistake no matter how clever the editing or, as the joke goes, how high you crank the music. I got lucky on Bull Durham--a perfect cast with chemistry you can’t invent. Screen chemistry is a mysterious thing, undefinable and unable to be conjured by the most brilliant director nor re-invented in the editing room." -- Ron Shelton
The Church of Baseball Features Interviews With:
Ron Shelton, Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Robert Wuhl, Thom Mount,
Mark Burg, Bill O'Leary, George F. Will, Ryan O'Malley, Kip Coons, Eugene Corr, Jack Viertel, Laura Stanczyk, Greg Avellone, Jeff Greene, Paul Devlin, Leonard Oakland, George Habel, Bob Costas, David Lester, Kip Coons, Grady Little, Jenny Robertson, Thomas Schlamme, Bonnie Timmermann, Tim Robbins,
Mitch Hazouri
Buy The Book on Amazon.com
The Church of Baseball Features Interviews With:
Ron Shelton, Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Robert Wuhl, Thom Mount,
Mark Burg, Bill O'Leary, George F. Will, Ryan O'Malley, Kip Coons, Eugene Corr, Jack Viertel, Laura Stanczyk, Greg Avellone, Jeff Greene, Paul Devlin, Leonard Oakland, George Habel, Bob Costas, David Lester, Kip Coons, Grady Little, Jenny Robertson, Thomas Schlamme, Bonnie Timmermann, Tim Robbins,
Mitch Hazouri
Buy The Book on Amazon.com
"Your shower shoes have fungus on 'em. You'll never get to the Bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. (beat) Think classy and you'll be classy. If you win 20 in the Show, you can let the fungus grow back on your shower shoes and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win twenty in the Show, however, it means you're a slob."--Crash Davis "Despite my love of metaphysics, and my rejection of most Judao-Christian ethics, I am, within the framework of the baseball season, monogamous."--Annie Savoy "What's this guy know, eh? If he's so great why's he been in the minors for ten years? And if he's so hot how come Annie wants me instead of him?"-- Nuke LaLoosh |
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Thoughts on the Movie
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Slideshow of Cast and Locations
Producer Thom Mount's Foreword
The movie business is very much like baseball. "You win some, you lose some and some are rained out."
Bull Durham was a development project I took with me to the eponymous Mount Company after finishing 13 years at Universal, most as worldwide President. I believed in its writer, Ron Shelton. Ron was brave, ironic and authentic. I decided Ron should direct this uniquely personal film - even though he had never directed a feature before. We decided that Kevin Costner was the perfect Crash Davis - he had not yet starred in a successful film (though No Way Out was soon to open.) Ron and I went to every studio - and the shower of abuse was sobering. "Kevin Costner isn't a movie star" said Warners. "Nobody wants to see a baseball movie" said Paramount. "We might give you less than half the money you want" said Fox.
At a small studio called Orion, our luck changed. My agent Jeff Berg pushed their head of production Mike Medavoy, and he reluctantly agreed to consider making Bull Durham - but only as a "negative pick-up", i.e., the Mount Company had to insure against any loss or late delivery, borrow money from a bank, make the film as agreed with Orion, finish it and deliver on a certain schedule. The insurance company (called a bond company in the film business) could fire anyone including me if any aspect of the film went awry. The bond company had to be convinced that Ron could direct - a tense interview. Casting Susan Sarandon, clearly definitive for the role of Annie, was opposed by Orion until she persuaded Medavoy that she wasn't "too old, not sexy."
By the time we started shooting winter was coming in Durham. We sprayed the brown grass with green paint. Ron was great. Kevin stepped up. Susan became Annie Savoy and we attended the Church of Baseball everyday. Our "rain out" became one of the most loved romantic sports comedies ever made. The authenticity of Ron's story, great acting, thoughtful directing, terrific camera work, realistic dialogue and endless attention to detail combined to become a wonderful film and Ron Shelton went on to direct many successful and very good films, Kevin became a true movie star, Susan broke what we would later call a "glass ceiling' and I've produced many films with people I like to work with - Polanski, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Robert Towne, Sidney Lumet, among others.
Welcome to Jim's book on Bull Durham, partly fact and partly fiction, tales of the film no one wanted to make - and the truth about Hollywood - "it's not brain surgery, but it is heart surgery - more critical to our lives" in a raw and memorable way.
Thom Mount Producer, Bull Durham
The movie business is very much like baseball. "You win some, you lose some and some are rained out."
Bull Durham was a development project I took with me to the eponymous Mount Company after finishing 13 years at Universal, most as worldwide President. I believed in its writer, Ron Shelton. Ron was brave, ironic and authentic. I decided Ron should direct this uniquely personal film - even though he had never directed a feature before. We decided that Kevin Costner was the perfect Crash Davis - he had not yet starred in a successful film (though No Way Out was soon to open.) Ron and I went to every studio - and the shower of abuse was sobering. "Kevin Costner isn't a movie star" said Warners. "Nobody wants to see a baseball movie" said Paramount. "We might give you less than half the money you want" said Fox.
At a small studio called Orion, our luck changed. My agent Jeff Berg pushed their head of production Mike Medavoy, and he reluctantly agreed to consider making Bull Durham - but only as a "negative pick-up", i.e., the Mount Company had to insure against any loss or late delivery, borrow money from a bank, make the film as agreed with Orion, finish it and deliver on a certain schedule. The insurance company (called a bond company in the film business) could fire anyone including me if any aspect of the film went awry. The bond company had to be convinced that Ron could direct - a tense interview. Casting Susan Sarandon, clearly definitive for the role of Annie, was opposed by Orion until she persuaded Medavoy that she wasn't "too old, not sexy."
By the time we started shooting winter was coming in Durham. We sprayed the brown grass with green paint. Ron was great. Kevin stepped up. Susan became Annie Savoy and we attended the Church of Baseball everyday. Our "rain out" became one of the most loved romantic sports comedies ever made. The authenticity of Ron's story, great acting, thoughtful directing, terrific camera work, realistic dialogue and endless attention to detail combined to become a wonderful film and Ron Shelton went on to direct many successful and very good films, Kevin became a true movie star, Susan broke what we would later call a "glass ceiling' and I've produced many films with people I like to work with - Polanski, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Robert Towne, Sidney Lumet, among others.
Welcome to Jim's book on Bull Durham, partly fact and partly fiction, tales of the film no one wanted to make - and the truth about Hollywood - "it's not brain surgery, but it is heart surgery - more critical to our lives" in a raw and memorable way.
Thom Mount Producer, Bull Durham
Script
"In his pitch for the film, Shelton described Bull Durham as Lysistrata in the minor leagues. Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired."
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Pre-Production "Bonnie Timmermann said she auditioned a stadium-full of actors for Bull Durham. One of the first questions Shelton had her ask actors was ‘can you play baseball?’ Most actors will tell you they can split an atom if that will help them get the part--but they really can’t. Bless their hearts. A lot of times they’ll say they can ride a horse, then take last second lessons in order to show the director they can."
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Shooting
"You shoot when the money arrives," Shelton said. It’s a pretty good rule of thumb for any production as you never know when or if you’ll see the cash again. Shelton said the film had a roughly 50 day shoot and he had to stay on schedule or it would be his ass. The luckiest thing for Shelton was that he got to make the film at all."
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