The setup: This thread is the first of many that I'll be putting out over the next couple of years celebrating the films of the TPE 100, which I threw together back in February 2023 as a response to some terrible movie list, possibly by Rolling Stone, that we all hated. .
The whole conceit of this thread is a 99.9% ripoff of the marvelous Bill Simmons / The Ringer podcast series "The Rewatchables" in which Bill, guests, and friends sit around talking about a movie each week that they all love. I'm going to rip off a lot of Bill's categories and try to encourage as much fun discussion as possible.
A lot of these films are insanely stupid and illogical. I love them all. The aim is to do 1 a week. I'll kick off the new thread with my connection to the movie, some general information, categories to discuss, and we'll go from there. I hope you enjoy discussing these movies as much as I've enjoyed finally putting this thing together.
Note: This isn't the thread for telling everyone why you DON'T like this movie or why you don't like me. If you haven't seen the movie or thought it was stupid, there's literally no reason to be here, and even less reason to post here.
Film #3: Field of Dreams
Released: May 5, 1989
Original trailer:
Streaming on: Amazon Prime, Apple TV
My history with this film
The mid-to-late 1980s were the apex of baseball films in America, starting with The Natural in 1984, Brewster's Millions in 1985, and followed up by Bull Durham and Eight Men Out in 1988, and both Major League and Field of Dreams in 1989. I was a freshman in high school when this movie came out, and while my dad was often gone 2-3 months at a time for work, my mom realized that I had developed a passion for baseball and took me to see all of them.
Without sounding too cheesy, Field of Dreams is my favorite movie when it comes to the subject of "I really wish this was real". It is the kind of movie that makes you wish magic was real, that voices called to farmers in their fields, that messages appeared on the jumbotron at Fenway Park that only you could see, and that it was possible to bring back Shoeless Joe Jackson and give him a chance to play baseball again.
The soundtrack is really, really gripping, particularly when you watch the trailer and it's not on there; the film could come off as pretty corny without it. Kevin Costner was pretty much unstoppable when it came to sports movies and movies overall by 1989. In a three-year lead up, he had been in Silverado, The Untouchables, No Way Out, and Bull Durham, and in 1990-1992 he would add Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood, JFK, and the Bodyguard; an all-time run.
It was shocking for young me to see James Earl Jones as a normal person. Up until then I only knew him as Vader, Thulsa Doom, and Eddie Murphy's father in Coming to America. He is equal parts hilarious and poetic, and delivers possibly the greatest sports movie monologue ever.
If you didn't already know, this is also Burt Lancaster's last acting role as the older version of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, who was in fact a real player who played just 1 game. They literally could have gotten anyone to be the older Graham - he's in two scenes total, but the second one, where he transforms from his youthful self into the older doctor, is pivotal and needs a master craftsman to deliver it. The movie wrapped production in late 1988 and was released in May 1989. Lancaster suffered a stroke in November 1990 at age 77 and never acted again, dying in 1994.
It's a film without a villain, unless you count Timothy Busfield, and is my favorite kind of thing, big actors taking small roles and eating them up. Ray Liotta had been nominated for a Golden Globe two years before for "Something Wild" and did something with his eyes in this film that really makes you believe he's a ghost, or at least that he's not quite alive anymore.
And of course, there's the famous field in Dyersville, Iowa. The movie studio built it in 1988 and it was left behind when the movie was completed. Exhibition games began here in 1990, and Upper Deck started a celebrity game in 1991 that included the likes of Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Reggie Jackson, and Bob Gibson. Costner partnered with the Alamo Drafthouse for a showing of the movie in 2006 along with his band (apparently he has a band). In August 2021, the real-life Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees played a game there on ESPN. Costner was on hand to lead both teams out of the cornfield for the start. But the most incredible part was the end, when White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson hit a two-out walk off home run to win it in the bottom of the 9th.
Roger Ebert's Review (4 stars out of 4)
The farmer is standing in the middle of a cornfield when he hears the voice for the first time: "If you build it, he will come." He looks around and doesn't see anybody. The voice speaks again, soft and confidential: "If you build it, he will come." Sometimes you can get too much sun, out there in a hot Iowa cornfield in the middle of the season. But this isn't a case of sunstroke.
Up until the farmer starts hearing voices, "Field of Dreams" is a completely sensible film about a young couple who want to run a family farm in Iowa. Ray and Annie Kinsella (Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan) have tested the fast track and had enough of it, and they enjoy sitting on the porch and listening to the grass grow. When the voice speaks for the first time, the farmer is baffled, and so was I: Could this be one of those religious pictures where a voice tells the humble farmer where to build the cathedral?
It's a religious picture, all right, but the religion is baseball. And when he doesn't understand the spoken message, Ray is granted a vision of a baseball diamond, right there in his cornfield.If he builds it, the voice seems to promise, Joe Jackson will come and play on it - Shoeless Joe, who was a member of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team but protested until the day he died that he played the best he could.
As "Field of Dreams" developed this fantasy, I found myself being willingly drawn into it. Movies are often so timid these days, so afraid to take flights of the imagination, that there is something grand and brave about a movie where a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can materialize out of the cornfield and hit a few fly balls. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in -- a movie about dreams. It is important not to tell too much about the plot. (I'm grateful I knew nothing about the movie when I went to see it, but the ads give away the Shoeless Joe angle.) Let it be said that Annie supports her husband's vision, and that he finds it necessary to travel east to Boston so that he can enlist the support of a famous writer (James Earl Jones) who has disappeared from sight, and north to Minnesota to talk to what remains of a doctor (Burt Lancaster) who never got the chance to play with the pros.The movie sensibly never tries to make the slightest explanation for the strange events that happen after the diamond is constructed.
There is a speech in this movie about baseball that is so simple and true that it is heartbreaking. And the whole attitude toward the players reflects that attitude. Why do they come back from the great beyond and play in this cornfield? Not to make any kind of vast, earthshattering statement, but simply to hit a few and field a few, and remind us of a good and innocent time.
Box office: Made $64.4 million domestic despite an opening of just $531,000, and $84.4 million worldwide. It finished 14th in the US with that total.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
Daddy, there's a man on your baseball field
Moonlight Graham saves Karin's life
Ray has a catch with John Kinsella
Terrence Mann's Speech
Best Quote:
Terrence Mann: "Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come."
The Voice: "If you build it, he will come."
John Kinsella: "Is this heaven?"
Ray Kinsella: "It's Iowa."
Moonlight Graham: "We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that that was the only day."
Ray Kinsella: "Don't we need a catcher?"
Shoeless Joe Jackson: "Not if you get it near the plate we don't."
Shoeless Joe Jackson: "Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the son-of-a-***** when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!"
Shoeless Joe Jackson (to Moonlight Graham): "Hey rookie! You were good!"
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: Timothy Busfield is way, way way too exuberant about selling the farm. I get he loves his sister, but lighten TFU guy.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Uh, I think Amy Madigan is the only woman in the movie. I guess a wife that passionate about baseball is an endearing quality if nothing else.
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are:
Art LaFleur as Chick Gandil, who played alongside Shoeless Joe for the 1919 Black Sox. He is thought to have been the ringleader of the scandal. Gandil made $4,000 in salary in 1919 and was paid $35,000 to throw the World Series. Art LaFleur had a classic "guy from the Great Depression" face, playing Babe Ruth in "The Sandlot", and a coach for the Yankees in "Mr. Baseball". He also played military officers in the likes of "Cobra", "In the Army Now", and several others. He passed away in 2021.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
[ol]
Despite the quote about hating Ty Cobb the two players were good friends. After he was banned, Jackson ran a liquor store in South Carolina. Cob came in once (no surprise there) and Jackson didn't say anything out of remorse. Finally Cobb said, "For God's sakes, Joe, don't you remember me?" and Jackson said, "Well sure I remember you Ty. I just didn't think anyone would want to remember me." The stories told around town about Doc Graham were all real stories about the real person. The scene where Ray Liotta lines the ball right back at Costner really happened, and Costner stayed in character. Ben Aflleck and Matt Damon were among thousands of extras at the scenes at Fenway Park. The guy who played John Kinsella, Dwier Brown, lost his own father right before shooting began, and channeled those emotions into his character. More than 1,500 locals were involved in the final scene with all the cars lining up on the road to the farm The film was originally going to be called Shoeless Joe but the movie company worried people would think it was about a homeless guy so changed it to Field of Dreams. The movie director called W.P. Kinsella, the book author to tell him about it and apologize - as the novel is called Shoeless Joe. Kinsella revealed that the publishing company changed the name of the book to Shoeless Joe from his original title - The Dream Field. Author WP Kinsella revealed that he was told "The Voice" in the film is that of Ed Harris, Amy Madigan's husband. It's never been revealed who actually did it. [/ol]
What Happened the Next Day?
Probably a whole lot of bureaucratic nonsense, fights over seating, and a riot.
Unanswerable Questions:
[ol]
What is the voice? Where is it from? Where does Terrence Mann go when he walks through the corn? What does Moonlight Graham do after he saves Karin? [/ol]
Who Won the Movie? I think you could give this award to four different people and you'd be right. But I'm going to give it to James Earl Jones. He is really funny in the first scene with Costner, the speech is an all-timer, and I love when he admits he saw the message at Fenway. it might be my favorite part of the whole movie because now it's not "just" Costner and his family at a field in Iowa having this experience.
Previous Entries
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
#2 Army of Darkness
The whole conceit of this thread is a 99.9% ripoff of the marvelous Bill Simmons / The Ringer podcast series "The Rewatchables" in which Bill, guests, and friends sit around talking about a movie each week that they all love. I'm going to rip off a lot of Bill's categories and try to encourage as much fun discussion as possible.
A lot of these films are insanely stupid and illogical. I love them all. The aim is to do 1 a week. I'll kick off the new thread with my connection to the movie, some general information, categories to discuss, and we'll go from there. I hope you enjoy discussing these movies as much as I've enjoyed finally putting this thing together.
Note: This isn't the thread for telling everyone why you DON'T like this movie or why you don't like me. If you haven't seen the movie or thought it was stupid, there's literally no reason to be here, and even less reason to post here.
Film #3: Field of Dreams
Released: May 5, 1989
Original trailer:
Streaming on: Amazon Prime, Apple TV
My history with this film
The mid-to-late 1980s were the apex of baseball films in America, starting with The Natural in 1984, Brewster's Millions in 1985, and followed up by Bull Durham and Eight Men Out in 1988, and both Major League and Field of Dreams in 1989. I was a freshman in high school when this movie came out, and while my dad was often gone 2-3 months at a time for work, my mom realized that I had developed a passion for baseball and took me to see all of them.
Without sounding too cheesy, Field of Dreams is my favorite movie when it comes to the subject of "I really wish this was real". It is the kind of movie that makes you wish magic was real, that voices called to farmers in their fields, that messages appeared on the jumbotron at Fenway Park that only you could see, and that it was possible to bring back Shoeless Joe Jackson and give him a chance to play baseball again.
The soundtrack is really, really gripping, particularly when you watch the trailer and it's not on there; the film could come off as pretty corny without it. Kevin Costner was pretty much unstoppable when it came to sports movies and movies overall by 1989. In a three-year lead up, he had been in Silverado, The Untouchables, No Way Out, and Bull Durham, and in 1990-1992 he would add Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood, JFK, and the Bodyguard; an all-time run.
It was shocking for young me to see James Earl Jones as a normal person. Up until then I only knew him as Vader, Thulsa Doom, and Eddie Murphy's father in Coming to America. He is equal parts hilarious and poetic, and delivers possibly the greatest sports movie monologue ever.
If you didn't already know, this is also Burt Lancaster's last acting role as the older version of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, who was in fact a real player who played just 1 game. They literally could have gotten anyone to be the older Graham - he's in two scenes total, but the second one, where he transforms from his youthful self into the older doctor, is pivotal and needs a master craftsman to deliver it. The movie wrapped production in late 1988 and was released in May 1989. Lancaster suffered a stroke in November 1990 at age 77 and never acted again, dying in 1994.
It's a film without a villain, unless you count Timothy Busfield, and is my favorite kind of thing, big actors taking small roles and eating them up. Ray Liotta had been nominated for a Golden Globe two years before for "Something Wild" and did something with his eyes in this film that really makes you believe he's a ghost, or at least that he's not quite alive anymore.
And of course, there's the famous field in Dyersville, Iowa. The movie studio built it in 1988 and it was left behind when the movie was completed. Exhibition games began here in 1990, and Upper Deck started a celebrity game in 1991 that included the likes of Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Reggie Jackson, and Bob Gibson. Costner partnered with the Alamo Drafthouse for a showing of the movie in 2006 along with his band (apparently he has a band). In August 2021, the real-life Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees played a game there on ESPN. Costner was on hand to lead both teams out of the cornfield for the start. But the most incredible part was the end, when White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson hit a two-out walk off home run to win it in the bottom of the 9th.
Roger Ebert's Review (4 stars out of 4)
The farmer is standing in the middle of a cornfield when he hears the voice for the first time: "If you build it, he will come." He looks around and doesn't see anybody. The voice speaks again, soft and confidential: "If you build it, he will come." Sometimes you can get too much sun, out there in a hot Iowa cornfield in the middle of the season. But this isn't a case of sunstroke.
Up until the farmer starts hearing voices, "Field of Dreams" is a completely sensible film about a young couple who want to run a family farm in Iowa. Ray and Annie Kinsella (Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan) have tested the fast track and had enough of it, and they enjoy sitting on the porch and listening to the grass grow. When the voice speaks for the first time, the farmer is baffled, and so was I: Could this be one of those religious pictures where a voice tells the humble farmer where to build the cathedral?
It's a religious picture, all right, but the religion is baseball. And when he doesn't understand the spoken message, Ray is granted a vision of a baseball diamond, right there in his cornfield.If he builds it, the voice seems to promise, Joe Jackson will come and play on it - Shoeless Joe, who was a member of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team but protested until the day he died that he played the best he could.
As "Field of Dreams" developed this fantasy, I found myself being willingly drawn into it. Movies are often so timid these days, so afraid to take flights of the imagination, that there is something grand and brave about a movie where a voice tells a farmer to build a baseball diamond so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can materialize out of the cornfield and hit a few fly balls. This is the kind of movie Frank Capra might have directed, and James Stewart might have starred in -- a movie about dreams. It is important not to tell too much about the plot. (I'm grateful I knew nothing about the movie when I went to see it, but the ads give away the Shoeless Joe angle.) Let it be said that Annie supports her husband's vision, and that he finds it necessary to travel east to Boston so that he can enlist the support of a famous writer (James Earl Jones) who has disappeared from sight, and north to Minnesota to talk to what remains of a doctor (Burt Lancaster) who never got the chance to play with the pros.The movie sensibly never tries to make the slightest explanation for the strange events that happen after the diamond is constructed.
There is a speech in this movie about baseball that is so simple and true that it is heartbreaking. And the whole attitude toward the players reflects that attitude. Why do they come back from the great beyond and play in this cornfield? Not to make any kind of vast, earthshattering statement, but simply to hit a few and field a few, and remind us of a good and innocent time.
Box office: Made $64.4 million domestic despite an opening of just $531,000, and $84.4 million worldwide. It finished 14th in the US with that total.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
Daddy, there's a man on your baseball field
Moonlight Graham saves Karin's life
Ray has a catch with John Kinsella
Terrence Mann's Speech
Best Quote:
Terrence Mann: "Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come."
The Voice: "If you build it, he will come."
John Kinsella: "Is this heaven?"
Ray Kinsella: "It's Iowa."
Moonlight Graham: "We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that that was the only day."
Ray Kinsella: "Don't we need a catcher?"
Shoeless Joe Jackson: "Not if you get it near the plate we don't."
Shoeless Joe Jackson: "Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the son-of-a-***** when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!"
Shoeless Joe Jackson (to Moonlight Graham): "Hey rookie! You were good!"
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: Timothy Busfield is way, way way too exuberant about selling the farm. I get he loves his sister, but lighten TFU guy.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Uh, I think Amy Madigan is the only woman in the movie. I guess a wife that passionate about baseball is an endearing quality if nothing else.
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are:
Art LaFleur as Chick Gandil, who played alongside Shoeless Joe for the 1919 Black Sox. He is thought to have been the ringleader of the scandal. Gandil made $4,000 in salary in 1919 and was paid $35,000 to throw the World Series. Art LaFleur had a classic "guy from the Great Depression" face, playing Babe Ruth in "The Sandlot", and a coach for the Yankees in "Mr. Baseball". He also played military officers in the likes of "Cobra", "In the Army Now", and several others. He passed away in 2021.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
[ol]
What Happened the Next Day?
Probably a whole lot of bureaucratic nonsense, fights over seating, and a riot.
Unanswerable Questions:
[ol]
Who Won the Movie? I think you could give this award to four different people and you'd be right. But I'm going to give it to James Earl Jones. He is really funny in the first scene with Costner, the speech is an all-timer, and I love when he admits he saw the message at Fenway. it might be my favorite part of the whole movie because now it's not "just" Costner and his family at a field in Iowa having this experience.
Previous Entries
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
#2 Army of Darkness
