BULL DURHAM

'''Bull Durham''' is a 1988 American movie about love and baseball. It is based upon the minor league experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton. ''Bull Durham'' stars Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. It depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina. Also featured are Robert Wuhl and Max Patkin, the "Clown Prince of Baseball."
This film is number 55 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". It is also ranked #97 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Laughs" list, and #1 on Rotten Tomatoes' Top Sports Movies list of the 53 best reviewed sports movies of all time.

Contents

Summary

Cast and characters

Production

Reaction

Cultural impact

References

See also

External links

Summary

Costner stars as "Crash" Davis (named after -- but in no other way based after -- Lawrence "Crash" Davis, an actual player for the Durham Bulls in 1948), a veteran of countless years in the minor leagues unwillingly sent down to single-A Bulls for a specific purpose: to educate a hotshot rookie pitcher "Nuke" LaLoosh (Robbins, playing a character loosely based on Steve Dalkowski) about being a major-league talent, and to get Nuke to control his haphazard pitching. Crash immediately begins calling Nuke by the degrading name of "Meat", and they get off to a very rocky start.
Thrown into the mix is Annie (Sarandon, the character named for the "Baseball Annies" groupies), a life-long spiritual seeker who latched onto the "Church of Baseball" and has, every year, taken on a prospect with the Bulls to be a lover/student. Annie flirts with Crash and Nuke but Crash walks out, noting he's too much a veteran to 'try out' for anything, although before leaving he and Annie share some sparks of mutual interest.
Annie and Crash then work, in their own way, and with a lot of animosity from Crash, to shape Nuke into a big-league pitcher: Annie by playing mild bondage games, reading poetry to Nuke, and getting the rookie to think in alternative ways; Crash by forcing Nuke to learn "not to think," by letting the catcher make the pitching calls (memorably at two points telling the batters what pitch was coming after Nuke had shaken off Crash's calls), and lecturing to Nuke about the major leagues with both the pressure in facing big league hitters that can hit Nuke's "heat" (fastballs) and the pleasure of enjoying life in 'The Show' that Crash briefly lived for "the twenty-one best days of my life" and has tried desperately for years to get back to. Meanwhile, as Nuke matures the relationship between Annie and Crash grows, until it becomes obvious that the two of them are right for each other, except for the fact that Annie's currently with Nuke. Along the way, Annie asks Crash what he believes about life, and Crash delivers a spectacular harangue.
After a rough start to Nuke's career, he becomes a dominant pitcher by mid-season thanks to the coaching of Annie and Crash. By the end of the movie, Nuke is called up to 'The Show' and the Bulls, now having no use for Nuke's personal mentor, release Crash. This incites jealous anger in Crash, who is frustrated by Nuke's failure to recognize all the talent he was blessed with. Nuke leaves for the big leagues, effectively ending his relationship with Annie, and Crash overcomes his initial jealously to leave Nuke with some final words of advice.
Eventually Crash, an experienced and skilled hitter, joins another team, the Asheville Tourists, and breaks the minor league record for most career home runs, achieving a personal milestone that he has striven for. Annie wants to tell ''The Sporting News'' about it, but Crash swears her to silence. Crash then retires as a player and returns to Durham to begin a life with Annie. He tells her that he will accept a baseball coaching job. Foreshadowing suggests that he'll succeed both in this coaching role and in his life with Annie. Both characters end one phase of their lives and begin another. We see Nuke one last time, being interviewed as a major leaguer, where he recites some answers to questions which he practiced earlier in the movie with Crash.

Cast and characters

Kevin Costner ... Crash Davis

Susan Sarandon ... Annie Savoy

Tim Robbins ... Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh

Trey Wilson ... Joe Riggins

Robert Wuhl ... Larry Hockett

William O'Leary ... Jimmy

David Neidorf ... Bobby

Production

Ron Shelton played minor league baseball for five years, starting off at second base for the Baltimore Orioles farm system after graduating from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He moved from the Appalachian League to California and then Texas before finally playing AAA ball for Rochester in the International League. Shelton quit when he realized that he would never become a major league player. “I was 25. In baseball, you feel 60 if you're not in the big leagues. I didn't want to become a Crash Davis,” he said in an interview. A Major-League Romp David Ansen
He went back to school and earned in M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Arizona before moving to Los Angeles to join the city’s art scene. However, he felt more kinship in telling stories than creating performance art. ''Bull Durham'' was the first screenplay he ever wrote with a first draft in 1979 that was originally entitled, ''The Player To Be Named Later''. All that remains from this version is a single anecdote.
His break into filmmaking was second unit work on the films ''Under Fire'' and ''The Best of Times'' (both of which he also wrote). However, when he pitched ''Bull Durham'', Shelton had a hard time convincing a studio to give him the opportunity to direct. Baseball movies were not considered a viable commercial prospect at the time and every studio passed except for Orion Pictures who gave him a $9 million budget (with many cast members accepting lower than usual salaries because of the material), an eight-week shooting schedule and creative freedom.
Producer Thom Mount (who is part owner of the real Durham Bulls) hired Pete Bock, a former semi-pro baseball player who now runs his own baseball management company, as a consultant on the film. Bock recruited more than a dozen minor-league players, ran a tryout camp to recruit an additional 40 to 50 players from lesser ranks, hired several minor-league umpires and conducted two-a-day workouts and practice games with Tim Robbins pitching and Kevin Costner catching.
Bock made sure the actors look and acted like ballplayers and that the real players acted convincingly in front of the cameras. He said, “the director would say, 'This is the shot we want. What we need is the left fielder throwing a one-hopper to the plate. Then we need a good collision at the plate.' I would select the players I know could do the job, and then we would go out and get it done.” At the Movies Lawrence Van Gelder
According to the Internet Movie Database, filming was done after the close of the regular season, during September and October of 1987. The length of the shadows during the day games subtly give away the time of year. Durham Athletic Park was, of course, used for most of the baseball action. There were also scenes filmed in other Carolina League cities, although one establishing shot of War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina was erroneous, because Greensboro's club was and is in the South Atlantic League.
The Durham Bull sign, once a staple at ballparks everywhere, was built specifically for the movie. Once filming was done, the bull was retained as a decoration, albeit in foul territory, and with a simple "Let's Go Bulls" instead of "Hit Sign Win Steak". Like the Hollywood Sign, this Durham Bull was not originally intended to be a long-lasting artifact, and was eventually replaced by a sturdier version. The new Durham Bulls Athletic Park also features the Durham Bull. In the new park, the sign is in fair territory, and hitting the bull will win the batter a free steak. Also, if the batter hits the grass the bull is standing on, he will win a free salad.
Aside from the sliding routine, the "rainout" scene was based on an actual event. In the late 1960s, Shelton played minor-league ball in the Texas League. Shelton's team was in Amarillo, Texas for a season-ending series. The night before the final game, Shelton, some teammates and some Amarillo players were out partying and decided to go to the stadium and turn on the sprinkler system, thereby flooding the field and ensuring a "rainout". However, the Amarillo team owner rented a helicopter, dried the field, and the game was played.

Reaction

In David Ansen’s review for ''Newsweek'' magazine, he wrote that the film “works equally as a love story, a baseball fable and a comedy, while ignoring the clichés of each genre.” A Major-League Romp David Ansen Vincent Canby praised Shelton’s direction in his review for the ''New York Times'', “he demonstrates the sort of expert comic timing and control that allow him to get in and out of situations so quickly that they're over before one has time to question them. Part of the fun in watching ''Bull Durham'' is in the awareness that a clearly seen vision is being realized. This is one first-rate debut.” Toons and Bushers Fly High Vincent Canby Hal Hinson’s review in the ''Washington Post'' praised the film’s “easy command of the ballplayer's vernacular, in their feel for what goes through a batter's head when he digs in at the plate and in their knowledge of the secret ceremonies that take place on the mound.” ''Bull Durham'' Hal Hinson

Cultural impact

''Bull Durham'' became a minor hit when released, and is now considered one of the best sports movies.^[1] It became a major career moment for the lead cast members. Costner especially would later play baseball players and fans in other movies, especially ''Field of Dreams''. After ''Durham'' came out Hollywood began releasing more sports, and especially baseball, movies after the genre had slipped from view.
Many quotes and scenes have become popular, including the scene where the team's manager berates the players as 'lollygaggers' in the shower, Crash's reciting to Annie a list of things he believes in (including a belief that Oswald was a lone gunman), the scene where Crash creates a "rain-out" so his teammates can have a day off a grueling road trip, and the pitching mound scene where the entire team gathers to discuss how to fix all the curses and bad luck they're having, as well as figuring out what to get a fellow teammate for his impending wedding.
Most of all, it revived interest in minor league baseball, which had been stagnating in small-town areas for decades, to where minor league teams achieve decent attendance and are even subject to relocation/bidding wars between communities. The Durham Bulls team itself in real-life has become one of the most famous minor-league teams in the United States (topped only by the Birmingham Barons during the year Michael Jordan tried baseball), and has moved from A (Class A) level to Triple-A (players who are one call away from 'The Show') status, complete with a larger stadium built in the 1990s to accommodate the growing crowds and the shift to AAA as a minor league affiliate to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (during the film's time period, the Bulls were with the Atlanta Braves).

References

1. ''Bull Durham'' Adds Another Chapter to McCormick Field History Bill Ballew

See also

★ Durham Bulls

★ Lawrence "Crash" Davis

★ Steve Dalkowski

External links

★

★ Bull Durham Home Page