Annie is impossibly understanding; the movie needs a sex scene; Ray Liotta bats righty as the lefty Shoeless Joe; the Fenway scoreboard reads 10:30 in the third inning; no black players before 1947; the two-acre field at $2,200 an acre; professional lights beside splintery bleachers; Mark vanishes for a glass of water; Mark isn't thrown off the property; Ray doesn't recognize his father in the scrimmage; Dwyer Brown's catching; Annie wouldn't wait when Karen falls; Karen could be carried onto the field; Archie already existed off the field; the cornfield's ground rules; only one book-burner is opposed; Shoeless Joe's no-errors defense
Notes on Amy Madigan are held for nitpicks; the first written down is whether anyone's wife has ever been this understanding in the history of mankind: she objects to Boston but not to mowing the cornfield; only the people who marry serial killers in prison compare; it's the 60s.
The movie needs a sex scene to understand what fuels Annie's blind devotion; Terrence Mann's response to Ray is you're seeing a whole team of psychiatrists, while Annie's is follow your bliss, moving and aspirational but also ridiculous, probably an extension of the hippie ethos.
Annie's Fenway big green wall vision is when she really buys in, versus her initial don't go, we're underwater doubt; by the Christmas montage of Ray staring at the field in a snowstorm every relative would want him in a mental hospital; and once Joe Jackson shows up, why not replant the corn instead of hosting a 162-game season.
Ray Liotta batted righty while Shoeless Joe was a lefty, everybody's biggest nitpick for thirty years and indefensible since they could have flipped the shot and cheated the background; come on, Phil Alden-Robertson (as transcribed), bad job.
The Fenway scoreboard reads 10:30 p.m. in the third inning with no rain delay, obviously shot after a game; it has bothered one host for thirty years.
The movie gives second chances to Ray and his dad, Moonlight Graham (joked as Grom, the gelato), Terrence Mann, Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox, yet ignores every black player before 1947; instead of the cheating White Sox, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell or Josh Gibson, and Terrence Mann would surely have raised it in the van; Robinson called it his greatest regret; it is the biggest flaw in the movie.
Mark's do you know how much this land is worth is undercut by Ray's $2,200 an acre: a baseball field is about two acres, so he isn't losing much on a farm of hundreds of acres; the counter is that he built and maintains a triple-A field with expensive electricity.
Why have the lights at all, where does a regular person get professional lighting, and why is the construction so perfect and precise while the bleachers are splintery unvarnished planks with smashed-in nails that aren't safe for a child; the lights do give an ethereal vibe and the film addresses how lights changed the game.
Busfield's Mark finally sees the ghosts after Karen is saved, Annie sends him inside for water, and he is never seen again; the counter is that interrupting the reunion with we can charge $20 a car would be in character; the opposite nitpick is that he should be kicked off the premises for nearly killing the child.
The editing is shady when Mark grabs and shakes Karen, and a parent would fight anyone who touched their six-year-old; Ray never recognizes his dad during the scrimmage despite catcher's gear and three hours in the stands.
Dwyer Brown's childlike catching has an explanation from research: the catch had to be shot in a ten-minute magic hour with an 85-year-old rock-hard catcher's mitt he feared dropping, so apologies to him, though his throwing wasn't loved; it wasn't as bad as the kid at the end of The Natural.
Karen falling off the bleachers eating the hot dog has holes: Annie would run to call the paramedics and no mom on the planet stops because her husband has an idea, since a mother whose child is hurt becomes superhuman.
Why not carry Karen five feet onto the field so Moonlight needn't cross; the counter is that young Moonlight hasn't been through medical school, answered that he is a timeless ghost who has lived his life and knows the grand design; Ray doesn't yet know Graham can't cross back.
Archie already existed outside the field as a hitchhiker, and the implication that Terrence Mann will come back with a long-form piece on heaven raises why Moonlight can't return; none of them can come off the field; Archie is on a different timeline and had to be brought there; he left the field and became a drummer for the Doors.
One host is devastated the other doesn't like a scene seen 700 times; the fair questions raise whether you need to understand the rules of the magic to like the movie; it's magic and faith, believing what you can't see, so you opt in, which is why Mark seeing the ghosts at the end is disliked, since he never opened himself up.
Smaller nits: the park's ground rules, what a ground-rule double in the cornfield is, an outfielder vanishing into heaven shagging a fly, where all the baseballs go, Janet's void; if Terrence Mann could walk into the corn, why wouldn't Ray try; maybe the spirits have to bring you, and it's about what you are pursuing.
The town hall over salacious literature is moral panic, but only the one woman is actually opposed and nobody in the room supports her; the counter is that it's about how hysterical people get together; that scene could be aged-best because it's what the internet is like now.
A sequel vision: Mark comes back out after his cold drink and lectures the ghosts about walks, shifts and swing planes, disparages Shoeless Joe for not getting on base, and brings his friend Bill James with notes.
Shoeless Joe's no-errors stat is cited as proof he didn't throw the series, but outfielders rarely commit errors in one series and it would have to be an obvious overthrow; the Rothstein gambling contingent, Boardwalk Empire; the segment ends with Mark asked how his glass of water is.
Costner is a yes for this movie rather than Dances with Wolves, since this sets up Dances with Wolves and made him the biggest star; a case for the Apex Mountain Supreme Court; he is cooler in Bull Durham, and 88 and 89 are treated as a pair, plus No Way Out, which deserves its own episode; he was able to direct Dances with Wolves only because of the roll he was on as the most bankable actor, and Robin Hood is placed after Dances with Wolves.
He was never more likable across America, everybody was in on Kevin Costner, whereas Dances with Wolves drew a fuck that guy backlash and Goodfellas-should-have-won complaints; this movie has no backlash.
James Earl Jones: not enough is known of his career, Darth Vader or Othello, but this feels like his longest-lasting performance, so no answer is given; Timothy Busfield was in thirtysomething and directed a lot of Sorkin, but no question this is his.
Iowa: late-80s Iowa, Kirk Ferentz, Steve Alford, its role in the presidential process, but it's hard to top literally standing in for heaven; 100 percent yes.
Baseball might have been at its apex: the end of the great baseball movie decade cresting with this, the 86 World Series, the Twins, before the earthquake series, steroids not yet involved though Consico and McGuire (as transcribed) looked like Pacific Rim, cocaine cleaned up, integration achieved; the thought trails off into I don't know.
Shoeless Joe as a sympathetic figure: Eight Men Out and this came back to back, and most people's knowledge of the Black Sox comes from these two movies; the Eight Men Out book is a staple that lays out how unfair some of it was; he's a tragic figure; Craig is asked whether his generation reads books.
The field is tight: James Earl Jones is not eligible, Frank Whaley is liked but not a heat-check performance, Busfield is doing the most with the same Ray, you gotta sell the farm, why didn't you tell me routine.
Art LaFleur as Chick Gandil (transcribed 'Chick Gandal'), the first baseman, is liked, with his you get a cigarette lines; all the White Sox guys are great.
The Busfield character prompts a memory of parents paying the bills at the kitchen table and then fighting; Busfield is initially given the Waiters Award.
Gabby Hoffman is raised, every moment a heat check, she's great; a host's daughter at six was as great as her and yelled at goalies at Kings games, so Karen would have been a heckler; the award switches to Karen with an apology to Busfield (transcribed 'Westfield').
James Horner's score; Shoeless Joe's 'I would have played for nothing'; late-80s Fenway Park; the Kinsella house; Ray's chemistry with the White Sox ghosts; Gabby Hoffman as Karen; the Terrence Mann character; the Annie and Ray relationship; the van scenes; Busfield walking across the field; Costner's hair and jeans; the disgruntled writer as plot point; the themes of hope and purpose
James Horner's score, unequivocally, arguably who won the movie: stolen over and over by sporting events, documentaries and trailers across thirty years, it plays five seconds and you need to excuse yourself; heard in surround sound for the first time it feels like a stadium; it has to double and triple the emotional climax in the last twenty minutes, like Shawshank's iconic score.
Shoeless Joe's I would have played for nothing, against today's spoiled players like Bryce Harper getting cash and checks.
Late-80s Fenway Park, a personal thing: the caterer, two dogs and two beers for seven bucks, few movies filmed there, the Morgan Magic 88 team with Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell before the A's kicked their ass.
The Kinsella house is a top seven or eight movie house, still standing as it was, worth a fortune if moved to LA; the White Sox ghosts busting Ray's balls during the call to dinner show his chemistry with them, and it would be amazing if he plowed the field and told the cheaters to go back to hell.
Gabby Hoffman as the daughter is all-time adorable, in a cutest-daughters final with the Remember the Titans girl, with Macaulay Culkin's bee movie ruled out as a non-sports film; a host's own daughter at six was their favorite human ever and their own field of dreams would be going back to that age; Karen's precociousness is winning.
Terrence Mann is James Baldwin meets J.D. Salinger; the book used Salinger and the film changed it for fear of a lawsuit; the recited bio, voice of the 60s, marched with MLK, cover of Newsweek, coined make love not war; asked whether we ever had a writer like this, the answer is no, though Baldwin and Norman Mailer were around back then doing that kind of writing; the whole movie could have been Costner and James Earl Jones in the van.
The Annie and Ray relationship: a great, supportive, believable marriage with real history, down to her sleeping in one of his old t-shirts.
The son of a bitch died before I could take it back scene is gut-wrenching, Joe Jackson's a criminal being the meanest thing you could say to your dad; the van exchange about the falling out and it's not my fault you wouldn't play catch with your father; all their scenes are high level, high PER.
Busfield walking across the field and interrupting without knowing the ghosts are there, the pitch just missing him and the batter swinging through, timed with no visible special effects.
Costner's hair and everything about him, worth bottling; the tightness of the jeans, which they don't make like that anymore.
Disgruntled writer as plot point has aged well: the recluse found at a pivot point between influencing everyone and being influenced, the aura pulsating over every conversation about him, a stand-in for baseball and tradition in American life; more broadly the themes of the movie.
The retort that the themes could equally have aged the worst is greeted as a holy shit take and parked for the next category, with a promise to explain why fathers and sons aren't as interesting as you think.
Asked for a pick, the answer is Annie and Ray, first misspoken as Amy and Ray. — Chris Ryan
Another pick is the blend of magic realism with hope and purpose as a driving force in a life, which Bill is expected to try to dissuade.
Late 80s Fenway Park, a selfish pick for just one person. — Bill Simmons
The show missed its chance to get a Ray Liotta walking off the field yelling Karen.
