Original title Shoeless Joe, book working title Dreamfield, changed after test audiences; the voice's identity unknown, rumored Ed Harris; Damon and Affleck as Fenway extras; filming sped up for Costner's Revenge; the corn outgrew Costner; the Lansing and Ameskamp farms, 65,000 annual visitors, sold in 2011 for about $5.4 million; 1,500 volunteers' headlights in the final shot; Moonlight Graham's real game was June 1905; the line-drive reaction was genuine; James Earl Jones hates baseball; deleted scenes; George W. Bush's favorite film; AFI quote number 39; W.P. Kinsella bored on set; Ray Kinsella named for Salinger characters; Don Buford and USC coaches as advisers
Behind on time, the research is zipped through: the original title was Shoeless Joe, the book's working title Dreamfield, and test audiences thought Shoeless Joe was about a homeless person; nobody knows who the voice was, the rumor is Ed Harris, one host is in the Liotta camp, but Liotta hasn't even seen the movie.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were legendarily extras at Fenway; filming began in 88 and was sped up because Costner had to shoot Revenge; the corn grew taller than Costner so they put boxes out for him to stand on.
Scenes were shot on Don Lansing's property and the baseball scenes on neighbor Al Amiskamp (as transcribed), who replanted corn while Lansing kept the field as a tourist destination without charging admission, only souvenirs; 65,000 visitors a year by the 20th anniversary; sold in 2011 for a believed $5.4 million, so Don Lansing's checkbook won.
The final shot used 1,500 volunteers flashing high beams; the real Moonlight Graham played one game in June 1905, not 1922; Shoeless Joe and Ty Cobb really were friends; the line drive knocking over the bag of balls was real and unplanned, Costner's reaction genuine and in character; James Earl Jones hates baseball yet did this and The Sandlot; deleted scenes include Ray's hearing test, buying equipment, getting lost on the way to Fenway, and watching batting practice with Terrence.
George W. Bush named it his favorite film; if you build it, he will come was voted the number 39 movie quote by AFI; W.P. Kinsella was on set a lot and found it incredibly boring, though his daughter had a romance with Ray Liotta.
Ray Kinsella is not named for the author but for two Salinger characters, Richard Kinsella in Catcher in the Rye and a Ray Kinsella in a 1941 story; Don Buford, the Oriole and father of Damon, coached the actors, and USC coaches were brought in to advise.
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').
Baseball as the one constant in the James Earl Jones speech; the slow first twenty minutes; the Christmas-sweater time jump; Costner drinking from a coffee mug while driving; no concussion protocol for Karen; the cover of Newsweek as proof of relevance
Baseball itself: the speech's premise that the country ebbs and flows while baseball is the one constant no longer holds, with an apology to Mal; the picker clarifies they are not saying baseball aged badly, only that the 1989 point, once totally true, has been undone by everything that has happened in baseball.
Counter: the country is in turmoil now as in the late 60s, sports are a rhetorical minefield yet still elementally loved and shared, what the Red Sox did for one host the Cubs, Eagles and Ravens did for others; a shout out to 'maize' (as transcribed), who would have been on if he hadn't quit four years ago.
Most time with baseball now is spent on what's wrong with it and how to fix it, with a counter-struggle of still liking it; in 1989 there was no struggle; the Field of Dreams way of thinking peaked with Sosa and Maguire (as transcribed) and was destroyed when that proved horseshit; Lupica's Summer of 98 book is now a comedy; the conversation is largely numbers.
Reply: the message is not the purity of the game but how the game unlocks something in your life; it's a part of our past is still true; investing in something as a portal to something else is eternal; both sides agree they are both right.
The 80s already had gross Astrodome stadiums, Pete Rose and cocaine, and Terrence Mann wouldn't have been allowed to play in the majors, a stain the film doesn't acknowledge; yet baseball's space, a rural game held in cities, never changes, which is why the Iowa cornfield setting is so inspired; the cinematography, the smell of a glove and the feel of grass have aged well.
The first twenty minutes are a little slow and could lose three minutes; the Christmas sweater time jump always gets a laugh, and what about field maintenance after winter; Costner driving while drinking from a coffee mug seems old, though a thermos is classic.
Two small ones: no concussion protocol when Karen falls from the top of the bleachers, nobody checks her head and neck, and a six-year-old would cry for ten minutes rather than recover instantly; and citing the cover of Newsweek as definitive proof of relevance makes members of the media a little sad.
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.
First nominee: Ray meets Shoeless Joe, is this heaven, no it's Iowa; a quick Liotta imitation; this was a year before Goodfellas, when he was a critic's darling after Something Wild; he still has never seen the movie and thought the script was dumb.
Liotta plays Joe Jackson like a sensitive, dew-eyed guy from 1989 rather than a period Black Sox type, which is perfect because he seems like a ghost who doesn't know he is one; a Chantix commercial with him in the cornfield and a second-half-of-Goodfellas Henry Hill emerging from the corn are joked about.
Second nominee: Ray goes to Cambridge in his Volkswagen van and meets Terrence Mann; the finger-or-gun exchange is played, the door slamming is really funny, and Mann flips fast once Ray brings up John Kinsella (transcribed 'John Consala'); great suspenders and belt.
The two hosts who have spent time in Boston are asked whether there really are that many Jewish people there, since the street looks like half of Brooklyn with Hebrew letters on windows; the Boston exteriors were apparently filmed in Dubuque with after-the-fact wide shots, though they obviously shot at Fenway.
Third nominee: after Fenway, Mann pretends he didn't see the scoreboard, drops Ray off, then is standing in the street; the Moonlight Graham, you saw it exchange is recited, New York Giants 1922, one game, never batted, Chisholm, Minnesota; that part is amazing.
Fourth nominee: the nighttime scrimmage with Archie, the first time Frank Whaley walks out, ghosts playing at 9:30 with Amy Madigan turning the lights on, the most baseball in the movie, a four-minute sequence.
A host doubts they could hit fly balls to a ghost who showed up in the backyard; the counter is that Ray had been prepping, taking BP every day; the one caveat is that Costner wears Timberlands the entire movie rather than Chucks or running shoes.
The James Earl Jones speech and the actual ending round out six nominees; the Beulah and Annie scene is rejected as padding rewatchable stats; Moonlight's sacrifice, Karen falling and being saved, is counted as its own scene separate from the catch with dad.
The opening catch-up montage is really good where it goes wrong in so many movies, and a secretly great choice is that the voice comes in the first scene with no thirty-minute build-up of farm life; Amy Madigan is quirky enough to buy it, unlike one host's wife, and she asks whether it's acid.
Ray meeting Moonlight for the first time and walking back to his office is poetry, resonant though removed from the climax; the rack focus to The Godfather on the marquee; the magic realism works seamlessly and the story is about life rather than baseball or fantasy.
Burt Lancaster's last movie, and the part was supposed to be, or at least offered to, Jimmy Stewart, blurted early and rebuked for stepping on half-assed internet research. — Chris Ryan
Ray simply accepting that it's 1972 is not ridiculous at all, which is why it is more a fantasy movie than a baseball movie.
One pick is when Ray goes to Boston: great chemistry, the reclusive countercultural icon surrounded by tapes and books who wants to be left alone, the locks on his doors; the last thirty minutes can only be watched once a decade, like dialing it up on YouTube to cry it out.
Seeing Terrence Mann for the first time has become a favorite, a well-written, well-acted five minutes, with a wish for four hours of deleted van small talk; the 1989-era library research for the old interview mentioning Ebbets Field is loved, as is Mann's heartbreak at not remembering and the you're from the 60s line.
Another pick is Moonlight crossing the line to save Karen and Ray's oh my God, you can't go back, the first thing that comes to mind about the movie, more than the catch; it is the emotional gut punch where every theme and tension, hope, purpose, sacrifice, is realized in one second.
A sneaky good scene is picking up Frank Whaley hitchhiking, the I need good karma line and his day-job baseball towns, looking like he's in Stand By Me; a host promises to ruin that scene later.
A further pick is when he sees Terrence Mann for the first time, and then really the pick is the James Earl Jones speech, with all the ghosts stopping to watch; baseball's a part of us, Ray.
