Bull Durham

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For the city, see Durham, North Carolina.
For the 1900s baseball player, see Bull Durham (baseball).
Bull Durham

Theatrical poster
Directed by Ron Shelton
Produced by Thom Mount
Mark Burg
Written by Ron Shelton
Starring Kevin Costner
Susan Sarandon
Tim Robbins
Robert Wuhl
Trey Wilson
Music by Michael Convertino
Editing by Robert Leighton
Adam Weiss
Distributed by Orion Pictures Corporation
Release date(s) June 15, 1988 (U.S. release)
Running time 108 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Budget $9,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $50,888,729 (USA)
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Bull Durham is a 1988 American movie about love and baseball. It is based upon the minor league experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton and depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina. Kevin Costner stars as "Crash" Davis, a veteran catcher brought in to teach rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) about the game in preparation for reaching the Major Leagues while baseball groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) romances "Nuke" but finds herself increasingly attracted to "Crash." Also featured are Robert Wuhl and Max Patkin, the "Clown Prince of Baseball".

Baseball movies were not considered a viable commercial prospect at the time and every studio passed except for Orion Pictures who gave Shelton a USD $9 million budget with many cast members accepting lower than usual salaries because of the material, an eight-week shooting schedule, and creative freedom. He cast Kevin Costner because of the actor's natural athletic ability. During filming, Costner was able to hit two home runs while the cameras were rolling.

Bull Durham was a commercial success, grossing over $50 million in North America, well above its estimated budget, and a critical success as well. Sports Illustrated ranked it the #1 Greatest Sports Movie of all time. In addition, the film is ranked 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' list of the 53 best reviewed sports movies of all time.

Contents

[edit] Summary

Costner stars as "Crash" Davis (named after — but in no other way based on — 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 the single-A (advanced) Bulls for a specific purpose: to educate hotshot rookie pitcher Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh (Robbins, playing a character loosely based on Steve Dalkowski) about being a major-league talent, and to control Nuke's haphazard pitching. Crash immediately begins calling Ebby by the degrading nickname 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. Before leaving he and Annie share some sparks of mutual interest inspired by a memorable speech where Crash lists the things "he believes".

Tim Robbins as "Nuke" LaLoosh and Kevin Costner as "Crash" Davis.
Tim Robbins as "Nuke" LaLoosh and Kevin Costner as "Crash" Davis.

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 (as well as giving him his nickname) 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 and Nuke are currently a couple.

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 majors 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 jealousy 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, a personal milestone that he has striven for. Crash then retires as a player and returns to Durham, where Annie tells him she's ready to give up her annual affairs with "boys". Crash tells her that he will accept a baseball coaching job; foreshadowing suggests that he'll succeed in this role and that he and Annie will stay together. 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 cliché answers to questions that Crash taught him earlier.

[edit] Cast and characters

[edit] 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.[1]

He went back to school and earned an 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.[1]

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.[1] 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.[1] Shelton scouted locations throughout the Southern United States before settling on Durham in North Carolina because of its old ballpark and its location, "among abandoned tobacco warehouses and on the edge of an abandoned downtown and in the middle of a residential neighborhood where people could walk".[2]

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.[1]

Shelton cast Costner because of the actor's natural athleticism. He was a former high school baseball player and was able to hit two home runs while the cameras were rolling and, according Shelton, insisted "on throwing runners out even when they (the cameras) weren't rolling".[3] 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”.[4]

The scene in the pool hall where Nuke tells Crash that he is going to "the Show" was originally shot in a black whorehouse with Costner's character playing "Unchained Melody" on the piano to a 60-year-old hooker while drunk. Nuke came in and the two men fought in an alley with several black hookers cheering Crash on. Costner remembers, "The pool hall was somehow thought to be a better experience for the audience, because we didn't want to see him with a black woman, I guess. But it was perfectly in line with who he was."[5]

[edit] Reception

Bull Durham debuted on June 15, 1988 and grossed $5 million in 1,238 theaters on its opening weekend. It went on to gross a total of $50.8 million in North America, well above its estimated $9 million budget.[6]

The film was well-received critically. It currently has a rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (100% for their "Cream of the Crop" designation). Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 16 reviews. 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.”[1] 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.”[7] Roger Ebert praised Susan Sarandon's performance in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times: "I don't know who else they could have hired to play Annie Savoy, the Sarandon character who pledges her heart and her body to one player a season, but I doubt if the character would have worked without Sarandon's wonderful performance."[8] In his review for Sports Illustrated, Steve Wulf wrote, "It's a good movie and a damn good baseball movie".[9]

[edit] Legacy

Bull Durham became a minor hit when released, and is now considered one of the best sports movies.[10] It became a major career moment for the lead cast members. Costner especially would later play baseball players and fans in other movies, including Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game.

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). A new Durham Bulls franchise plays at the Triple-A level (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 Rays (during the film's time period, the Bulls were with the Atlanta Braves). The former Bulls franchise featured in the movie is now the Myrtle Beach Pelicans.

For all its acclaim for reviving interest in minor league baseball, there is a glaring factual mistake in the film involving the minor leagues. The owner of a pool hall is introduced as having had a good season hitting for Louisville in 1965. But Louisville didn't have a minor league team in 1965; the Louisville Colonels were disbanded when the American Association folded after the 1962 season and Louisville was without minor league baseball until 1968.

In 2003, Sports Illustrated ranked Bull Durham as the "Greatest Sports Movie".[11] In addition, the film is ranked number 55 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies."[12] It is also ranked #97 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Laughs" list, and #1 on Rotten Tomatoes' Top Sports Movies.[13] list of the 53 best reviewed sports movies of all time. Entertainment Weekly ranked Bull Durham as the fifth best DVD of their Top 30 Sports Movies on DVD.[14]

For years, Ron Shelton has contemplated making a sequel and remarked, "I couldn't figure out in the few years right after it came out, what do you do? Nuke's in the big leagues, Crash is managing in Visalia. Is Annie going to go to Visalia? I've been to Visalia. That will test a relationship . . . It was not a simple fable to continue with - not that we don't talk about continuing it, now that everyone's in their 60s".[2]

[edit] DVD

Bull Durham was originally released on DVD in October 27, 1998 and included an audio commentary by writer/director Ron Shelton.[15] A Special Edition DVD was released on April 2, 2002 and included the Shelton commentary track from the previous edition, a new commentary by Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins, a Between The Lines: The Making Of Bull Durham featurette, a Sports Wrap featurette, and a Costner profile.[16] A "Collector's Edition" DVD celebrating the film's 20th anniversary was released on March 18, 2008 and features the two commentaries from the previous edition, a Greatest Show On Dirt featurette, a Diamonds In The Rough featurette that explores minor league baseball, The Making Of Bull Durham featurette, and Costner profile from the previous edition.[17]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Ansen, David. "A Major-League Romp", Newsweek, June 20, 1988. 
  2. ^ a b "Shelton celebrates 20 years for Bull Durham", Southern Ledger, May 1, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-05-05. 
  3. ^ Bierly, Mandi. "MVP: Kevin Costner", Entertainment Weekly, November 18, 2005. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  4. ^ Van Gelder, Lawrence. "At the Movies", New York Times, June 10, 1988. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  5. ^ Vary, Adam B. "My Brilliant Career: Kevin Costner", Entertainment Weekly, June 1, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  6. ^ "Bull Durham", Box Office Mojo, September 25, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  7. ^ Canby, Vincent. "Toons and Bushers Fly High", New York Times, July 3, 1988. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  8. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Bull Durham", Chicago Sun-Times, June 15, 1988. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  9. ^ Wulf, Steve. "Bull Durham", Sports Illustrated, July 4, 1988. Retrieved on 2008-04-24. 
  10. ^ Ballew, Bill. "Bull Durham Adds Another Chapter to McCormick Field History", The Asheville Tourists. Retrieved on 2007-04-09. 
  11. ^ "The Greatest Sports Movies", Sports Illustrated, August 4, 2003. Retrieved on 2008-04-24. 
  12. ^ "Bravo's 100 Funniest Films", Boston.com, July 25, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  13. ^ "Top Sports Movies", Rotten Tomatoes, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  14. ^ Bernardo, Melissa Rose. "Jock Stars", Entertainment Weekly, November 11, 2005. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  15. ^ Hunt, Bill. "Bull Durham", Digital Bits, November 7, 1998. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  16. ^ Bovberg, Jason. "Bull Durham: SE", DVD Talk, March 17, 2002. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 
  17. ^ Woodward, Tom. "Bull Durham", DVD Active, January 17, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-17. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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Films directed by Ron Shelton

Bull Durham (1988) • Blaze (1989) • White Men Can't Jump (1992) • Cobb (1994) • Tin Cup (1996) • Play It to the Bone (1999) • Dark Blue (2002) • Hollywood Homicide (2003)
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American films of the 1980s
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