Cobb (film)

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Cobb

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Ron Shelton
Produced by David V. Lester
Written by Al Stump (Book and Article)
Ron Shelton (Screenplay)
Starring Tommy Lee Jones
Robert Wuhl
Lolita Davidovich
Music by Elliot Goldenthal
Cinematography Russell Boyd
Editing by Kimberly Ray
Paul Seydor
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) December 2, 1994
Running time 128 min.
Country United States
Language English
Gross revenue $1,007,600
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Cobb is a 1994 baseball film starring Tommy Lee Jones as the legendary baseball player Ty Cobb. It was written and directed by Ron Shelton. The original music score was composed by Elliot Goldenthal. The film's tagline is: "Everyone hated this baseball legend. And he loved it."

Contents

[edit] Plot

Based on a true story, Robert Wuhl plays sportswriter Al Stump who is hired to write an authorized "autobiography" of Cobb. Stump arrives at the Tahoe home of the dying Cobb to write the official life story of the first baseball player inducted in to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He finds a drunken, misanthropic, bitter racist who abuses his biographer as well as everyone else. After spending time with Cobb, Stump is torn between writing the book that Cobb wants and writing the truth.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Trivia

Baseball scenes in the movie were filmed at Birmingham's Rickwood Field, which stood in for Philadelphia's Shibe Park and Pittsburgh's Forbes Field. The movie was also filmed in Cobb's real hometown of Royston, Georgia. Major League pitcher Roger Clemens has a brief cameo as an opposing pitcher, on whom Cobb doubles off of, steals third and then home.

Singer/Songwriter Jimmy Buffett makes a cameo as a one armed heckler in the stands. Lawrence "Crash" Davis, the namesake for the main character in Shelton's earlier movie Bull Durham, also has a bit part in the film.

Tommy Lee Jones was shooting this film when he won the Academy Award for The Fugitive. Since his head was shaved for his role as Ty Cobb, Jones made light of the situation in his acceptance speech by saying "All a man can say at a time like this is 'I am not really bald.'"

[edit] Criticism

The film was met with radically diverse reviews. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone hailed it as "one of the year's best" and Charles Taylor of Salon included it on his list of the best films of the decade. Others took a harsher view of the picture. Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a 'D', claiming the movie to be a "noisy, cantankerous buddy picture." He explained: "By refusing to place before our eyes Ty Cobb's haunted ferocity as a baseball player, it succeeds in making him look even worse than he was."

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
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)