A group of friends in Kansas City meet every other week to watch a classic (well, usually) movie and have dinner. We've been doing this for about six years, which is kind of remarkable, and this is a chronicle of what we watch and what we eat.
Continuing our sports theme (after a brief side trip to a Bob Hope/Lucille Ball comedy called “The Facts of Life”), we screened “Field of Dreams” last week for one very important reason: Kandy had never seen it. Miss Iowa had never seen “Field of Dreams.” To repeat: Miss-Goes-Back-to-the-State-This-Movie-Was-Filmed-All-the-Time had never seen “Field of Dreams.” This was right up there with Rich having never seen “Grease” or Steve having never seen all of “It’s a Wonderful Life” or me having somehow skipped “Caddyshack” or “The Blues Brothers.” Here at movie night, we aim to correct all wrongs.
Now that I’ve mercilessly teased Kandy about this gap in her cinematic resume, I have to confess: I haven’t seen “Field of Dreams” all the way through in a looooong time. It’s one of those movies that you rarely catch at the very beginning, which features a lovely bit of exposition dump.
As with most sports movies, there isn’t much game playing being shown on screen. Instead, this movie is suffused with sports history, to the point where the ghosts of the game become flesh.
Iowa insights
All the way through, thanks to Kandy, I learned new things about how the filmmakers didn’t really know that much about Iowa:
“No Iowa farmer would ever wear short sleeves in the corn field.”
“True, a bunch of people might be watching him plow over his corn – it is Dyersville, after all – but not the actual farmers. They have work to do.”
“2200 bucks an acre? Not anymore.”
See, this is stuff that you can’t even get from IMDB.
The Costner era
“Field of Dreams” comes during the period in movie history known as “Kevin Costner Takes Over the Place.” This one comes two years after “The Untouchables” and “No Way Out,” a year after “Bull Durham,” and it’s ahead of “JFK,” “The Bodyguard,” “Dances with Wolves,” and the deathless “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Seriously, the guy had a major streak going.
It’s also the first of his baseball trilogy (I choose to only count the movies that feature on-screen games, which leaves out “The Upside of Anger”) that includes “Bull Durham” and “For Love of the Game.” Those three movies just missed the leading lady hat trick, though: Two of the three feature redheaded lead actresses named Annie. So close.
Requisite movie trivia
Honestly, for as much unnecessary trivia I know about some movies, I am always humbled by what I don’t know.
Tom Hanks was originally offered the role of Ray Kinsella but turned it down.
Archibald "Moonlight" Wright Graham was a real baseball player. On 29 June 1905, with the New York Giants, he played one Major League Baseball game. Five days later, he quit his dream of being a pro ball player to become a doctor.
The shot of the line-drive knocking over the bag of baseballs next to Costner was sheer luck off the bat of Ray Liotta. During the movie, Chanda thought she saw the ball coming from a different angle than from the bat and speculated that someone was throwing it. Amazing that Liotta made that hit himself.)
J.D. Salinger, on whom the character Terence Mann is based, was very offended by the fictional portrayal of himself in W.P. Kinsella’s novel "Shoeless Joe", upon which the film is based. His lawyers said that they would be "unhappy if it the story were transferred to other media," so the studio created the character of Terence Mann.
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson remarks about Ty Cobb's desire to play: "None of could stand the son of a bitch when he was alive, so, we told him to stick it." In real life, both players were very close friends, towards the end of Jackson’s life, Cobb came into his liquor store in South Carolina and asked Jackson whether or not he knew him. Joe replied he did, he just wasn't sure if Cobb wanted to know him since most of the old players didn't want to anymore.
The line, "Hey, Dad, you wanna have a catch?" originally didn't include "Dad." Audiences were disappointed in the lack of acknowledgment of father and son, and the word "Dad" was looped in during post-production.
And, just for fun, a photo that makes me go awwwww:
Sidney Lumet, the director of Network and a bunch of other fantastic films, died on Saturday. His resume will knock you out – there’s Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Murder on the Orient Express, 12 Angry Men, Serpico, The Verdict, even The Wiz, people. The Wiz. The guy who did Network also did The Wiz. Process that.
We’ve done two of Lumet’s movies in our movie group – Network and 12 Angry Men. I’m going to talk about Network today because when I read the news about Lumet’s death, I immediately wanted to see that movie again.
We screened this one quite a while ago – my evite history doesn’t even go back far enough, actually. My Netflix history tells me I rented this in September 2007, so I’m going to go with that. Oddly enough, I do remember that I hosted, and that I served sandwiches (why? Why do I remember that? Why do I remember that I made a special point to get awesome bread from this little bakery in Prairie Village?).
Screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky
God, I love this movie. It’s easily a top 10 for me. I am naturally inclined toward movies with incredible scripts – every one of my top 5 movies either won the best screenplay Oscar or was nominated – and Network has one of the best you’ll ever see. It’s a really speechy movie, but because those speeches were written by Paddy Chayevsky, they totally work. And the actors just dug into those scenes and knocked them out of the park.
Whenever screenwriters write about writers in movies or TV, they tend to portray these sad sacks who have almost no importance on the movie set, but that apparently wasn’t the case for Network. Lumet said that Paddy was on set to oversee his direction, which Lumet didn’t mind because Paddy had better comedic instinct than he did.
The Oscars
The 1976 Oscars had an embarrassment of riches in terms of nominees. Look what was nominated for Best Picture:
Rocky
All the President's Men
Bound for Glory
Network
Taxi Driver
And Rocky won because it's the feel-good, underdog-wins-it-all movie. Traditionally, the Oscars prefer it that way. They don't award films that show the protagonist assassinated in the last scene because of low ratings.
Network is also notable in Oscar history for a few interesting (and wonderfully trivial) reasons:
It's only the second movie to win three acting Oscars - plenty of films have won two, but only A Streetcar Named Desire and this one won three.
Peter Finch (who played Howard Beale) was the first person to win a posthumous acting Oscar - he died a couple of months before the ceremony. The second to do so? Heath Ledger in The Dark Night (who, just like Finch, was Australian).
It's only the second movie to receive five acting nominations (two for best actor, one best actress and both the supporting categories).
Two of its nominees have remarkably small roles. Beatrice Straight played the wife of William Holden's character. She's on screen for just 5 minutes, 40 seconds, and she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Similarly, Ned Beatty was nominated for Best Support Actor for exactly one day of work in Network (he lost to somebody in Rocky).
I firmly believe that while all the actors in Network were remarkable, they won their Oscars (or were nominated) because script did the heavy lifting. Just look at their most famous scenes – particularly those one-shot wonders of Straight and Beatty.
Here’s why Beatrice Straight won her Oscar:
Recognize her? Also in Poltergeist.
Then get out, go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, and don't come back. Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly.
And here’s why Ned Beatty was nominated for his Oscar. Also Lumet’s choice of camera angles and lighting in this scene helped accentuate the surreal nature of the speech:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
And here’s why Peter Finch and Paddy Chayefsky won their Oscars (forgive the French subtitles):
It’s hard to imagine anyone else in this role because Finch is so indelible, but lots of people were approached for this part first. Henry Fonda thought the script was “too hysterical” (and I don’t think he meant funny); George C. Scott was pissed at Sidney Lumet, so he turned it down; Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor were even asked to do this role. In the end Finch lobbied for the role and got it by recording his voice in a perfect American accent to show his Australian one wouldn’t ruin things.
And that speech? The one with the No. 19 greatest movie quote in history? Finch did it in one and a half takes. Halfway through his second take, he stopped in exhaustion (his heart was already failing by this point). So what you see in the movie is cobbled together from those takes – the first half of his speech comes from the second take, and the most famous part – the “mad as hell” part – all comes from his first take. Amazing.
Parallels and premonition
Network is as old as I am – it was filmed in 1975, just as I was making my debut – and given that it’s about media and trends, which change and age quicker than you can blink, it’s easy to assume that this movie might have aged in amusing ways.
Oh, hell no.
It’s eerie to watch Network today and see exactly how many of the issues they’re talking about still apply to us today. Take this line from Beale’s famous speech:
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Um, yep. That’s 2011.
And then there’s Faye Dunaway’s character – the fresh face of UBS News who wants counterculture, anti-establishment programming, who’s willing to fuck around with the concept of documentary television to make it more sensational and get better ratings. Does this start to sound familiar? In 1987, Fox became the fourth TV network (just as UBS is in the movie) and started breaking ground with TV that nobody else wanted – Married with Children, The Tracey Ullman Show, and then Cops, which is the grandfather of reality TV.
Another parallel: Glenn Beck. Now, admittedly, I don’t watch Crazy McNutjob (or anything on Fox News, for that matter) and all I know about the man comes filtered through The Daily Show. But I do read about media a lot, and from what I can glean, Beck has been descending into Howard Beale-like crazy talk for months now – apparently, absolutely everything that happens every day is a harbinger for End Times on Beck’s show. But for the longest time, Fox couldn’t do anything to tone him down because his ratings were so high (just like with The Howard Beale Show in the second half of Network). And then, his ratings started to decline. But instead of hiring an assassin, Fox just got Beck to leave and, presumably, continue his Crazy McNutjob routine on some other street corner.
Well, so, yeah. Didn’t mean to leave this poor blog dormant for, um, like eight months or something. My bad.
We’re a few movies into our year of Sports Movies here in movie group land. So far we’ve done 1944’s National Velvet (horseracing with Elizabeth Taylor) and 1951’s Angels in the Outfield (which is considerably less wacky than the Disney remake). After a March-long break from movie night, we return with another baseball flick, in honor of the Royals’ opening day: 1988’s Eight Men Out.
For no good reason that I can think of, I hadn’t seen this movie yet. I mean, I love baseball movies, I love John Cusack, I love period pieces – what’s the dealio Cooke? I think the problem is that I knew how it was going to end, and I don’t like it when baseball goes and breaks my heart (the Royals hold the rights to that particular activity year after year, thankyouverymuch).
But this was a perfect movie group choice. You know how we’re always on the lookout for “hey it’s that guy”? Well, this movie is absolutely packed with them. In fact, I think we spent as much time watching the movie as we did on IMDB or racking our brains to figure out where we’d seen that guy before. Some of them came to us quickly; others needed the web/phone assist.
Apart from "that guy" moments, Eight Men Out also features the greatest collection of interesting noses I've ever seen. Even the extras sport significant schnozes. I don't know if it's enough to make it a theme of the movie, but it's definitely a strong visual motif (I'm pulling out the ol' English major vocab, folks!)
Runner up motif: the chaw. Everywhere. D.B. Sweeney's cheek must have been permanently stretched from the size of the bulge in his mouth. (Pause for giggity.)
My favorite bits of trivia on this movie:
According to some sources, the nickname 'Black Sox' was already in use for the Chicago White Sox long before the World Series fixing scandal. It was a reference to owner Charles Comiskey refusing to launder uniforms himself, forcing the players to do it themselves, which inevitably led to uniforms becoming filthy. Other sources, including Eliot Asimov's book 'Eight Men Out', do not mention the team being referred to as the 'Black Sox' before the scandal, however.
In several scenes, White Sox players are seen tossing their mitts on to the field as they head towards the dugout. This was an actual practice by major league players to share equipment. The home team players would often leave the mitts on the field for the opposition to wear during the upcoming inning. The tradition slowly died off during the 1920s.
The trial actually ends in August of 1921, nearly two years after the fix. The movie makes it seem as if it all took place in the time between the 1919 and 1920 baseball season.
A child in the movie utters the famous quote "Say it ain't so, Joe!" In real life, a Chicago reporter was standing close by when a boy said something to the effect of "Say it didn't really happen Joe." In order to make a more emotionally-grabbing news article, the reporter took creative license, and created the "Say it ain't so, Joe!" quote.
Director John Sayles was contractually obligated to a running time under two hours. To inspire the cast to talk fast, he showed them the film City for Conquest. The final cut of the film is 12 seconds under two hours.
In honor of our “that guy” moments, here’s an annotated IMDB cast rundown:
John Cusack – George “Buck” Weaver: Obviously, we know this guy. This movie came early in his career, a couple years after Sixteen Candles and one year before Say Anything (which, by the way, also featured one of his castmates from this movie – John Mahoney played the coach in Eight Men Out and played Ione Skye’s dad in Say Anything. Ask Steve to recite that speech about not wanting to buy anything sold or bought – he can do it.
Michael Lerner – Arnold Rothstein: Recently, we know him from Elf – he played the CEO of the publishing company where James Caan works and demands a stupid meeting on Christmas Eve. He’s also in the Coen brothers’ fudged-up “Barton Fink,” “Newsies” and a charming little gem called “Wax On, Fuck Off.”
John Mahoney (far right). The other guys are the director John Sayles (far left, playing Ring Lardner) and the writer Studs Terkel.
John Mahoney – Kid Gleason: Frasier’s dad plays the coach, who wears his hat Hal MacRae style, baby. Where else do we know him? Well, Frasier, obviously. Also I recognize him from The American President, Reality Bites, Say Anything and, my fave, Moonstruck.
Christopher Lloyd – Sleepy Bill Burns: Here he’s one of the slimy fixer gamblers, but just three years before he was Doc Brown. This is not our first Christopher Lloyd movie – he was also in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (his goofy face was particularly suited for the loony bin movie). Another movie group link: He was in the remake of Angels in the Outfield (as the lead angel), and we watched the 1951 original a few weeks ago (which was notable for its utter absence of wacky angels and bug-eyed Christopher Lloyd).
Charlie Sheen – Oscar “Hap” Felsch: Ah, the Sheen. The Adonis DNA. The tiger blood. The winning duh. He’s so cute and young in this flick. He’s actually not in Eight Men Out very much – but it’s an ensemble movie, so that’s not surprising. Besides, we get our full dose of the Wild Thing in 1989’s Major League. Fun fact about the Sheen: he had a baseball scholarship to KU. Road not taken, huh?
David Strathairn – Eddie Cicotte: The underpaid, tortured pitcher who first threw a game then came back to win one in the series. I love me some Strathairn. Here’s where you know him: A League of Their Own, Good Night and Good Luck, The River Wild (an overlooked Meryl Streep movie that I suggest you check out), The Bourne Supremacy, LA Confidential. The man gets around. And he’s awesome everywhere.
Clifton James – Charles “Commie” Comiskey: The owner of the Sox and one of many villains for this tale. James made a career out of playing Southern sheriffs, as it turns out, in Cool Hand Luke, Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, etc. So, props.
D.B. Sweeney – Shoeless Joe Jackson: Toepick! Steve lost a man card for this one. He was the first to break out the toepick. Sweeney is inherently too pretty to play Shoeless Joe (see pic), but he does his best to ugly him up with the world’s largest hunk of chaw permanently imbedded in his cheek. Nasty. Where else do we know D.B.? The Cutting Edge, obviously, also in a bunch of TV shows’ guest spots. But it really comes down to toepick, in the end.
Michael Rooker – Chick Gandil: He played the first of the dirty players, the one who used all kinds of peer pressure on the other players to get them to turn. Rooker has one of those faces that I just recognize, but it’s not from something terribly specific. He was in Mississippi Burning, which I remember seeing in high school, also in Cliffhanger and Tombstone and Slither. Mostly, though, he’s just “that guy” for me.
James Read – Lefty Williams: We figured out during the movie (thank you IMDB!) where we knew this guy: He played Elle’s dad in Legally Blonde and the sisters’ dad in Charmed.
Gordon Clapp – Ray Schalk: That poor, frustrated catcher who really wanted to win but his pitchers wanted to lose. We recognized him from NYPD Blue. Director John Sayles loved this guy – cast him in four of his movies.
Bill Irwin – Eddie Collins: Leave it to Dave the dad to connect this guy to Sesame Street. Of all the potential references on Irwin’s resume – Hot Shots, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Popeye – David knew him best as Mr. Noodle, Elmo’s friend on the Street.
Richard Edson – Billy Maharg: This is one guy whose name you’ll never know, but you’ll always know him by his nose. In a movie of great noses, he is the king of distinctive noses. He’s one of the first “that guy” references we spotted – he’s the valet in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who takes the Ferarri on a joy ride. He’s also in Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, Do the Right Thing and lots of others.
Kevin Tighe – Sport Sullivan: This was my first “Oh yeah! I know that guy!” reference for this movie – he’s the bar owner in that deathless classic Road House. More recently, he was Locke’s incredibly awful father Anthony Cooper on Lost. Before that, he was also in Newsies and School Ties. His accomplishment in Eight Men Out boils down to 1. Being that guy who was in Road House and 2. Sporting an incredibly awful Irish accent. Seriously, take it from the Costner, if you can’t pull off an accent, don’t even try.
John Anderson – Judge Landis: I was sure that I knew this guy from somewhere – there are only so many crusty old men with Andrew Jackson’s haircut out there. David and I determined that he simply reminded me of grandpa from Christmas Vacation. Mystery solved.
John Sayles as Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner himself
John Sayles – Ring Lardner: The director played one of the very famous writers who broke the scandal. Sayles also wrote the script, and it took 10 years to get it to the screen. Originally, he wanted to cast himself as one of the players, but he realized that in the intervening decade, he had gotten too old. So he cast himself as Ring Lardner – and the physical resemblance is eerie. Lardner, by the way, was good friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald (who wrote “The Great Gatsby” – whose main character, Gatsby, is rumored to have gotten his fortune by betting against the Black Sox), and Lardner’s son was Ring Lardner Jr., who wrote the movie “MASH” and won an Oscar for “Woman of the Year” and was one of the Hollywood 10 who were blacklisted in the Joe McCarthy communist scare. Whew! This one was a loooong reference tangent.
Nancy Travis – Lyra Williams: Lefty Williams’ wife (the pitcher whose wife was threatened if he didn’t follow through) – she was in So I Married an Axe Murderer and 3 Men and a Baby (she was the mom with a terrible British accent. (note: this was not a chick-heavy movie.)
Tay Strathairn – Bucky: This is the little tow-headed kid whose big brother said “say it ain’t so, joe” – he was played by David Strathairn’s son (Strathairn played the other pitcher). He’s 30 years old now and not an actor (at least as far as IMDB can tell me). But super cute.
Dick Cusack – Judge Friend: played by John Cusack’s dad. Seriously, if there’s a movie set in or filmed in Chicago, Dick Cusack is in it. Observe: While You Were Sleeping (Chicago), High Fidelity (Chicago and son), Fugitive (Chicago), Return to Me (Chicago). I swear, I see him everywhere.
