The life we live with after

The Boys of Summer - Second Base, sequel to the award-winning first documentary, began principal photography on March 13, 2014. We need your help. Please visit our kickstarter page and share it with your friends and family.

I watched "The Natural" once again this morning and was reminded why it's one of my favorite movies -- not just baseball movies, but all movies. It's a throwback. It's classic. It is beautifully metaphorical - and for fans of the book, no, I'm not arguing the movie is better. I think they're both brilliant. It takes a deft eye and ear to take a beloved book like Allan Malamud's and do it justice on the big screen. It means purposely leaving out things the medium of film doesn't do well (e.g. internal dialogue) and highlighting the things it does (e.g. visual metaphor).

Redford is at the top of his game. And for those who only see him now or haven't visited his work in a long time, it's worth remembering how great he was. He is simple, quiet and deeply powerful. He's athletic, but not in a way that calls attention to itself. Modern presentations of male athletes usually involve a man taking off his shirt and a cutaway to a woman's eyes growing large. The Natural is far more than skin deep. Good and evil are at play. So is the love of a father and a son through their vehicle: baseball. The onus of great natural talent, what it is to have it, be glorified then nearly killed for it.

Which brings me to one of my favorite exchanges between Redford and Glenn Close in a script littered with spectacularly sharp dialogue:

Iris Gaines: You know, I believe we have two lives.

Roy Hobbs: How... what do you mean?

Iris Gaines: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

This can speak to anyone who has experienced adversity. In the scope of Boys of Summer, it certainly speaks to the number of people I've met with Parkinson's. For me, too, there's the life before my parents got sick and the life since. I've gone from assuming my health to putting it at the forefront of my consciousness and my work. Boys of Summer opened an avenue of advocacy with my talent, my gift for story telling through the visual medium, that I continue to work. I'm far from a Natural. But I do have great passion and persistence.

In The Natural's DVD extras, there is a documentary featuring Cal Ripken Jr.. He was clearly a man with a gift and a deep love for his father who coached both Cal and his brother Billy to MLB careers, along with many others. Cal speaks about the tragedy of the talent that is wasted by those who don't put in the work and the glass ceiling that blocks those without the great talent, but scores of passion and persistence. One of the reasons I'm pursuing the sequel to Boys of Summer is to shatter that ceiling that currently resides above me. That and return to graduate school for my MFA in filmmaking in the fall of 2014, expanding my network and squarely pushing me into the marketplace where I believe I need to be - not just for me, but for my family, too.

Another great moment in The Natural between Roy (Redford) and Iris (Close) speaks to another important theme of Boys of Summer. Roy has just seen Iris, his childhood love, for the first time in 15 years. He is at her apartment. He discovers a baseball glove - her son's baseball glove.

Iris Gaines: It's my son's. He means the world to me. He's a great kid.

Roy Hobbs: I'll bet he is. I'd like to meet him.

Iris Gaines: He's coming pretty soon.

Roy Hobbs: Is he with his father? 

Iris Gaines: No. His father lives in New York. But, I'm thinking he needs his father; he's at that age. He needs him.

Roy Hobbs: Sure. A father makes all the difference.

That last line is true in more ways and words than I know how to put together. I know what my father has meant and continues to mean to me. He is strength, dignity and love. He is kind, compassionate and very thoughtful. He works hard but goes about it without anyone noticing. He does it because he believes it's the right thing to do. And yes, for those who remember the old Quaker Oats ads, Wilford Brimley is in the Natural, too. I do my best to be that kind of dad to my two kids every day. 

I'll address this at length in another blog, but I want to make one thing clear: this proposed follow up to Boys of Summer isn't a call for someone else to foot the bill for a family vacation. Anyone who would propose that is simply ignorant of the film, the process of making a film, the potential impact of a film, my history and ability as a filmmaker and my personal commitment to make a difference in the lives of people who participate in and watch the film. 

One final quote:

Roy Hobbs: My life didn't turn out the way I expected.

Another example of the universality of the themes in the film. I don't know anyone whose life has turned out the way they expected. That doesn't mean the people I know are particularly sad or happy. It does mean that for all we like to control or pretend we're in control of, we're really not. There are moments - far too few precious moments - where we can dramatically change the direction we are headed if we are brave enough to go up to the plate and swing the bat. Here's to hoping we knock the cover off with the sequel to Boys of Summer...and that you'll help us get to the plate. 

The Boys of Summer - Second Base, sequel to the award-winning first documentary, began principal photography on March 13, 2014. We need your help. Please visit our kickstarter page and share it with your friends and family.

What is baseball?

What is baseball?

After watching (or, more accurately, re-waching) four baseball films and meditating on the sport through the lens of our proposed follow up documentary, something simple came to me: baseball is a vehicle, not the end game. Where it takes us is much more important that what it does. It serves as a support system, a spine of sorts, that allows us to fill in the details around. The four “baseball films” and their true intent seem to bear that truth out. 

The Final Season – It’s about saving a small town in Iowa

Eight Men Out – It’s about corruption

Field of Dreams – It’s about healing and fulfilling a dream

The Natural – It’s about redemption

It’s the same with Boys of Summer. Though it leans heavily upon baseball, it’s not about baseball. It’s about relationships – fathers and sons, fans and teams, indivduals and their bodies which are doing strange things.  

Baseball is a great sport. At the same time, it’s a bit of a dumb animal. It can’t, by itself, do anything. It can be played in a way that can move people to terrific heroics on one hand and murder on the other. In that sense, again, it is a conduit, a mirror and a vehicle.

Where do you want it to take you?

For players, it may be fame, fortune, the thrill of feeling what their bodies are capable of. For owners, it may be money, ancillary properties and the ability to build and maintain a public trust.

For fans it’s the thrill of taking part in a lucid, voyeuristic dream – one that makes the impossible seem possible. The slowness at which the game is played fuels that serenity. The daily grind itches at one’s soul, not allowing it to leave until it is scratched…only to itch again the next day.

I want baseball to take us all on the road - both literally and figuratively. I want to share this journey with those I’ve met before and those we’ll meet anew. I want to talk about dreams and fears, life and death. I want the latest and greatest minds on PD to share what has changed ten years later and where hope lies today. I want to experience the greatness of the people of America, the adventure of the road and a game of catch with my dad and my son at once. I want to help build a new generation and allow people’s stories to be heard by all.

Baseball is a vehicle. It sits by the side of the road, ready to take us wherever our dreams allow. It doesn’t ask for much beyond daily attention. While that may sound like a lot, the return is infinite.

The Boys of Summer - Second Base, sequel to the award-winning first documentary, began principal photography on March 13, 2014. We need your help. Please visit our kickstarter page and share it with your friends and family.

Eight Men Out

We're up, we're live and ready to hit the road in the summer of 2014. I hope you'll take a look at our kickstarter page and share it with anyone you think might be interested. Film research review #2:

Eight Men Out (1988)

Director: John Sayles

Cast: John Cusack, Christopher Lloyd, John Mahoney, Charlie Sheen

Eight Men Out is an strangely romantic movie about the periphery of baseball much more than the game itself. Often beautifully shot, with detailed sets and wardrobe that make one feel like he is looking in on a fine piece of art, it is a spectacle. At the same time, there is a great deal of unevenness that makes it a hard film to really sink into. The performances of the actors are, by and large, very solid. None of them have enough time on screen to make a deep impression on the audience, though John Cusack probably comes the closest with his portrayal of Buck Weaver. The actual play of the game on screen, which is often a hallmark of how “realistic” a sports movie is believed to be, is pretty shoddy. The actors were likely chosen for their ability to act, first, which is understandable – but still puts the audience in the rather uncomfortable position to have to accept what is being fed to them, even if it doesn’t add up. For example, David Strathairn, as Eddie Cicotte, is throwing what look 40 mile per hour meatballs that I’m supposed to believe are unhiytable pitches enough to allow him to win 29 games in a season. It’s the sports filmmakers burden – how real do the sequences have to be? I would argue as real as possible, particularly if it’s supposed to be showing the best of an era, which the “Black Sox” were repeatedly said to be.

The obvious point through all of this is that Eight Men Out is not about baseball so much as the scandal of this particular team. It’s about corruption. It’s about power. It’s about authority and who ultimately holds it. Cusack’s soap box moment with the neighborhood kids near the end of the film where he talks about the beauty of the game and how he still feels it as a kid is one of the stronger moments in the film for baseball purists. What he says speaks to the simplicity of the game, the part of it most fans (or at least this one) wishes could be the focus. That’s not to knock this film’s subject matter as it was very important and, in some ways, strengthens the importance of baseball in America’s history. History, in fact, is probably the biggest thing baseball has going for it against the other major sports. So even when the history isn’t perceived as positive, it’s still an opportunity for the game to be seen for what we wish it were and it sometimes still is.

Kickstart Boys Of Summer - Second Base

The Boys of Summer - Second Base, sequel to the award-winning first documentary, began principal photography on March 13, 2014. We need your help. Please visit our kickstarter page and share it with your friends and family.

This also opens up a new phase of research for me. I start each morning with 60-90 minutes on a spin bike. I know what you're thinking: "boring!" Me too. Until I hooked up a little DVD player to the front of the bike and started watching movies as I sweat. It's a great way to make time fly and I literally experience the film differently because of the heightened state of my body during the work out. More on that in other blogs. For today, I bring my first review of what will be exclusively baseball movies over the next few months.

The Final Season

Release date: 2007

Starring: Sean Astin, Powers Boothe, Rachael Leigh Cook

Sometimes a review goes outside in, like a great slider. That’s how this movie works. If you get past the obvious plot devices early on, what starts to emerge are the things that work in many sports movies: overcoming long odds, discovering one’s self, redemption. All those elements are here. And while they may not be put together in the most artful form, the payoff is still resonant and meaningful. There is something about Iowa and baseball and it is captured well here. Perhaps “The Field of Dreams” got there and planted the seed first or most deeply. Perhaps it’s because the state, itself, represents the heartland, kindness and “American values” in so many ways. Maybe it’s corn, farmland and the base of our economy and trade these commodities give us. All these elements provide grounding for what many Americans would like this country to be seen as. Others would argue that this depiction isn’t “the truth” of what America is. I tend to agree with the doubters – but only in so far as a literal depiction is valuable. The problem with “the truth” is it’s subjective. So the minute one person offers it, the next set of eyes is going to change the parameters. Art, and narrative filmmaking as an art, has a great way of getting beyond the literal truth to depict something bigger, more resonant and metaphorical.

While The Final Season doesn’t offer “the truth” about baseball, America or the events it is based on, it offers a certain, specific truth that worked for me. I cared about the outcome. I felt for their triumphs and losses. I was happy they won. And that’s no more a spoiler than telling you the Titanic sunk.