criterionforum.org

Bull Durham



Former minor leaguer Ron Shelton hit a grand slam with his directorial debut, one of the most revered sports movies of all time. Durham Bulls devotee Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon)—who every year takes a new player under her wing (and into her bed)—has singled out the loose-cannon pitching prospect Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a big-league talent with a rock-bottom maturity level. But she's unable to shake Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), the veteran catcher brought in to give Nuke some on-the-field seasoning. A breakthrough film for all three of its stars and an Oscar nominee for Shelton's highly quotable screenplay, Bull Durham is a freewheeling hymn to wisdom, experience, and America's pastime, tipping its cap to all those who grind it out for love of the game.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Ron Shelton, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS‑HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
• Two audio commentaries featuring Shelton and actors Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins
• New conversation between Shelton and film critic Michael Sragow
• Between the Lines: The Making of "Bull Durham," a 2002 program featuring interviews with cast and crew, including Shelton, Costner, Robbins, and actor Susan Sarandon
• The Greatest Show on Dirt, a 2008 appreciation of the film featuring former players, broadcasters, and sports-film aficionados
• NBC Nightly News piece from 1993 on the final season of baseball at Durham Athletic Park, where Bull Durham takes place and was shot
• Interview with Max Patkin, known as the Clown Prince of Baseball, from a 1991 episode of NBC's Today
• Trailer
• PLUS: Excerpts from a 1989 piece by longtime New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell, with new comments from the author

Wow, unexpected, but actually welcome. In its own way, it lives up to the spirit of Howard Hawks, and it's really one of two Kevin Costner performances that really make the case for his abilities as a film actor.

The most memorable thing about his commentary track with Robbins is the revelation that there was a whole sequence dealing with their mascot getting killed in some kind of accident. They wound up cutting that out though as it seemed to throw the whole film off the rails.

"A breakthrough film for all three of its stars" ??? The Untouchables had come out and was a massive hit - in what way did this "break" Costner? That it set him on a path to be Mr. Sports?

If my memory is well sorted this is basically if Semi-Tough removed everything that made it interesting.

The baseball centric extras make this very appealing for me to pick this up.

knives wrote:If my memory is well sorted this is basically if Semi-Tough was actually good and funny.

Fixed.

I disagree with you to an extent I cannot measure.

To be brutally honest, except for The Candidate and possibly The Bad News Bears (which I vaguely remember from childhood), I'm not really a fan of Michael Ritchie's films.

That's fair though to me he's one of the best of the '70s New Hollywood folks even if his career went off the rails as soon as the '80s hit.

I remember enjoying it, and my ignorance of baseball is close to total.

MichaelB wrote:I remember enjoying it, and my ignorance of baseball is close to total.

This seems to be the most common compliment I hear about this film - people who either don't know baseball or couldn't care less about it actually enjoyed the movie. It's not a movie that shies away from baseball either - if anything, it did a better job than any film before it in showing the intricacies of the sport.

Ribs wrote:"A breakthrough film for all three of its stars" ??? The Untouchables had come out and was a massive hit - in what way did this "break" Costner? That it set him on a path to be Mr. Sports?

More as a comedic and romantic lead. And wasn't he overshadowed in attention by De Niro and Connery in The Untouchables anyway?

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

Ribs wrote:"A breakthrough film for all three of its stars" ??? The Untouchables had come out and was a massive hit - in what way did this "break" Costner? That it set him on a path to be Mr. Sports?

More as a comedic and romantic lead. And wasn't he overshadowed in attention by De Niro and Connery in The Untouchables anyway?

Fandango should have been Costner's breakthrough.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

Ribs wrote:"A breakthrough film for all three of its stars" ??? The Untouchables had come out and was a massive hit - in what way did this "break" Costner? That it set him on a path to be Mr. Sports?

More as a comedic and romantic lead. And wasn't he overshadowed in attention by De Niro and Connery in The Untouchables anyway?

People certainly remembered Connery for the film come awards time as he won for Best Supporting Actor and De Niro was already big time in the seventies. I don't think Costner really made into the stratosphere until Dances With Wolves which was a big deal at the time. He of course also manged to ruin a ton of that goodwill with Waterworld (Which he didn't direct) and The Postman (Which he did.) He may have gotten noticed really early on but I don't think he's ever been you know, De Niro level. If you want to know just how nuts Costner really is check out his spending habits on Waterworld. It's "holy shit" levels of bad.

Apropos of Costner, this made me laugh so much I printed it out and hung it on my fridge a few days ago:

Hey, Bull Durham!! Once during a mound visit during a high school baseball game i thought the first basemen would get the reference when i started talking about a girl i was seeing and what to get her for a birthday present. He looked at me like i had three heads before collecting himself and telling me to "bear down, strike this guy out." The big thing for me at the time was that Costner could really hit and looks like a serious ballplayer in every frame he's in. Robbins would've been cut from his middle school JV-the idea his character is supposed to have a 95mph fastball is ridiculous. Costner was my hero for a few years between Fandango and this. I started to hate him when Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas for best picture. By the end of the decade he was such a hollywood laughing stock that i felt kind of sorry for him. Still, great to see this in the collection...

I thought Costner was great in Draft Day, but I think that's probably one of those sports movies people who like sports hate

I've spoken about it before but I prefer Wyatt Earp to Tombstone, and I remember liking Open Range a lot too. And Yellowstone looks quite good from what I've seen.

If you look at his filmography, he really was THE golden boy in Hollywood for awhile and more than a few people (peers in the acting community like James Earl Jones and critics alike) thought he was a true successor to Gary Cooper. He had modest hits and star turns before but Bull Durham really started a high profile run that continued with Field of Dreams (Best Picture nominee), Dances with Wolves (an enormous risk that wound up making him a king), Robin Hood (terrible film and performance but a huge hit), JFK (Best Picture nominee), The Bodyguard (terrible film that was a massive hit) and finally A Perfect World (a flop but the second of his two best performances).

Of these I’m only a fan of Bull Durham and A Perfect World, and they do make me wish that there was more on their level because he was capable of more.

I thought his Robin Hood was fun silliness even as Rickman stole the whole show.

Robin Hood is great. All you're doing is convincing/reminding me that Costner is awesome, hearthesilence

I still prefer Field of Dreams to Bull Durham as the baseball movie, even if it has a few annoying moments and cliches. If Draft Day isn't for sports fans, I'm not sure who it's for; that being said I like sports, the NFL draft, and the almost soap opera quality of that movie (the "super bowl" chant at the end was icing on the cake). It's a sports movie that seems eternal, seeing as the Browns are days away from being on the clock yet again.

I remember seeing ROBIN HOOD theatrically in 8th grade and being taken aback by how violent it was. I feel it kind of upped the ante on allowable violence for a PG-13 movie at the time. Not that I minded - it made everything seem very serious. Which I laugh at when I see it today because it’s not the least bit serious of a movie.

That said, I liked Costner well enough in it and still don’t mind him, although it occurs to me that it’s been some years since it’s been in rotation on cable. At any rate, even if he is bad in it, I don’t know how anyone could notice when Christian Slater is in the movie, too.

I think it's cycling on HBO now.

Getting back to Bull Durham, Kurt Russell was on Bill Simmons' podcast awhile back and he talked about how he and Shelton (both former minor-league players) collaborated on this script before Russell had to split. I forget what his impression of the final product was, but he talked about how he's never seen a baseball movie that felt true to his experiences in the game.

Bull Durham is a wonderful film about accepting change and learning to mature gracefully. The final moments where Costner is painting Sarandon's toenails as they're discussing life are just perfect.

Regarding Costner as a filmmaker and actor, I think he's one hell of a visual stylist. Dances with Wolves has a silly and contrived script (I think his character is knocked out on 3 different occasions for separate reasons), but it's aesthetically gorgeous and the performances are uniformly wonderful. Open Range is a major work. A slow burning western with a truly phenomenal final shootout that glides across a huge canvas and takes up at least an entire reel. Films like Fandango, Silverado, and Three Days to Kill really highlight his laconic, breezy screen presence that makes him so appealing.