The (super)Natural

Field of Dreams

Director: Phil Alden Robinson

Cast: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Timothy Busfield, Gaby Hoffmann

Released: May 5, 1989

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to Driving Miss Daisy)

Best Original Score - James Horner (lost to Alen Menken for The Little Mermaid)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Phil Alden Robinson (lost to Alfred Uhry for Driving Miss Daisy)

Field of Dreams is a movie I watched many times when I was younger because it was a favorite of my family's. Both of my parents (and many of my relatives) are from Iowa, so you can probably see why it was such a staple for me growing up! This is just such a quintessential American movie; it's got baseball and takes place in the nation's heartland. As someone who has been to Iowa many times, I can confirm that it definitely captured the state.

An interesting side note about the movie's title: as you may already know, Field of Dreams is an adaptation of W.P. Kinsella's novel, Shoeless Joe (which I read when I was a freshman in high school, but don't remember anything about it), but the studio didn't want the movie to be the same title because they thought that the audience would think it's about a homeless guy or that Costner is supposed to be the title character. Somebody suggested Field of Dreams, but the director didn't like it (not sure why!). He talked to the author to tell him that although the screening was well received, they had to give it a different title. Kinsella told him the he didn't come up with the book's title and said he wanted to call it Field of Dreams instead, so the director took that as a sign and thus that's how the film became Field of Dreams. I'm guessing whoever suggested the movie be called that in the first place already knew Kinsella wanted that as the original title of his book or maybe it was just a huge coincidence. 

It's been almost fifteen years since I've seen the movie so there were a few things I forgot. One of those is the movie gets going really quickly. It takes less than five minutes before Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears the voice.

We get some quick backstory about Ray. Actually, we first start with some quick backstory about his father, John Kinsella. He was born in North Dakota in 1896, was in the war, settled in Chicago and became a fan of the White Sox and a lover of baseball. He played in the minors for a year or two, "but nothing ever came of it." He moved to Brooklyn where he married his wife and Ray was born in 1952. As he was going through the timeline, I mentally did the math in my head and was thinking his father was pretty old when Ray was born. He would have turned 56 in 1952. Ray does admit his father was "already an old man" when he was born, and yes, he certainly was! His mother (no idea how old she was) died when he was three so he was raised by a man old enough to be his grandfather. He grew up knowing about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and "the great Shoeless Joe Jackson." He and his dad fought a lot and when it was time for him to go to college, he "picked the farthest one from home" which turned out to be Berkeley. There he met his future wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and one of the things they had in common was that "she came from Iowa, and [he] had once heard of Iowa." After graduation, they moved there and got married in June of 1974 and his dad died the following fall. According to him, "a few years later" their daughter, Karin, was born. This does not track because Karin is played by a very young Gaby Hoffmann who was born in 1982. The movie takes place in 1988 and she can't be no older than six so saying she was born "a few years" after 1974 isn't quite correct. To me, a few years is maybe 3-5. But I suppose it's all semantics. 

Annie talked Ray into buying a farm and at 36, he tells us "Until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life." 

So, yeah, all that backstory takes less than five minutes to tell. I assume it's much more fleshed out in the book. Like, I bet W.P. Kinsella devoted more than a paragraph to that! Probably even more than a chapter!

Of course, the voice he's talking about is the one that says, "If you build it, he will come." He's out in the cornfield when he hears it and his wife and daughter are sitting on the porch swing. When he asks Annie if they heard anything she says they didn't. When they're back inside, he tells Annie what the voice said and she seems to take it all in stride. She asks, "If you build what, who will come?" which is a good question. She even jokes about it the next day (he heard the voice again laying in bed) when he takes Karin to school and asks him, "What if the voice calls while you're gone?" He jokes back and tells her to "take a message."  

He hears the voice again and this time he sees a quick image of a baseball field, then he sees an image of Shoeless Joe Jackson. This seems to come out of nowhere and it makes me wonder how this was done in the book. Like, was he given more context clues? At dinner (where the family is eating freshly picked corn on the cob - yum!) he tells Annie he thinks he knows what the voice meant and if he builds a baseball field out there, then "Shoeless Joe Jackson will get to come back and play ball again." She replies, "You're kidding" and laughs. Even though she tells him that it's "the craziest thing I've ever heard", she's very supportive of him. Oh, did I mention that Shoeless Joe Jackson died in 1951? She asks him if he's actually thinking of doing this and he replies, "I can't think of one good reason why I should", then tells her he's scared of "turning into [his] father" and that he never "forgave him for getting old." The main reason he wants to build this baseball field is because his father never did one spontaneous thing and he's "afraid of that happening to [him]" and "something tells [him] that this may be [his] last chance to do something about it." As we already know, Annie thinks he's crazy, but she's very supportive. Perhaps a little too supportive. She tells him, "If you  really feel you should do this, then you should do it." I don't think most wives would be that encouraging and let their husbands just randomly build a baseball field (complete with stadium lights)!

We next get a montage of him building the field. A few people have come by in their cars to gawk and take pictures. I was wondering how he got the money for everything (especially the stadium lights; where did he get those anyway?), but we'll find out later that he used most of their savings to build this baseball field. I wonder how long it took for them to build this because it seems Ray and Annie are the only ones working on it! While he's plowing the cornfield, he tells his daughter (and the audience if they weren't privy) how Shoeless Joe got his nickname: "When he was still in the minors, he'd bought a new pairs of spikes and they hurt his feet. So, about the sixth inning, he took them off and played the rest of the game in just his socks. The other players kidded him and called him "Shoeless Joe" and the name stuck." 

He continues his exposition about the baseball legend when he tells Karin about how Jackson's team (the White Sox) threw the World Series in 1919. According to the Wikipedia article I read about this, "Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each (equivalent to $88,000 in 2023) to throw the World Series." Ray says that he did take the money, but nobody could prove that "he did a single thing to lose those games." 

You know, this reminds me of on Survivor when some tribes purposely lose because they want to go to Tribal Council to get rid of dead weight or a teammate who is toxic or isn't contributing anything. I mean, I know it's not exactly the same thing because nobody's being bribed on Survivor and it's not, you know, illegal to throw a challenge (but some people think it's a terrible idea), but you usually need everybody who's in on it to throw the challenge. Perhaps Shoeless Joe played as best as he could because he knew his other teammates were going to really stink it up. The commissioner of baseball (I had no idea there was such a thing!) suspended the eight players for life and they were never allowed to play professional baseball again. 

Later, when the baseball field is complete, he and Annie are laying out on the grass and he tells her that his father claims he saw Joe years later "playing under a made-up name in some 10th-rate league in Carolina." He looks around smiling as he says, "I have created something totally illogical." He is very lucky to have such a supportive wife! I love this scene because you can feel the ambience of Iowa...a muggy summer night with the crickets chirping and perhaps the waft of cow manure in the distance (hopefully very far in the distance!). 

Annie gets up in the middle of the night to see Ray sitting by the window, just looking out at the field. Obviously, he's waiting for something to happen now that his field is complete. The next thing we know, there's snow on the ground and the house is decorated for Christmas. While he has family over, he's still looking out the window, but still, nothing has happened. This seems to be the only instance of time passing. I feel like there should have been more because the next scene is when he and Annie are discussing their finances (and how they spent most of their savings building the field) and Karin tells him, "There's a man out there on your lawn." Karin forgot to mention the important detail that the man in question is wearing a baseball uniform! 

So we have an interesting dialect scene when Annie tells Ray "I'll put up some coffee." Most people (if not all!) would say "I'll put on some coffee" (or they would just simply say "I'll make some coffee"). I would had just assumed this was an Iowa/Midwest thing, but most of my relatives are from Iowa and I've lived in the Midwest my whole life and I have NEVER heard anyone say it that way. It doesn't sound natural to me. I even listened to it again to make sure the subtitles weren't wrong, but she definitely says "up".

Ray turns on the stadium lights and starts swinging the ball to the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) with the bat. At first, Joe doesn't say a word until he jogs up to Ray and after Ray says hi and introduces himself, he tells Ray that his name is Joe Jackson. He asks Ray if he (Ray) can pitch so he can swing the bat. 

After a few hits, Joe talks about how much he loves this game and even myself, who doesn't really care for baseball, starts to get nostalgic and sentimental for what he's talking about. And just wait until the James Earl Jones speech! He asks about the lights and Ray tells him that all the stadiums have them. He agrees with Joe that they "make them harder to see the ball", but tells him that "owners found that more people could attend night games." 

 

Annie and Karin have come out and head in their direction so they can meet Joe, but when he walks towards them and reaches the edge of the field, he stops. In a later scene, we will find out why he can't go any further. Karin, being a six-year-old, asks him if he's a ghost. He asks her, "What do you think?" and she replies, "You look real to me." Annie invites him inside (probably for that coffee!), but he says he doesn't think he can. He turns to go back towards the cornfield, but then turns back and asks Ray if he can come back again and Ray tells him yes, that he built this for him. Joe tells him there are others, meaning the other eight players that were also suspended and that "it would really mean a lot to them." Ray tells him they'll all welcome. Joe has one more question for Ray, probably one of the better known lines in a movie filled with famous quotes: "Is this heaven?" Ray replies, "No, it's Iowa." My aunt (who lives in Iowa) loves this line and often quotes it. 

Has that ever been a tourism slogan for Iowa? If not, it should be! You know when you enter a new state and you see the welcome sign with the state's name and then some slogan (usually some pun or something the state is known for)? Well, I went to look up the signs for each state and Iowa's says 

The People of Iowa Welcome You

Iowa

Fields of Opportunities

First of all, I feel like these are two different welcomes and they should have gone with just one. Obviously the "Fields of Opportunities" is a play on of Field of Dreams. I will give them credit for that, but honestly, they really missed the mark with not going with

Is this Heaven?

No, it's

IOWA!

C'mon, Iowa Tourism Board! 

The next morning, Annie's mother, brother, Mark (Timothy Busfield), and Mark's wife are at the house. Mark is telling Ray he's going to lose the farm and the baseball field is going to bankrupt him and if he sells the farm now, he can get a fair price. Karin comes in to tell her dad that "the baseball game is on" and Mark thinks there's one on TV even though Ray and Karin go outside. 

They sit on the bleachers, Karin with her popcorn (nothing seemingly to drink, though) as the eight players emerge from the cornfield and start to play ball. A few minutes later, Annie comes out with Mark and the others as they're getting ready to leave. We quickly learn that Mark, his wife, and his and Annie's mother cannot see the eight men out on the field. When Karin tell him they're watching "the baseball men", he turns around, looking confused. I'm honestly surprised that they didn't show a shot of an empty field so we could see it from Mark's perspective. During this whole scene, the ball players are always in the background. Both Ray and Annie are surprised Mark and the two women can't see anything, but should they really be that surprised? These are ghost, for a lack of a better word, out there. 

When it's time for the ball players to go back to where they came from, they walk into the cornfield and visual effects are used to show them vanishing. I think this would have been more effective if they kept on walking until we couldn't see them anymore because eventually they would have disappeared into the cornfield! 

As Ray is heading back inside, he hears the voice again and this time it says, "Ease his pain." He has no idea what that means and doesn't get any more instructions or details when he asks, "Whose pain?" When he tells his wife he heard the voice again, she makes a joke, asking him if he has to build a football field this time. 

That evening, there is a PTA meeting scheduled to talk about book banning which really has Annie irked. While there, a future Trump voter holds up a book called The Boat Rocker by Terrance Mann claiming that "smut and filth like this has no place in our school." I laughed when Annie leans over to Ray and whispers, "Fascist. I'd like to ease her pain." She'll have a couple more zingers for this woman before the evening is over! 

One of the school administrators who's running the meeting tells the woman, "That book is hardly smut" and is "considered by many to be the classic novel about the 1960s." Unfortunately, many of the attendees agree with Ms. Fascist. The administrator reminds them that the author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and "is widely regarded as the finest satirist of his time." Ms. Fascist continues her rant, saying the books of Mr. Mann "endorse promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races..." Annie is getting very angry and her eyebrows are raised and she mouths "wow" in disbelief when the woman says that. 

 

During all this, Ray has been writing "ease his pain" over and over on the itinerary they were given for the meeting and has an epiphany that it may be referring to Terrance Mann. Annie stands up to confront Ms. Fascist (we actually do learn her name but I forgot what it was and it's more fun/accurate to call her that) and tells her and the rest of the attendees that Terrance Mann coined the phrase "make love, not war." She tells the woman that if she had experienced the '60s, she would think the same way too. The woman haughtily informs her that she "experienced the '60s" and Annie replies, "No, I think you had two '50s and moved right into the '70s" and sits down. Ooh, burn, Annie! The woman retorts by telling her, "Well, your husband plowed under his corn and built a baseball field." After telling Ray that she'll "be cool", Annie stands back up and replies, "At least he is not a book burner, you Nazi cow." Yeah, pretty sure Annie won with that one, but the woman still snaps back with "At least I'm not married to the biggest horses' ass in three counties." Yeah, no, Annie still won. She takes over the meeting when she wants to "put it to a vote" and asks the audience "Who's for Eva Braun here?" Sadly, at first, it seems she doesn't have any supporters, even after she asks them "Who wants to spit on the Constitution of the United States of America? " But when she asks "Who thinks freedom is a good thing?", they start raising their hands. There's a funny moment when Ray is still deep in thought and she smacks him on the shoulder and he raises his hand. 

As they're leaving, Annie is super excited that everyone is on her side now. Ray tells her he knows whose pain he's supposed to ease: Terrance Mann's. Annie asks how does he know that and he replies, "I don't know I just know. I was right about building the field wasn't I?" Hmmm, sorry, movie, but I'm not buying it. Seems like a bit of a lame answer. Here's a fun fact: in the book, it's J.D. Salinger whose pain he has to ease. Annie asks him, "What's Terrance Mann got to do with baseball?" He doesn't know that either and so we get a montage of him going to the library and looking up articles about Mann on the microfiche (the children of today would be horrified that Google or Wikipedia didn't exist back then!) and reading his works. Ray tells Annie that Mann stopped writing in the '70s and now "writes software for interactive children's videos" (does he mean computer games?). He found a short story Mann published in a magazine in 1962 called "This Is Not a Kite" where the hero of the story is named John Kinsella; Ray's father's name. The last interview he ever gave was in 1973 where he says his dream as a child "was to play at Ebbets Field with Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers." Ray says Mann was "a baseball fanatic" and in order to "ease his pain", he needs to take him to a game at Fenway Park. (Mann lives in Boston.) This time, Annie isn't too sure about this. Building a field on their farm? Totally fine! Traveling to Boston? Big no-no! She doesn't want him to travel all that way because they are having financial problems and he needs to stay at the farm. They have a bit of a dispute and Ray tells her he strongly thinks there's a reason he needs to go and he thinks "something is gonna happen at the game." Annie admits that she had a dream of Ray and Terrance Mann watching a game together at Fenway Park, and what do you know Ray had the exact same dream, so it must be a sign! Ray now has Annie's blessing to go to Boston.

I looked up how long it is from Dyersville, Iowa (that's the actual town where the baseball field is) to Boston and it's a little over 19 hours to drive there without any stops. Too bad Terrance didn't live a little closer, like Chicago or Minneapolis. 

When Ray arrives in Boston, he finds out where Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) lives (surprisingly this reclusive writer wasn't in the phone book!), but when he knocks on his apartment door, Mann isn't too happy to see him and tells him he wants to be left alone after slamming the door in Ray's face. You could say that Mann is a bit of a grumpy old man. Ray tries again and asks him if he can have one minute of his time so Terrance agrees. Ray tells him, "You once wrote, 'There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what's possible.'" Terrance doesn't have time for this and pushes Ray out of his apartment. He notices that when Mann slammed the door, the door didn't quite latch, so he's able to go back inside. He puts one of his hands in his coat pocket and pretend it's a gun. Mann doesn't buy it at all and grabs a crowbar, telling Ray he's going to beat him until he leaves. Ray is able to evade the weapon when he tells Terrance he's a pacifist and the writer stops short of taking a swing at him. 

Ray tells him he has to take him to a baseball game later that evening and that "something is supposed to happen there tonight." When he brings up the interview Terrance gave years ago about him wanting to play baseball, Mann denies ever saying any of those things. Ray tells him if he comes to the game with him, he promises he'll never bother him again. 

Here are two fun facts when they go to watch the game at Fenway Park:

-We find out that two hot dogs and two beers cost $7 in 1988. What a deal! 

-Apparently, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were extras during this scene. Makes sense since they are from Boston. They would have been about fifteen or sixteen at this time. I tried looking for them, but yeah, I did't see them. 

While watching the game, Ray hears the voice again and it has a new message for him: "Go the distance." At first, I was thinking that was the most vague message, but we'll quickly find out what the disembodied voice means when Ray sees a message on the Jumbotron. It says "Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham" and lists some stats about him including that he's from Chisholm, Minnesota and played for the New York Giants in 1922. So I'm guessing that "go the distance" means he's supposed to drive to Chisholm and find this guy. 

He asks Terrance if he heard or saw anything, but Mann doesn't know what he's referring to. Ray tells him that he didn't need to come after all and they can leave now. When he drops him off outside of his apartment, Mann asks Ray if he got another message. Ray doesn't want to take up too much more of his time, so he says the message was "The man's already done enough, leave him alone" and shakes Terrance's hand. As he turns the car around, he has to stop quickly because Terrance is standing right in front of him in the street. He says "Moonlight Graham" and Ray knows that Terrance heard the voice and saw the stats about Graham on the screen. 

Apparently Ray didn't know what "go the distance" meant (gee, I thought it was pretty obvious - the most obvious of all the messages the voice says to him!) so Terrance has to explain to him that they need to find Moonlight Graham in Minnesota. He hops back into the van without even packing first! Dude, you're literally right in front of your apartment! Go upstairs and pack a suitcase! 

They travel 1,539 miles from Boston to Chisholm (which is a little over 200 miles north of Minneapolis; I Google mapped their route). When they reach the small northern town, they try looking up Archibald Graham in the phone book, but can't find anything. They go to the office of the Chisholm Tribune Press where an old lady who's probably been working there for over fifty years recognizes the name as Dr. Graham or "Doc" Graham as he was known. He had given up his baseball career to become a doctor. She has to break the news to the two men that he died in 1972. Terrane wonders what made them travel all this way to try to find a man sixteen years after he died. They interview some old guys at a bar who knew Dr. Graham. One of them tells them he "wore an overcoat, had white hair, and always carried an umbrella." In a few short minutes, we'll see why this scene is here. Though, I have to ask, don't most old people have white hair? We get another little detail that Doc's wife always wore blue and that the shops in town stocked blue hats because they kew he would buy one. Now you know this is a small town if everyone knows that! And just how many blue hats does one woman need? How many hats does one woman need? I looked up the population of Chisholm and 4,711 people lived there in 2022. I imagine it was half that or even lower in 1922! (Although back in the '90s, they were up to over 5,000!) 

Later that evening, Ray goes for a stroll and it appears he has been transported to 1972. He sees posters for Nixon, the movie marquee is promoting The Godfather, "one of this year's ten best" and he sees that the year on a license plate is 1972. I totally forgot about this time travel scene. Probably because it only lasts less then a minute, then it's never really talked about ever again. Out of the mist he sees an older gentleman with - get this - white hair and wearing an overcoat and carrying an umbrella. He is indeed Archibald "Moonlight" "Doc" Graham (Burt Lancaster in his final role) and he invites Ray to his office. 

We learn that he only got to play half an inning, but then left to become a doctor because he "couldn't bear another year in the minors." When Ray asks him what his wish is, he tells him it's to play baseball again, more specifically that he would "have liked to bat in the major leagues." When Ray tells him he can make his wish come true, Doc says he believes him, but that he can't go with him because he can't leave this town and that his dream "will have to stay a wish." 

Later, Ray discusses it with Terrance and the writer thinks they were sent to Chisholm to "find out if one inning can change the world" and if Moonlight had "gotten a hit, he might have stayed in baseball." 

 

Ray calls back his wife who had called earlier and she tells him she talked to the bank and they told her that they had just sold the deed on the farm to Mark and his partners and they're going to foreclose. He tells her he'll be home soon, but first he needs to take Mr. Mann back to Boston. Lucky for him, Terrance tells him he's coming with him. Can you imagine how out of the way that would have been for him if he had to drive him back to Boston? He would have had to drive 1,530 miles east, then almost 1,220 miles back to Iowa. Now, since he's already in Minnesota and Terrance wants to go back with him he only has to travel 422 miles south. (Can you tell I like using Google Maps?) 

While driving to Iowa, Ray tells Terrance that not everybody can see the ballpark, but technically that's not true. They can see the field, they just can't see the players. They come across a young hitchhiker and he's carrying all his belongings all bundled up in a cloth with a pole attached to it. It's almost as though he's from another time! The boy tells them he plays baseball and he's looking for a place to play and that he's "heard that all through the Midwest, they have towns with teams." Ray tells him they're going to a place just like that and he hops in the van. After Ray and Terrance introduce themselves, he says his name is Archie Graham. Ooh! The plot thickens! 

While Archie is napping in the backseat, we get some backstory about Ray's relationship with his father as Terrance asks him about it. He tells him his father never made it as a baseball player, so he tried to get him (Ray) "to make it for him" and Ray ended up despising the game and refused to play when he was 14. That's when he read Mann's book The Boat Rocker. There's a funny moment when Terrance gets all indignant and says "It's not my fault that you wouldn't play catch with your father!" Ray continues, saying he said "something awful" to his father and left home at 17. It is implied he never saw his father again because he wanted to return, but didn't know how, but was able to make it for the funeral. The terrible thing he said to his father was that he could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal. He's referring to Shoeless Joe Jackson and when Terrance tells him he wan't a criminal, Ray replies he said it because he was seventeen. He has deep guilt about it and is sad that his father never got to meet Annie or Karin. 

When they return to the farm, there are now more players out on the field so now they will be able to play real games instead of just practices. It is established right away that Terrance can see the players and he is astonished that Shoeless Joe Jackson is there. Archie is amazed by how many players he recognizes (but I sure don't) - Smokey Joe Wood, Mel Ott, and Gil Hodges are the names he utters. Yeah, the only old-school baseball players I know are Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and thanks to this movie, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Oh, and I've also heard of Lou Gehrig, but mostly because of the disease. 

The young Archie gets his older counterpart's dream of swinging the bat. He misses the first couple of times but after getting some advice from Joe, he smacks the ball and gets a home run....I think....I'm not really a sports person, so I really don't know how baseball works. 

The next day, while Ray is watching a game with his family and Terrance, Mark stops by. He walks right in the middle of the field, nearly getting hit by the ball the pitcher throws. It's funny when the players get really angry at him, but I'm not sure why they just didn't wait until he had passed by them. Also, if the ball had hit him, would he have felt it? Terrance quickly realizes that Mark can't see the players and when Mark sees Ray's got company, he asks "Who is this? Elvis?" He doesn't believe Ray when he tells him it's Terrance Mann and introduces himself as the Easter Bunny. Mark tells Ray that he has a deal to offer that will allow him to stay on the land. Karin interrupts them to tell her dad that they don't have to sell the farm; that people will come to watch the game and will pay for a ticket. I laughed when she says that people will decide to come to Iowa City for a vacation, but they'll think it's "really boring" (yeah, who would go there for vacation? And I can say that because I've been to Iowa many times and have relatives (including my parents) who are from/still live in Iowa), so they'll drive to the farm and pay to watch the games. I had to get out the old Google Maps again....Iowa City is about an hour and a half away from Dyersville. 

Mark isn't listening to her, but Terrance is! This is when we get James Earl Jones' "People will come" speech and he waxes poetic about baseball and how "the one constant through all the years has been baseball." As he's giving his speech, the music starts swelling and he walks out on the field and all the players stop what they're doing, but this time they're more in awe and not irritated like they were with Mark. They slowly walk closer to him. I did laugh when he said, "They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom." That would be another great welcome sign for Iowa:

Welome to Iowa

You've come here for reasons you can't even fathom

Though the heaven line is much more iconic and synonymous with this movie. At one point he says, "Oh...people will definitely come." When he said "oh", he kinda held it for a few seconds and I thought he was going to break into "Oh, beautiful, for spacious skies..." James Earl Jones would appear as an ex-ballplayer (and the owner of Hercules) four years later in The Sandlot and I have no doubt the director/writer hired him for that role because of this movie. 

Mark tells Ray he'll lose everything and will be evicted, but Ray tells him he's not signing anything. Karin ends up falling off the top of the bleachers and hitting her head. This is because Mark had grabbed her after she tells him there are people out on the field and he accuses Ray of turning his daughter into a "space cadet", but when he puts her down, she ends up falling instead. I think it would have made more sense if she had just accidentally fallen. 

Annie starts running back to the house to call for help, but Ray sees young Archie Graham coming forward and he tells his wife to "wait". Please, like any mother would "wait" for some ghost doctor to help their child. But she does and he does. When he steps off the baseball field, he turns into the old man doctor and is able to save the young girl who was unconscious because she had a hot dog lodged in her throat. Mark is able to see him, so did he just see some random old guy materialize right in front of him? He is also now able to see the other ballplayers and asks when they got there. 

Everyone's had enough excitement for one day, so Joe tells Ray that they'll see him tomorrow, then asks, "Do you wanna come with with us?" Ray thinks he is talking to him, but he is asking Terrance who is standing next to Ray. Ray is a bit upset he wasn't the one invited. He says he built this field and asks, "What's in it for me?" Terrance tells him there's a reason they chose him, "just as there was a reason they chose you and this field." He then admits he did give the interview about Ebbets Field, the one that sent Ray to Boston to find him. He says there's something out there and he'll write about it because that's what he does. 

Terrance disappeared into the corn field and before Joe leaves, he says to Ray, "If you build it, he will come" and nods at the catcher who turns out to be John Kinsella, Rays' dad. I think he does actually have a line earlier in the movie (when the group is playing baseball), but nothing is ever given away about him being Ray's dad and since his face is always covered by a mask, Ray has never noticed until now. 

Ray and John introduce each other and I'm not sure if John knows Ray is his son. (Ray just says his first name.) Ray introduces him to Annie and Karin and almost tells Karin he's her grandfather, but instead introduces him as John. Annie says they're going to let the two of them talk and takes Karin back to the house. John asks Ray, "Is this heaven?" and Ray replies, "It's Iowa." John says, "I could have sworn it was heaven" and when Ray asks if there is a heaven, John tells him there is. They say goodnight and as John walks away, Ray calls out, "Hey Dad, you want to have a catch?" and John replies, "I'd like that." Considering that was his reply, he would have to know that Ray is his son or otherwise he'd be like "What did you call me?" 

The movie ends with a long line of cars lined up as far as the eye can see waiting to see the game. They're not even ready for all those people because they only have one set of bleachers! And what about all the food they're going to need?

I've been to the filming location in Dyerville and I just remember the baseball field being smaller than it looks in the movie. People were playing baseball, but I was more interested in the cornfield! 

Tribal Lines

Dances With Wolves

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A.  Grant

Released: November 21, 1990

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (won)

Best Director - Kevin Costner (won)

Best Actor - Kevin Costner (lost to Jeremy Irons for Reversal of Fortune)

Best Supporting Actor - Graham Greene (lost to Joe Pesci for Goodfellas)

Best Supporting Actress - Mary McDonnell (lost to Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost)

Best Art Direction-Set Direction (lost to Dick Tracy)

Best Cinematography (won)

Best Costume Design (lost to Cyrano de Bergerac)
Best Editing (won)
Best Score - John Barry (won)

This is one of my mom's favorite movies, if not her favorite. I don't know what her favorite movie is currently, but at the time of its release, Dances With Wolves was definitely a favorite of hers. In fact, I made her guess what my next film review would be, telling her it was one of her favorite movies. Dances With Wolves was her second guess, after Legends of the Fall, which I didn't even know was one of her favorite movies!

I think my dad bought the VHS (which was on two tapes since it is a three house movie!) for my brother and me to give our mom for Mother's Day or her birthday. And even though, I swear, she was always watching it (though it may have seemed that way to me because it was so long), I had never seen this movie in full, only bits and pieces. My mom claims she had no idea Kevin Costner directed this movie, though I think she probably just forgot because she did admit it's been awhile since she last saw it. She's seen it several times and, as I told her, it says "Directed by Kevin Costner" right smack dab in the middle of the screen during the opening credits. It's kind of hard to miss!

If you remember (and you probably don't because this was eight years ago!), I posted my thoughts on seven Best Picture upsets and Dances With Wolves was one of them, winning over Goodfellas. Even though I prefer Goodfellas, I don't mind it losing to Dances With Wolves (unlike, say, Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain, just to give an example!) because it does feel like an Oscar-winning movie: it's a sweeping epic that's three hours long. It does have that feel of an Academy-Award winning movie. However, and I expressed this in the video, I think it is ludicrous that Kevin Costner won Best Director for his first movie (he's only directed two other movies besides this one: The Postman, which I've never seen, and Open Range, which I remember liking) while Martin Scorsese, well already an established director by then wouldn't win an Oscar for Best Director for another sixteen years! Sometimes the Academy is really stupid.

One of the main reasons my mom loves this movie is because she loves the Native American culture and thinks she would have liked living in a teepee and being part of that community. I don't know how she would have fared, though, because when we went camping when I was a kid, it was only for a weekend! But we would sleep in teepees and ride horses, so we got a little bit of the experience. Of course we didn't kill any buffalo (although they did serve buffalo burgers at the lodge!); we cooked our hot dogs over a campfire. Not exactly like living like a Native American, but close enough.

Dances With Wolves takes place during the Civil War in 1863 and Lieutenant John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) has badly wounded his leg to the point that it needs to be amputated. He would rather die than lose his foot (I would too; the pain would be less severe!) and tries to commit suicide by riding to the front of enemy lines, but is instead hailed a hero because he is able to distract the enemy (who fail to kill him) and the Union soldiers are able to attack successfully. For his act of bravery, he is given a horse named Cisco and transfer to any station he desires. He chooses Fort Hayes because he wants to see the frontier before it disappears. Before he heads out, he is given medical care and is able to keep his foot. I guess whatever they did to it really worked because it doesn't become a problem again for the rest of the movie. He is then transferred to Fort Sedgewich, which is the furthest outpost. It is located in Colorado before Colorado became a state. I always thought this movie took place in South Dakota (before it became a state), but the majority of it was filmed there. I should note that Fort Sedgewich is very close to the Nebraska border so there being no mountains in the movie is not a problem.

Fort Sedgewich is deserted, but he plans to stay anyway. He keeps a journal and whenever we hear voiceover from Kevin Costner, it's Dunbar reading from his journal. Costner's voiceover in this movie is as good as Demi Moores voiceover in Now and Then, which, is to say, absolutely terrible. He sounds like he's reading from a script (yeah, yeah, I know he's supposed to be reading from a journal, but you know what I mean) and I found it very cringe-worthy. Some actors are very natural doing voiceovers and some...are not.

He has his first encounter with Indians when a few from the Sioux tribe try to steal his horse, but always fail. One of them, who is named Wind in His Hair (Rodney A. Grant) comes all the way up to Dunbar on his horse and announces (in the Sioux language Lakota), "Do you see that I an not afraid of you?" Dunbar decides to pay the Sioux camp a visit to sort everything out which I don't think is the best idea. While they are a peaceful people (unlike the Pawnee who are portrayed as savages, killing and scalping anyone they come across who is not one of their own), they do not trust the white man. On his way to the camp, he comes across a white woman with unruly hair dressed in Native American garb who is bleeding profusely from her wrists. At first I didn't know what was going on, but we later learn that her husband was recently killed so maybe she was trying to kill herself? I was also confused why they cast a white woman (Mary McDonnell) to play a Native American, but she is supposed to be white. We also learn later that her (white) name is Christine and her family was killed by the Pawnee, but she managed to run away and was taken in by the Sioux. Being that she is the only woman in this movie (aside from another (authentic) Native American woman, but she is married), it is pretty obvious there's going to be a romance between her and Dunbar. I'm sure there are other women in the tribe, but we never really see any. They end up getting married. The Sioux believe since they are both white, that's why they ended up together, which is probably true, and probably because she is literally only the single woman in a one thousand mile radius!

Dunbar brings the wounded woman to their camp, but he is told to get the hell out of there. Of course he doesn't understand what they're saying, but he definitely understands the tone and body language of Wind in His Hair. Later, there is a powwow between the main Indians and the Chief, Ten Bears, sends a group including Wind in His Hair and Kicking Bird (played by Graham Greene) - he's the one married to the only other visible woman, to go to the white man and see what he wants. They don't believe him to be dangerous because he hasn't tried to kill any of them and did bring back one of their own. We see a couple scenes of the Indians trying to communicate with Dunbar and while humorous at times (the scene where Dunbar shows them how he makes coffee is amusing), it is also frustrating because of the language
barrier. I must say, for someone who has never spoken Lakota in his life, Dunbar sure learns it pretty fast cuz he is speaking it fluently by the end of the movie. Hell, he's speaking it fluently by the middle of the movie! I'm not sure the movie's timeline, but it can't be more than a year.

To help with the communication, they decide to bring Dunbar to their camp and ask Christine, whose Indian name is Stands With a Fist to help. She is reluctant to speak the white language, unsure if she is able to remember how. She was probably five or six when she was taken in by the Sioux and never used English again after learning Lakota. I also wonder if she remembers that her birth name is Christine. The audience only knows it because we get that flashback scene. We never see her tell Dunbar that she was once called Christine. She is able to communicate with Dunbar, but her English is broken and her language is stilted. It would have to be challenging to be a native English speaker, but yet playing someone who is fluent in another language and English is difficult for them. When John introduces himself, Kicking Bird thinks he said "Dumb Bear" when he said Dunbar, ha!

Stands With a Fist obtained her name as a young girl. There was an older girl who would call her names and beat her, but one day Christine knocked her down by punching her in the chin. She stood with her fist out and asked if there was anyone else who dared to call her a bad name. She probably acquired her Indian name not long after she joined the tribe, but what did they call her before that day? Did she tell them her name was Christine? Also, what did they call Indians before they received their names or were they all born with their given names? There is a young kid named Smiles A Lot. Did he get that name because he was always smiling as a baby? What happens on days when he's not having a good day and not smiling at all? Am I asking really stupid questions? Probably. My Indian name would be something like Spends Too Much Money on Coffee or Irritable Redhead in the Mornings. Yes, I realize those are both about four words too long for an Indian name. If you didn't already know, Dances with Wolves is the Indian name that is given to Dunbar. They have seen him with a (relatively harmless) wolf who comes around to his camp and has received the nickname Two Socks because of his white forepaws. Now I'm sure you're thinking the same thing I am: Why is it Dances with Wolves and not Dances with Wolf when there's only one wolf? (Yes, there is a different wolf at the end, but we never see Dunbar interact with it). Maybe Dances with Wolves just sounds better or maybe if you dance with one wolf, you dance with all of them? Again, am I asking stupid questions?

Dunbar establishes a good rapport with the Sioux tribe. Like I mentioned earlier, he starts to learn Lakota and pretty much becomes a fluent speaker. Buffalo seems to be scarce lately and the Sioux needs to find some before they starve. Now as we all remember from what we learned at Natural History Museum Day Camp (well, this is what I learned when I attended, and by the way, it wasn't called that even though that's exactly what it was), the Indians used every part of the buffalo. Not only were they used for food, but their hides were used to make their clothes and teepees, the bones were made into tools or weapons, and so on. In the middle of the night, they hear a herd of buffalo go roaring past them, but when they go to find them in the morning, the soldiers have gotten there first, leaving a field of dead buffalo, only having taken their hides and their tongue. I understood why they took the hides, but why the tongues? Is that a delicacy? We know it is soldiers who did this because there are wagon wheel tracks. This angers the Sioux immensely because not only are the buffalo all useless to them now, but it is a huge sign of disrespect in their culture. To them, the buffalo is a sacred animal that provides them with many of their necessities. This is just one of the many times Dunbar feels ashamed of his fellow white man. In one of the saddest scenes of the movie, we see a lone baby buffalo bleating pitifully. If you are an animal lover, this movie will break your heart because this movie is not very kind to four-legged creatures! This includes the Pawnee tribe killing their dogs when they attack the Sioux camp and Cisco, Dunbar's beloved horse being shot and killed by the soldiers when Dunbar goes back to Fort Sedgewick to gather some things, only to find it being swarmed with soldiers. They also kill the wolf just to show the audience that these guys are real pricks. I didn't understand why the wolf didn't run away when it was being shot at, because it did take a few attempts before it was actually hit. I don't think Two Socks was very bright!

They don't have to wait too long before another herd of buffalo come their way. This is probably the best scene of the movie, if not the most memorable. There were 3500 buffalo used in the scene, all of them real. The only fake buffalos were the animatronic ones they used for the ones who went down after being killed by either a bow and arrow or a rifle, Dunbar's contribution to the tribe. One buffalo charges after the young Smiles A Lot and Dunbar aims his gun to shoot it, finally getting it to go down just before it reachers the youngster. I read to make the buffalo charge, they had his favorite treat waiting for him. Speaking of treats (uh, maybe), the Indians celebrate by eating the liver (ugh!) of one of the buffalos and they let Dunbar have a bite of it.


After Dunbar aka Dances With Wolves is caught by the soldiers, then freed by the Sioux who ambush the soldiers and kill them, he decides staying with them would be too dangerous because he is now a wanted man, so he leaves with his new wife, Stands With a Fist who goes where he goes. In a callback to the earlier scene when Wind in His Hair announces he is not afraid of Dunbar, he now rides his horse atop a cliff and proclaims, "Dances with Wolves! I am Wind in His Hair. Do you see that I am your friend?" The film ends with a silhoute of a wolf howling.  

But Above All This, I Wish You Love

The Bodyguard
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston
Released: November 25, 1992

Oscar nominations:
Best Original Song - "I Have Nothing"
Best Original Song - "Run To You" (lost to "A Whole New World" from Aladdin)

Movie confession time: this was my first (and likely only) time seeing The Bodyguard. However, it was my 300 millionth time hearing Whitney Houston belt out the epic love song, "I Will Always Love You" which is so associated with the chanteuse. So much so that I had no idea that Whitney's version was a cover of a song Dolly Pardon had written and recorded in 1974! 1974! That was 18 years before Whitney's cover was released! I have both versions on my iPod and obviously they're both very different as Whitney, the pop singer, sings it as a power ballad, and Dolly, the country crooner, almost sings it in a melancholy style, as a very sad love song. Whitney's version is much "bigger" (and longer) while Dolly's is more low-key which might explain why the cover version is the more popular of the two.

Let's quickly get one thing straight here: The Bodyguard is not a very good movie. It's pretty bad at times. But it's the kind of movie that's still enjoyable to watch because it's not so bad that it's unwatchable. It's still very watchable and that makes it the good kind of a bad movie.

Kevin Costner plays Frank Farmer, a bodyguard (duh) who used to work for Ronald Reagan and still blames himself for the time Reagan was almost assassinated because he wasn't there that day to protect him...even though Reagan didn't die! (Wasn't this a similar plot point for Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire?) He wants to retire, but he's been asked to be the bodyguard for actress/pop singer Rachel Marron (is it me or is that the most vanilla name ever?) played by Whitney Houston. Whitney playing a pop star? Of course I can buy that. She's playing herself. Whitney playing an actress? Sure, I can see it. Whitney playing a Oscar-nominated actress who (spoiler alert!) wins the Oscar? Laughably absurd. I'm sorry, but in what world would Whitney Houston be considered an Oscar-winning actress? The woman could sing flawlessly (well, at least in her heyday) but she was a mediocre actress at best.

Frank Farmer was hired because he's the best in the (bodyguard) business and because Rachel (unbeknownst to her) has been receiving threatening letters from a creepy stalker that only her manager and sister and now Frank know about. They don't want Rachel to know because they don't want to her to worry. Of course she finds out because the stalker makes his way into her dressing room before she's to perform and she sees a menacing letter addressed to her. She is very concerned, not only for her safety, but for that of her young son. Extreme safety measures are put up around the house and Frank Farmer accompanies Ms. Marron wherever she goes. Since Frank always has to be around, Rachel suggests they go out on a date. After they sleep together, Frank tells her it's too dangerous for them to be together because he can't be distracted from protecting her and she gets really angry at him, but of course true love can't tear them apart.

I thought the love aspect of the film, which is the biggest part and main drawl of the movie, was very lacking. I was expecting to see this amazing chemistry bursting on screen, but there is barely anything. I can tell that they care about each other, but I never got the sense they were passionately in love with each other. I only get that when Whitney/Rachel sings "I Will Always Love You." I would have loved to see more of an epic love story, like Jack and Rose...or Jack and Ennis!

One of the nicest moments between the two of them is when they're at a small bar and dance to the original "I Will Always Love You" which is the reason that is "their" song. Speaking of songs, like I mentioned before, I didn't know at first that "I Will Always Love You" was originally recorded by Dolly Parton, but I also didn't know "I Have Nothing" and "Run To You" were written especially for this movie, so technically they're Rachel Marron songs, not Whitney Houston songs. I found out the truth about "I Will Always Love You" a couple years after it was released. I didn't know about these other songs until I just watched the movie. I'm not very familiar with "Run To You," but I love "I Have Nothing" and have it on my iPod. She gets a hilarious (okay, maybe hilarious isn't the right word, but I found it amusing) note from her stalker that says, "I HAVE Nothing, YOU have everything, bitch!" I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that.

Another song I like that Whitney/Rachel sings is "Queen of the Night" even though it sounds exactly like En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" which came out the same year this movie was released. I don't think that's a coincidence!

At the Oscars, Rachel's big night where she's nominated for (and wins!) an Oscar, she is nearly killed when her stalker shows up and aims at gun at her, but Frank Farmer, the best bodyguard in the history of the world, jumps in front of her and takes a bullet for her. His only injury is an arm in a sling. The whole scene at the Oscars made me think of The Naked Gun 33 1/3 and that whole scene at the Oscars where Frank Drebin is trying to stop a terrorist attack at the ceremony and I realized that movie came out two years after The Bodyguard, so I just realized they spoofed it! I probably would have appreciated it more if I watched The Bodyguard before Naked Gun 3!

Do Frank and Rachel end up together? No. Lame!

The President Who Got Shot

JFK
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner,  Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci
Released: December 20, 1991

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Director - Oliver Stone (lost to Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones (lost to Jack Palance for City Slickers)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar (lost to Ted Tally for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Sound (lost to Termination 2)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Score - John Williams (lost to Alan Menken for Beauty and the Beast)

I've only seen a few Oliver Stone movies. They range from ones I really liked (Platoon) to the God-awful (Alexander - which, by the way, I had to see in the theater because other members of my family wanted to see it and my choice for seeing National Treasure was overruled). I would say his heyday for great movie-making was the late '80s/early '90s which JFK falls nicely into. 

I watched the special edition of the DVD which is about three hours and twenty minutes, so I treated it like a miniseries and watched it over a span of about three or four days. Whether or not you believe there's a huge conspiracy behind the assassination of the 35th President of the United States (which the entire movie is based around), you can't deny this is a fascinating film. 

First of all, the star power is pretty amazing. I already listed the actors with the most screen time, but the film also includes Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Kevin Bacon, John Larroquette, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, Laurie Metcalf, and Wayne Knight. 

The film begins with a little montage of Kennedy's life in office and soon begins after his death on November 22, 1963 in Dallas and goes all the way to 1969. It's based on a book written by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Costner) who becomes obsessed with proving that there was a huge cover-up behind Kennedy's death. He becomes so obsessed that he ignores death threats and puts his family second to the case - he reminded me of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac and how he was obsessed with finding the identify of the killer. 

The movie does make a pretty good case of there being a conspiracy linked to JFK's death, but then again, it's what the movie/Stone wants you to think. Garrison and his team interview witnesses who saw Kennedy's assassination first hand and their recounts don't match up with what's documented by the government/police; the doctor who performed JFK's autopsy testifies that government officials kept a close eye on him as he looked at the body and wasn't allowed to examine the gunshot wound; one of Kennedy's bodyguards tells Garrison he just happened to be sent to an assignment in Antarctica when the assassination occurred and that security was very lax (even if Kennedy had never been killed, I cannot ever imagine the POTUS being allowed to ride in a frickin' convertible - that just seems really stupid); it's determined that there's no way Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Oldman) could have shot Kennedy from the angle of the window he was supposedly at and there must have been two other assassins involved as well.

The CIA, FBI, Mafia, Secret Service, and even Vice-President Lyndon Johnson are all considered to be part of the cover-up. They wanted Kennedy dead because of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs and he wanted to pull troops from the Vietnam War. They also weren't happy with the changes he had in store for America. I guess Kennedy was a little too ahead of his time back then as the sixties weren't the most noble times for the U.S. Garrison also thinks they had something to do with the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. 

There's some gruesome footage of Kennedy's murder shown at a trial. For some reason, Stone feels the need to show a clip of part of Kennedy's head being blown off not once, but about six times. Yeah, didn't need to see that, Ollie. Luckily it's not a close-up, but you can still tell it's very graphic. He also shows a close-up photo of the deceased Kennedy presumably taken during his autopsy. It's very jarring because his eyes are open. Ever heard the term "dead eyes"? Yeah, it's ever creepier when the person in question is actually, you know, dead.

I was flipping through an almanac from 2000 and it has the Kennedy assassination listed as number 6 of the top 100 news stories of the century. Honestly, I think that's kinda low - I would rank it as at least one of the top three! 

If you're fascinated by history, have three plus hours to kill, and even have an inkling that there was some shady business involved with Kennedy's murder, then give JFK a whirl.