Sometimes It Rains

Things change, as they always do, but even when this happens it can be impossible to feel like you’re really moving forward. BULL DURHAM opened on June 16, 1988, the same week as Walter Hill’s Schwarzenegger-Belushi team-up RED HEAT and the John Hughes-produced Aykroyd-Candy comedy THE GREAT OUTDOORS. Two films which were determined to be the ’80s formula they were always meant to be (I’ve gone into my semi-positive feelings about RED HEAT before; THE GREAT OUTDOORS is one of the weakest of the Hughes run) and another that is still very special all these years later, a film about the summer meant to be seen in the summer and how all those things in the summer which can feel like diversions become a part of us. And here I am right now writing about it in the fall so maybe I’m not fully ready for summer to go away just yet. To say that BULL DURHAM is for baseball what SLAP SHOT was for hockey isn’t totally wrong but really isn’t right either. Both films know that it’s not the big game at the end which becomes the true climax in our lives, but BULL DURHAM is more about the characters than the greater issue of what’s going on all around them. Whatever the minor leagues were really like back in the late ‘80s (I think I’ve been to exactly one minor league game in my entire life), the film seems like it was meant to be slightly out of time anyway, like the 1959 Volvo that Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy drives or maybe the much cooler ‘68 Mustang driven by Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis. They’re the ones who are really at home in Durham, a place where it seems like the present day still hasn’t quite arrived, more than Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh will ever be since he not only drives a Porsche, of course he brags about it too. In the world of BULL DURHAM, the future is going to happen elsewhere. The town in the movie feels like nothing much was ever going to change there but chances are some things have by now. The real team got a new ballpark in 1995, for one thing, and since 1998 they’ve been a Triple-A club which at least sounds like moving up in the world. But none of this has to do with BULL DURHAM. It’s a film about two people who suddenly discover that the thing they love isn’t treating them the way they want and the possibility of moving forward suddenly becomes real. This is all mixed up with a third person in there between them who in some ways keeps them apart but also serves as their child they need to send out into the world before realizing how much they were always meant to be together. When that happens, all the other stuff can simply fall away. And there’s baseball too. Baseball does matter.

Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) is a baseball groupie living in Durham, North Carolina and a fan of the local minor league team, the Durham Bulls, with a tendency to mentor a young player in her own special way each season. As the new season begins, the big new prospect appears to be Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a pitcher with a very promising arm but not much of a head. This is complicated by the arrival in town of Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a catcher who has been sent down to A Ball with the express purpose of helping to shepherd the pitcher and get him prepared for the majors. Crash turns down the chance for a season with Annie and she takes on Ebby instead, giving him the nickname of ‘Nuke’ but the interest Crash and her each have in each other is still obvious. As the season progresses and Ebby is slow to be willing to learn from Crash while being taught by Annie in her own special way, they finally start to get through to him. But as the team improves and he finally begins to listen to what Crash’s lessons, Annie’s frustration with the situation grows but eventually both of them are going to have to face what will happen when Nuke gets so good he gets called up and the team has no use for Crash anymore.

It’s a strange time right now. Some things are good. Some are wonderful. Some are stressful and continue to be. In some ways, my life has a clarity it has never had before but so much still feels up in the air. I still love films. But sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this. Maybe it’s because I haven’t come up with a good reason not to. It would be wrong to say that writing about films is the one thing I’m good at doing but when I see Crash Davis walking the streets of Durham late at night by himself, I understand. He’s a good ballplayer, nobody denies this, but maybe he just never had that very special extra something out on the field to allow him to get to the majors and stay there. He just doesn’t know what else to do. All he has for certain are the things he believes in, his knowledge of what it takes to win and a talent at hitting the ball which no one else knows about, at least until Annie looks up a few stats. She’s probably the only one who ever did. Crash should have known what that meant right away.

Thinking about all this is a reminder that right now at this moment in time the very idea of watching BULL DURHAM feels like total relaxation. The directorial debut of screenwriter Ron Shelton, it’s a movie about two people who look at each other and just know, with a rhythm and sensibility all its own, a calm approach to the characters and every joke which fits perfectly. The two leads each have a philosophy in how they approach their lives and they come at each other like a car crash. Nuke, the younger man in between them, has no philosophy and barely knows anything at all beyond the natural talent of his arm and even that needs plenty of discipline. Annie Savoy believes in the Church of Baseball, as she says right at the start, which she found after looking seemingly everywhere else. Me, I found the Church of Cinema long ago and the film comes to mind when I think of it this way. The Road of Excess leads to the palace of wisdom, as Annie defensively says at one point, and there are days where that excess is all about watching as many films as possible. And if that doesn’t lead to the palace of wisdom, I don’t know what does. That’s the way my brain works. In the eyes of the film, the ultimate goal of all the wisdom that comes from what you believe in is to set it aside and just sit there for a few moments in silence with the one you love, nothing else mattering for a few moments. That sounds like peace. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it’s a film about baseball, but it’s a film about other things too. It’s been a long time since I read up on my baseball history. It’s not something I do anymore. I was just a kid when I visited Cooperstown, back in those days when I read about baseball as much as humanly possible. This was before I really discovered films and things changed. But I remember enough to know how much that history matters, to know what the meaning of a certain photo of Babe Ruth during the opening credits is. And BULL DURHAM isn’t a movie about being a kid. The baseball angle matters, but it’s about people who love it and it never went away for them, who love all that history, who want to be a part of it and who don’t want to be a part of anything else. They’re trapped in it all too.

Of course, along with baseball you could say it’s a film about sex and the delayed satisfaction of it as well. Either way, BULL DURHAM is a romantic comedy about people putting things off because of what they love, with a literary style to both the dialogue as well as the very nature found in each character which makes it continually rich and layered. Annie paints herself as a literary figure already, the heroine of her own story and each page of her life is what she decides it is, living as a groupie in this town where she’s the big fish in the small pond and no one can tell her otherwise, every movement she makes showing how much she’s in charge of a situation. Sarandon uses every inch of her body to become this character, along with a narration spoken by her which is like music in how it feels like a perfect fusion of her voice and all those wonderful words. You believe in her sense of control that comes out of reading poetry to the man tied up in front of her, the way she gets Nuke to discover his own sense of control by wearing those garters on the mound and breathing through his eyelids as she insists he must. And when Annie loses some of that power over things she has no idea what to do, things have been thrown off the axis of what she’s in charge of for the first time ever. The film makes it clear how much Crash and Annie want each other but it’s just as clear what’s going to get in the way, so clear that we know exactly what he really writes on that note to her in the dugout without seeing a closeup. And when they come together it really matters. Their attraction for each other becomes one more reminder of how much they’ve been spending too much time putting off what they need to do.

Crash Davis has been to the majors, “the show” as everyone in this world calls it, even if it was just for a brief time and now can’t believe that he’s back in A Ball, ready to quit but he knows he’s not going to do that, not yet anyway. And whatever he’s thinking about when he’s wandering the streets of those small towns by himself at night, he keeps it to himself. Crash carries an air of not caring but also caring too much and fighting that bitterness inside himself, still thinking about the best 21 days of his life. That inner turmoil is always there and he’s too old to pretend he’s anything he’s not, laying out his beliefs in that famous long speech to Annie, whether the small of a woman’s back, good Scotch or those slow kisses he could maybe have one day with Annie if things work out. The film holds on his face at certain times during his frustrations and his victories so just the sight of Crash in his rooming house where he’s ironing while drinking Scotch remains one of the best little Costner moments ever. It lets us get inside Crash’s head when he’s up at bat which lays out all his annoyances and his frustrations at trying to get Nuke to listen to him, telling hitters up at bat what’s coming when he won’t. If someone has achieved something real in this game, even if no one knows about it, they have Crash’s respect. When Nuke comes looking to give him the big news, Crash makes sure to tell him how tenuous it all is, how one more hit a week can get you where you want to be. Crash got close enough to taste it and he knows. He played as good as he ever did and it didn’t matter. When it’s all over and he’s told, “You know how it is,” that’s all there is to say.

This is only one example of how good Ron Shelton is with the dialogue he writes, finding the beats that bring out the humor but also done in a way that knows who the characters are which is what matters. The portrayal of the Bulls and everything around the team is all part of that ramshackle feel, the way it gives us moments between the players and all their insecurities, pausing to let Crash give the team a rainout while on the road through his own means. It’s not quite SLAP SHOT in its portrayal of the sport and the town around them never matters as much, just that the place feels a little empty and run down, maybe even forgotten by the rest of the world. The film is really interested in things like the scene at the mound where the players gather to talk about anything imaginable except for the game they’re playing with the comedy of the moment exactly what this film is supposed to be and it plays as totally natural. It’s those little moments, sometimes with a joke and sometimes not, which is more important than the plot which barely seems to matter at points. At one point the Bulls are losing. Later they’re winning. That’s about it. Figuring out what to get Millie and Jimmy for their wedding matters a lot more.

Still, it should be said that there is a plot in there and Shelton knows how to keep those beats moving, but even though a few montages jump things forward it’s mostly in no rush whatsoever. And it feels like that’s the way it should be. Crash and Annie are attracted to each other instantly like a couple right out of a Howard Hawks film as insistent as he is when saying he doesn’t dance, but the movie keeps them apart until there’s nothing that can keep them apart anymore. It’s about two people who want to fuck but can’t, mainly because of the barriers they put up in front of themselves. And it wisely keeps them apart for long stretches so we’re almost dying to see Annie and Crash end up together and when they are in the same frame it crackles, sizing each other up in the batting cage or the unforgettable moment of the two of them shouting “William Blake!” at each other during their most heated argument until they have no idea what they’re even fighting about. Because of this, when they come together it really feels like any reasons there were for keeping apart have been washed away and the moment is genuinely powerful. But until then, it’s about each person trying to teach Nuke in their own ways, with the pitcher caught between them and only confused until they get through to him. When Nuke finally accepts that Crash really does know a thing or two about all this, it’s done in a small way but even that matters. All through it, the blocking in scenes always shows relate to each other, which one has the upper hand, and Ron Shelton’s direction is casual but he knows the way to make a shot matter whether the intimacy of two people in a scene or the way it photographs baseball games with the camera right in there with the player it’s focusing on. The chemistry between the two leads pays off beautifully when they come together, the sex scenes worth the wait with one brief interlude when they’re talking about reincarnation while on a break that feels so natural. And there’s the last scene in the rain which is the right sort of payoff to everything.

Maybe BULL DURHAM is minor in the end, which is fitting since it’s set in the minor leagues after all, a film about people who could have gotten together much sooner if they weren’t being so stubborn about the whole thing. But they needed to learn that. And there are few things in all of cinema as purely sexy as that shot which pans from Sarandon in ecstasy with her hands tied to the bed down to Costner painting her toenails. Everything about BULL DURHAM feels just right. Somehow TIN CUP, Ron Shelton’s 1996 golf movie where he reteamed with his male star, is even more laid back, if that’s possible, and has its pleasures even if it’s not quite the same. Revisiting BULL DURHAM is so relaxing, so enriching and rewarding, no matter how many times you’ve seen it already, but what can be found is more than that. In your heart you might care more than anyone else does, love it more than anyone. No one else knows this. But that doesn’t matter. Some things you can’t control. Some things you can. Focus on that. Remember what you love. Play the game if you can. Have some fun. Find that woman. Dance.

It’s not Susan Sarandon who’s top-billed but she’s the one with the best role and it really is her movie in the end, she’s the one who narrates it and she alone is the one who makes it feel unlike anything else. There’s a lot to say about Susan Sarandon. None of that matters here. Her performance as Annie Savoy is one of the best of the entire decade of the ‘80s along with being one of her best ever and every moment is unforgettable and her very being is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen, with a sensuality and comic timing that it feels like no one else could have equaled. Kevin Costner matches up with her perfectly and every gesture he makes feels real, his being as a guy who knows how good he is, how smart he is, but it was never enough and he dreams of the day when it might be so when he lays in to his younger protege about all the things he’s doing wrong it feels effortless. Caught between them, Tim Robbins plays Nuke as a guy who knows that if he tries just hard enough, he might actually be able to have a thought and he sells his small amount of maturing just enough that you believe it demonstrated in how calm he seems in his last moment showing what he’s learned. Jenny Robertson as Annie’s friend Millie, who says just about every line that she has different than what you would expect but the film’s real secret weapons are both Trey Wilson as manager and Robert Wuhl as coach who has so many good line readings that it would take too long to list them. Anyway, lollygaggers.

But back to baseball movies, a tradition which BULL DURHAM is a part of and it’s the only one that comes to mind which features a shrine to Thurman Munson as the end credits roll. Thinking back to a few others for a moment, everyone in the world seems to love THE NATURAL but even though it’s got the famous imagery and score, to me it’s kind of a snooze. Please don’t throw stuff. MAJOR LEAGUE, unlike BULL DURHAM, is the one that really wants to be SLAP SHOT only from a much slicker, not to mention capitalistic, vantage point and it all rings hollow to me. Kevin Costner did a couple of others, of course. FIELD OF DREAMS is kind of its own thing which sets it apart from other baseball movies and it’s one which I have such a personal reaction to that I don’t even want to go into it right now. It’s that kind of film, as you surely know. FOR LOVE OF THE GAME, which I’ve written about before, probably needed a script polish and different female lead but has always been underrated. And it’s hard for me to not love THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, of course. Leaving that one aside, I would say that THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original) and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN are the two baseball films that definitively rank up there with BULL DURHAM which leads me to the harebrained theory that the best baseball films are the ones that don’t involve the major leagues at all. And BULL DURHAM is the only one of these three that doesn’t involve any sort of climactic game, one of a number of things that sets it apart from all the others. BULL DURHAM is also part of a run of great titles that came from Orion Pictures with their other summer ’88 comedy being Jonathan Demme’s MARRIED TO THE MOB, also featuring Trey Wilson who maybe gets the biggest laugh in that film. This is a reminder that the ‘80s weren’t so bad, not always. BULL DURHAM is a film about baseball but it’s also about finding a way to enrich your life beyond what you ever expected, helping you forget about those things keeping you down and helping you to move on to what your world should turn into. Maybe you can do it with a very special person too. Because no matter what, summer ends. It does every year. Life has to begin.