Bull Durham
Bull Durham is a 1988 American romantic comedy sports film written and directed by Ron Shelton. The film stars Kevin Costner as "Crash" Davis, a veteran catcher from the AAA Richmond Braves, brought in to teach rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh about the game in preparation for reaching the major leagues. Baseball groupie Annie Savoy romances Nuke, but finds herself increasingly attracted to Crash. Also featured are Robert Wuhl and Trey Wilson, as well as "The Clown Prince of Baseball", Max Patkin. The film is partly based upon Shelton's experience in minor league baseball, and depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor-league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina.
Bull Durham was a commercial success, grossing over $50 million in North America, well above its estimated budget, and was a critical success as well. Sports Illustrated ranked it the #1 Greatest Sports Movie of all time. The Moving Arts Film Journal ranked it #3 on its list of the 25 Greatest Sports Movies of All-Time. In addition, the film is ranked #55 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies." It is also ranked #97 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Laughs" list, and #1 on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 53 best-reviewed sports movies.
Plot
The Durham Bulls, a single-A minor league baseball team, are dealing with another sparsely attended losing season, with one thing working for them: Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, a hotshot rookie pitcher known for having a "million dollar arm, but a five cent head," who has potential to become a major league talent. "Crash" Davis, a 12-year veteran in the minor leagues, is sent down from Triple-A as the team's catcher to teach LaLoosh to control his haphazard pitching. Crash immediately begins calling Ebby by the degrading nickname "Meat", and they get off to a rocky start.Thrown into the mix is Annie, a "baseball groupie" and lifelong spiritual seeker who has latched onto the "Church of Baseball" and has, every year, chosen one player on the Bulls to be her lover and student. Annie flirts with both Crash and Ebby and invites them to her house, but Crash walks out, saying he's too much of a veteran to "try out" for anything. But before he leaves, Crash sparks Annie's interest with a memorable speech listing the things he "believes in", ending with, "I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days... Good night".
Despite some animosity between them, Annie and Crash work, in their own ways, to shape Ebby into a big-league pitcher. Annie plays mild bondage games, reads poetry to him, gets him to try different mental approaches to pitching, and gives him the nickname "Nuke", after Annie compares his overeagerness to a "nuclear meltdown."
Crash forces Nuke to learn "not to think" by letting the catcher make the pitching calls. After Nuke shakes off his signs, Crash twice tells the batters what pitch is coming, leading to both players hitting home runs; he also lectures Nuke about the pressure of facing major league hitters who can hit his "heat". Crash talks about life in the major leagues, which he lived for "the 21 greatest days of my life" and to which he has tried for years to return. Meanwhile, as Nuke matures, the relationship between Annie and Crash grows, until it becomes obvious that the two of them are a more appropriate match.
After a rough start, Nuke becomes a dominant pitcher by mid-season, adding to the Bulls' good fortunes; in the end, he is called up to the major leagues. This incites jealous anger in Crash, who is frustrated by Nuke's failure to value the rare talent he has. Nuke leaves, Annie ends their relationship, and Crash overcomes his jealousy enough to leave Nuke with some final words of advice.
The Bulls, now having no use for Nuke's mentor, call up a younger catcher and release Crash. Crash presents himself at Annie's house and the two consummate their attraction with a weekend-long lovemaking session. Crash then leaves Annie's house to seek a further minor-league position.
Nuke is seen one last time, being interviewed by the press as a major leaguer, reciting the clichéd answers that Crash had taught him earlier. Crash joins another team, the Asheville Tourists, and breaks the minor-league record for career home runs. He then retires as a player and returns to Durham, where Annie tells him she's ready to give up her annual affairs with "boys." Crash tells her that he is thinking about becoming a manager for a minor-league team in Visalia. The film ends with Annie and Crash dancing in Annie's candle-lit living room.
Cast
Background
The film's name is based on the nickname for Durham, North Carolina, since 1874, when W. T. Blackwell and Company named its product "Bull" Durham tobacco, which soon became a well-known trademark. In 1898, James B. Duke purchased the company and renamed it the American Tobacco Company. By this time, the nickname "Bull City" had already stuck.The film's writer and director, Ron Shelton, played minor league baseball for five years after graduating from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Initially playing second base for the Baltimore Orioles' farm system, he moved from the Appalachian League to California and then Texas before finally playing AAA baseball for the Rochester Red Wings in the International League. Shelton quit when he realized he would never become a major league player. "I was 25. In baseball, you feel 60 if you're not in the big leagues. I didn't want to become a Crash Davis", he said.
He returned to school and earned a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture at the University of Arizona before moving to Los Angeles to join the city's art scene. However, he felt more kinship in telling stories than in creating performance art. His break into filmmaking came with scriptwriting credits on the films Under Fire and The Best of Times.
According to Justin Turner, the bull in right field that was hit for a home run in the film is actually in left field at Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
Production
According to Shelton, "I wrote a very early script about minor league baseball; the only thing it had in common with Bull Durham was that it was about a pitcher and a catcher." That script was titled The Player To Be Named Later; a single anecdote from that script made it into Bull Durham. For Bull Durham, Shelton "decided to see if a woman could tell the story" and "dictated that opening monologue on a little micro-recorder while I was driving around North Carolina." Crash was named after Lawrence "Crash" Davis but was modeled after Pike Bishop, the lead character William Holden played in The Wild Bunch: a guy who "loved something more than it loved him." Annie Savoy's name was a combination of the nickname that baseball players gave their groupies and the name of a bar; she was a "High Priestess could lead us into a man's world, and shine a light on it. And she would be very sensual, and sexual, yet she'd live by her own rigorous moral code. It seemed like a character we hadn't seen before." After Shelton returned to Los Angeles from his road trip, he wrote the script for Bull Durham in "about twelve weeks."Filming began on October 5, 1987, and wrapped on November 30, 1987, after 56 days of filming. When Shelton pitched Bull Durham, he had a hard time convincing a studio to give him the opportunity to direct. Baseball movies were not considered a viable commercial prospect at the time and every studio passed except for Orion Pictures who gave him a $9 million budget, an eight-week shooting schedule, and creative freedom. Shelton scouted locations throughout the southern United States before settling on Durham in North Carolina because of its old ballpark and its location, "among abandoned tobacco warehouses and on the edge of an abandoned downtown and in the middle of a residential neighborhood where people could walk". According to NO BULL: The Real Story of the Rebirth of a Team and a City by Ron Morris, Shelton decided because the city was "run down with vacated tobacco warehouses and boarded up downtown storefronts" it made a "down-and-out, minor-league town that represented his story well." The Imperial Tobacco Warehouse, which is currently owned and has been renovated by Measurement Incorporated, was used as a filming location. The Queen Anne style James Manning House, built in 1880, was used for Annie Savoy's romantic encounters.
Shelton cast Costner because of the actor's natural athleticism. Costner was a former high school baseball player and was able to hit two home runs while the cameras were rolling and, according to Shelton, insisted "on throwing runners out even when they weren't rolling". He cast Robbins over the strong objections of the studio, who wanted Anthony Michael Hall instead. Shelton had to threaten to quit before the studio backed off.
Producer Thom Mount hired Pete Bock, a former semi-pro baseball player, as a consultant on the film. Bock recruited more than a dozen minor-league players, ran a tryout camp to recruit an additional 40 to 50 players from lesser ranks, hired several minor-league umpires, and conducted two-a-day workouts and practice games with Tim Robbins pitching and Kevin Costner catching. Bock made sure the actors looked and acted like ballplayers and that the real players acted convincingly in front of the cameras. He said, "The director would say, 'This is the shot we want. What we need is the left fielder throwing a one-hopper to the plate. Then we need a good collision at the plate.' I would select the players I know could do the job, and then we would go out and get it done."