RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
As I said in my original I lived in Canada when this was released and have no idea how it went down in Oz. But great to hear on Margret and David's 2nd last show and last screening of a Classic movie Margret showed bits of Bull Durham. Even David was a big fan.
http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s4127995.htm
My final classic for At The Movies is one of the sexiest films ever made. It's BULL DURHAM, written and directed in 1988 by Ron Shelton.
It's sometimes described as the greatest movie about sport and I think that combination of sport and sex and romance is just about perfectly balanced.
It's a film about baseball and I have to admit that some of the jargon in the film eludes me but it doesn't matter because its message is clear.
The writer and director of the film, Ron Shelton, was a minor league baseball player in his youth and gave it up because he knew he'd never make the big time, never be invited into the 'show'.
Instead he got a degree in visual arts and went to Hollywood where he began as a screenwriter. In that old adage, write about what you know and love, he wrote the screenplay for Bull Durham which no studio was particularly interested in but Orion Pictures gave him $9 million to make this, his debut film as director.
He took an unusual approach in making the narrator a woman, in this case Annie, (SUSAN SARANDON) whose religion is baseball and who, each year, selects one new member of the Durham Bulls to bed and educate.
......
MARGARET: David?
DAVID: Well, when this film came out in 1988, I thought I really am not going to be very interested in a film about baseball.
MARGARET: I thought that.
DAVID: But, of course, it turned out to be about much more than that and it is so well written and so well acted and, of course, it's a very, very enjoyable film. I loved Ron Shelton at the time saying that his intention was to make a film about a grown man who earns a precarious living playing a kids' game. I also loved his description of the character of Annie being romantic and a little old fashioned, a bit like baseball.
