Movies - Field of Dreams

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Field of Dreams

	Movies - Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams (1989) is a movie about a man who becomes convinced that he's supposed to construct a baseball diamond in his corn field. It stars Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffmann, Ray Liotta, Timothy Busfield, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Whaley.

The movie was directed and adapted by Phil Alden Robinson from the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

The character played by Burt Lancaster and Frank Whaley, Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, was a real baseball player. The background of the character is based on his true life, with a few factual liberties taken for artistic reasons.

The character played by James Earl Jones, the fictional author Terence Mann, is based on the author J. D. Salinger in the original novel. In 1947, the real Salinger wrote a story called A Young Girl In 1941 With No Waist At All, featuring a character named Ray Kinsella.

The baseball field built for the film has become an attraction with the same name.

Synopsis

Field of Dreams is a movie about a man who through an apparently supernatural revelation feels compelled to construct a baseball diamond on his farmland, regardless of the financial consequences of so doing. Throughout the movie, this man, protagonist Ray Kinsella, struggles to understand the purpose of his aforementioned action. Strangely enough, famous ball players of yesteryear (i.e. dead) soon begin to show up to Ray's field for scrimages and practice shortly thereafter (none so noteworthy as the great Shoeless Joe Jackson). Perhaps even more strange, only Ray and his family seem to have the ability to observe this magical celebration of an earlier time and simpler way of life.

Having uprooted his crop for the field, Ray finds himself facing ridicule and foreclosure from the bank. Yet he holds tight to his mission, all the while doubting its purpose and reflecting on the turbulent way in which he cut off his father in his early adulthood.

Indeed, Kinsella's pain is ultimately "eased" when he realizes this magical field has a power to not only bring back other heroes from his past, but will pose a far more important mission that he must see through, which may well bring peace and finality to his painfully nostalgic memories.

Trivia

The original working title of the movie was the same as the book, Shoeless Joe, before it was renamed by the producers. Author W.P. Kinsella later reported that his original working title for the novel itself was Dream Field.
During the filming, in the summer of 1988, the midwest was stricken with a severe drought. Water was brought in to irrigate the cornfield and make it look good for the movie. The act of plowing the healthy corn under, to build the ballfield, was met with real-life bewilderment by area farmers whose crops were suffering from the rainless summer.
Because of that drought, the infield grass on the baseball field died and turned brown, and had to be painted green.
In the scene where Shoeless Joe Jackson talks to Costner's character about heaven, fog is seen creeping out of the corn field and across the diamond. This was not a special effect — the fog had actually come in at the time.
The frequently-asked question, "Is this Heaven?" became a bumper-sticker slogan for Iowa for some years thereafter.
The real Joe Jackson was a rural southerner, while Ray Liotta spoke with a northern city accent. Liotta also batted right-handed and threw left-handed, while Jackson batted left-handed and threw right-handed. These were known facts to the producers, who decided not to do as was done in The Pride of the Yankees
, wherein Gary Cooper
was filmed batting right-handed and then the film was flipped to simulate the left-handed Lou Gehrig.
In a unique trivia record of some kind, this was the second consecutive year that Kevin Costner had played a baseball-oriented character with a love interest named Annie. In 1988 he had starred with Susan Sarandon
and Tim Robbins
in Bull Durham
.
The diamond's outfield was much smaller than a regulation ballfield would have been. For filming purposes, the corn lining the outfield needed to be closer to the cameras than normal major league dimensions would allow.
The "Clean Shaven Umpire" listed in the closing credits was played by a member of the production team who normally sported facial hair. He has one speaking line in the film. After batter Archie Graham asks "how 'bout a warning?" referring to the pitcher throwing beanballs, the umpire says, "Sure...", looks at the pitcher briefly, then turns to Archie and says, "...Watch out you don't get killed!"
Among the thousands of extras in the Fenway Park scenes were a then-unknown Matt Damon
and Ben Affleck
.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Field of Dreams ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Field of Dreams; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - Field of Dreams

Synopsis

Trivia

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay