BULL DURHAM (Ron Shelton, 1988) R

Reviewed: April 14th, 2002

The Ron Shelton Three Paragraph Introduction__________

God bless Ron Shelton. I love movies but I don't love sports. Thankfully Ron Shelton loves both.

Shelton's films are gifts to movie fans who aren't interested in sports and (I would imagine) sports fans who aren't interested in movies. He is the man who wrote and directed films such as White Men Can't Jump, Tin Cup and Bull Durham. Better than anyone else, Shelton understands how sports must be translated to film. Each of Shelton's best films might be described as romantic comedies because they are definitely both sexy and funny, but to do so would be unfair. Ron Shelton has very little interest in the conventions of romantic comedy. His films elevate and transcend the genre. Tin Cup is a masterpiece on any terms (it is one of my very favorite films of all time). White Men Can't Jump works as an edgy comment on race relations as well as anything else. And Bull Durham is sometimes as moving as a great drama.

All of which speaks to this point: What especially places Shelton's work above most of the rest of the pack is their sense of sadness and the way that lends itself to their sense of realism. Sometimes this sadness is just below the surface, sometimes just above it. Using sports as the catalyst, Shelton often makes films about men who've abandoned their dreams (tragically, the line often blurs between abandonment and just never quite able to achieve these dreams). Viz. Bull Durham, the dream element might be interpreted as somewhat autobiographical since Shelton played five seasons of Triple-A, minor league baseball but never made it to the majors. I can only hope Shelton doesn't see his filmmaking career as a compromising of his ambitions. I believe making movies has always been his calling, even if he doesn't actually prefer it to playing sports.

What is possibly most interesting about Shelton is how much his films reveal about masculinity... how sports factor into the male mystique... and how male-female relations play into this.

Which brings me to Bull Durham, the 1988 movie which turned Kevin Costner: the actor into Kevin Costner: the movie star.

The Kevin Costner Five Paragraph Tangent__________

I love Kevin Costner the actor, I really do. Kevin Costner the actor has given me wonderful performances in movies like The Untouchables, Field of Dreams, JFK, A Perfect World, Tin Cup and Bull Durham. But since 1988, Kevin Costner the movie star has launched a dastardly campaign to destroy Kevin Costner the actor. For a long time after Bull Durham, Costner the human seemed to be able to keep both sides of his Hollywood being in a kind of symbiotic relationship. But since Tin Cup--for the past five years, that is--Kevin Costner the movie star has finally overpowered Kevin Costner the actor, beating him senseless, readying to deliver the final death blow. Thus we see Costner's name on the marquee of theaters playing insufferable garbage like The Postman, Message in a Bottle, For Love of the Game, Thirteen Days, 3000 Miles to Graceland and the recent Dragonfly.

Many people think Kevin Costner the movie star's climb to power is the Academy's fault, positing it began with Costner winning best director for his helming of Dances With Wolves. Their reasoning is that Costner let the acclaim go to his head, that it made him decide his talent behind the camera is just as strong as his talent in front of it and thereafter he would only work with weak directors whom he can boss around and impose his personal vision upon (and we all know that despite the fact moviemaking is of course a collaboration, the best movies are made with one singular vision at their cores). This theory, however, is incorrect. One only needs to take a quick glance at Costner's filmography to discover that after Dances with Wolves he worked with very strong directors such as Oliver Stone, Lawrence Kasdan and Ron Shelton.

Another theory people have is that the infamous Waterworld all but assured Kevin Costner the movie star's victory. Their thinking is that Waterworld (one of the most troubled shoots in film history, its budget allegedly rose to around 200 million; prior to Titanic it was the most expensive film ever produced)--which was constantly predicted to be a colossal disaster only to eventually turn a profit--convinced Costner he was invincible. I cannot fully subscribe to this theory either though, since Tin Cup came after Waterworld.

No, instead I place the blame on Costner's directorial follow-up to Dances With Wolves, The Postman. I need not insult this film and beat a dead horse. Everyone with any sense in their head knows exactly what The Postman is (but did you know Costner freakin' sings over the closing credits?!). It was a huge, expensive disaster which flopped miserably. Now, while I do think that both Dances with Wolves and Waterworld are what inspired Costner to have the audacity to make The Postman in the first place (and so for that, I blame those two films), I also maintain, by and large, it is The Postman itself that punched Kevin Costner the actor in the skull. While Kevin Costner the actor's on life support, Kevin Costner the movie star's in charge. He tells Costner the human being to make big, bad movies that will deliver fat paychecks. Usually, indeed, they are made by directors with no presence behind the camera (one exception being Sam Raimi making the terrible For Love of the Game -- I don't know what the fuck happened there).

The only way to get Kevin Costner the actor off life support is for an enormously talented filmmaker to revive him. This filmmaker needs to pick Costner the actor up out of his hospital bed, slap him awake, and quite literally force him to appear in his/her new film. Such an occurrence would go a long way towards turning a reversal that could leave Kevin Costner the movie star still satisfied, but Kevin Costner the actor truly victorious.

But time is running out. One more Dragonfly and I fear it may be too late...

Bull Durham__________

Bull Durham is a great, great, great film and Costner's absolutely perfect in it. Durham and Tin Cup are tied for my favorite Costner performances, which says something about how brilliantly Costner can play (A) A loser-type* and (B) Comedy.

* I'm actually not a big fan of the term loser to describe a character and it's not quite accurate to label those two characters as such. I just mean they each have qualities which give off a distinct loser-esque vibe.

In Bull Durham, Costner's a wise, Triple-A baseball player who's spent virtually his entire career at the top of the minor league heap, not talented enough to ever make it to the majors (save for one 20-day stretch once). He's hired by the Durham Bulls to play out his final season, their motive not being his physical baseball talent but his mental skills, his valuable ability to mentor Tim Robbins's naive, impulsive pitcher with an underdeveloped arm of gold and hone Robbins into a talent worthy of the major leagues.

This is but Storyline 1 and it's handled beautifully. While not blazingly original in premise, Shelton never resorts to clichés. I might have found Robbins's unintelligence to be a little exaggerated in his first few scenes, but that feeling quickly faded and then Robbins made his guilelessness genuinely likable and charming. There is always the sense of progress in Bull Durham from the opening frame forward. What a lot of movies might do is play Robbins's character's foolishness for all the comedic effect its worth, beat the dead horse until its buried, and at the end, finally, bang! He has learned to be a better ballplayer! Woo-hoo! But because Shelton is interested in so much else in Bull Durham he has no need to result to that nonsense and hence the storyline begins evolving from the moment it is setup. There is a dramatic scene towards the end of the film where Costner's jealousy for Robbins reaches its breaking point, and with this scene Shelton absolutely nails their relationship, cements it. Wonderful stuff.

Storyline 2 in Bull Durham is a love triangle of sorts (I hesitate to apply such a trite label). While most romantic comedies are content with the love triangle alone--their very presence, as if they were such a revolutionary conceit, is often enough to justify a film's existence--Bull Durham is not. In poor romantic comedies concerned only with The Triangle, characters' lives, hopes, dreams, jobs, family, etc. outside The Triangle is thus rendered moot. Not so with Durham, whose love triangle is crucially and sublimely interwoven with Storyline 1.

Plus, whereas many romantic comedies often underdevelop the girl, Shelton gives as much time to his film's female lead, Annie Savoy -- fantastically played by Susan Sarandon -- as anyone else. In fact, those who might wish to make the argument Savoy is Durham's protagonist could point to such evidence as Shelton's choice of Annie as narrator. She bookends the film with a voice-over that works because there's so much being said that there is no practical way it could all be shown.

All around, Annie is a great creation on Shelton's part: ultra funny, colorful, intelligent, alive, determined, hot and perhaps most importantly, there is some of that Shelton sadness I mentioned earlier at the root of her character (particularly in one remarkable scene with Costner where we see exactly how much her over-intellectualization shields).

At the beginning of every season Annie chooses a baseball player to take under her wing (her character is as much a mentor as Costner's is), partly because of her love for baseball but possibly more because of her overwhelming desire not to be alone. The character reminds me somewhat of an older, more mature version of Kate Hudson's character in Almost Famous: that is, a band's groupie who likes to think she controls the band and that the band needs her more than she needs the band. But what happens when the band stops going on tour?

Robbins, Sarandon and Costner are so comfortable with each other here that the results can be staggering. During one scene Costner is talking to Robbins in the locker room. Both are sitting on a bench, Robbins facing Costner (and camera), Costner facing away. Costner gives Robbins a final lecture and all the while Robbins has this mischievous grin on his face, preparing his response. We see the smile, we know the punchline already, but Costner doesn't, and more importantly, Costner makes us believe he doesn't. We don't want him to. We want to see his reaction, which is a lovely way to bring the apprentice/master storyline full circle. Here and elsewhere, Shelton never misses a strong payoff.

Bull Durham's three (primary) supporting characters are also conceived and played spot on. The highlight is Robert Wuhl's incessantly placating, cheerful lapdog, assistant manager.

All the way down to the littlest touches, Shelton's Oscar-nominated screenplay is a joyous piece of work -- dialogue always hits exactly where it should (as much the actors' doing as Shelton's).

I do not want to spoil the choice made at the end of Bull Durham but there was a moment during it when I was just left smiling, smiling thinking about how well I had gotten to know these characters and how, at least at this moment, how perfect (they) are for each other. Here and afterwards, Shelton's ending strikes all the right notes.

Bull Durham is Shelton's love poem to baseball; his affection and knowledge are apparent in every frame and they're a hell of a lot of fun to bask in for two hours.

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