DIRECTOR JOHN LEE HANCOCK
What makes sports such a universal metaphor in movies?
I think sports and courtrooms both are because there are absolute winners and losers. I think that's the easy answer. Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. That's also what happens in almost every movie - someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. I think that baseball, in particular, seems to take on an almost spiritual aspect from an American audience standpoint. Ken Burns does a better job of describing it than I do. There's something about it that seems to be very tied in to fathers and sons. A lot of people that I know that adored baseball when they were little kids, went with their fathers. I thought that was kind of apt that this is baseball. That said, I don't think of it as a baseball movie, per se. If I thought about it really as a baseball movie, I probably wouldn't have wanted to do it.
Why do you say that? Were you not a baseball fan going into this?
No, I'm a baseball fan definitely but I think that the sports movies that succeed are the ones that have a one-two punch. They're the ones that you go, “Yeah it's a baseball movie but boy, it's about a lot more.” And I think that's why “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “The Natural” and “Field of Dreams” and these movies that I love, I think they work not because of the “A” plot, but the “B” plot. What's happening underneath the surface is really what the movie is all about.
How hard was it ensure the accuracy of the film?
Major league baseball is like any big corporation - IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, whatever. They have tons of lawyers that get paid tons of money to say “No” over and over and over, every day. I understand that. They are protecting the product and they do a very good job of protecting that product and trademark, and copyrights and all those things - and there's a reason behind that. There's a certain hesitancy along the way to just jump in and say, “Hey we'll do whatever.” That said, when they started to realize that the movie was not only going to be something that was really good for baseball but a good movie, then they've been really supportive. The Texas Rangers, in particular, because they knew that this miracle happened in their brand-new ballpark, said, “Man, we want this to happen in a big way. We'll do whatever we can.” They actually helped as an emissary to Major League Baseball as well, to get us to be able to do things that had never been done, frankly, before.
Like filming during an actual game?
Yeah, and that's really a big thanks to Major League Baseball because by that point they had said okay. The Rangers kind of said, “It's on us. It's our ballpark; we'll take care of it. Just let us handle it.” And Major League Baseball said okay.
How important is it when you are making a sport movie, to have the real authenticity in the movie?
It is for me and especially since this was a true story. I just think you need to be as accurate as you can. Also, it's just one of those stories that was so big and over the top in reality that you really want to pay close attention to the details. You wouldn't want to give any impression that, “Oh, they are making this stuff up.” I think if you did have fake jerseys and things like that, then people would go, “They made a whole bunch of this up” and they'd tell you what. Or, somebody might go, “Major League Baseball wasn't behind this. What does that say about the script and the movie? Maybe it's not as accurate as they're trying to say it is.”
What kind of dramatic license did you take in this film?
When I first heard of it, I thought this is a great story - it's a “Movie of the Week.” Mike Rich's script came through and I realized that he had kind of mined some themes that I thought were really interesting, the father/son issues, and the stuff about dreams. Texas is really a character in the movie. I thought he had turned it into a feature film but the first question I asked him, I said, “We have to go through this script and you've got to tell me what's real and what's not because you are a wonderful writer and there's a certain amount of invention involved with anything. You can't help it; it's usually truncating something that happened into one scene. But you've got to let me know.” We went through and I could not believe how much was true. I said, “The deer, the hair?” and he said, “Happened.” I said, “Okay, the second try-out with the rain - give me a break.” He goes, “Happened.” I couldn't believe it. I said, “What do you mean it happened?” He said, “They flew in and they had to fly back that afternoon. They essentially said do you want to throw or not? He said I'll throw.” Those kinds of things. One of the things I wanted to talk about in the junket over and over - and I have been - is just trying to let people know that a whole lot of this happened. In terms of things that didn't happen - the radar machine is a great screenwriting invention because it tells us Jimmy felt like he was throwing the ball pretty hard. It felt kind of good but he didn't have any idea how hard he was throwing until he went to the try-out.
There's been a lot of controversy about the accuracy of movies. Do you think that people are being too finicky?
I think people have gotten a little too finicky. By the way, I think that a lot of this stuff that comes out about these movies comes from dirty politics - the competition saying, “Did you know this? Did you know this?” Playing to the press a bit so maybe a movie that happens to work as a movie is slighted somewhat. I much prefer a situation like ours where it's not as much of a hot potato and there's so much of this that really happened. That's the good news. If Mike Rich had come back and said, “You know, not really much of it happened but it reads really well,” I would have had second thoughts about directing it.
Years from now will it get to the point where you have to ask someone like Jim Morris about all their personal secrets, before making a film?
I hope we don't get to that because then it's like movies become political candidates. I guess we'd only have pieces of fiction. We wouldn't have inspiring stories because why would people put themselves out there? I don't know, I guess if you've got a real character who is also a proponent of the movie like Jimmy, I guess certainly you'd want to size that person up and see if that person's going to be a good representative for the movie. At some point, it is a piece of commerce. There's a big investment in it but thankfully from day one, Jimmy has always been kind of the humble, nice, great guy that he is. He's a good representative for the movie.
Why did you see Dennis Quaid as the lead?
I felt there were very few guys who could play this role because I felt like he needed to be an “every man” with the emphasis on “man.” There are a lot of boys in Hollywood, guys that are even in their 40s but are still kind of boys - they're “Peter Pan” and you see them at Premieres and they wear hip-hop clothes and try to act like they're 19 - they're not. But maybe they will work forever because of that, I don't know. I was thinking about Gary Cooper and William Holden, these guys that were kind of quintessential American men that had kind of a strong silence about them. And I think Dennis certainly has that in his repertoire. “Flesh and Bone” is a much darker piece but there's a quiet solitude and a complexity internally to that performance which is beautiful, I think. It just so happened that at that exact time that I signed on to direct the movie, Dennis had been tracking the script and he was interested in doing it. Right away we had lunch and sized each other up. There's always a question of, “Gosh, I hope he's athletic.” People had told me that he was. Actually I ran into Kevin Costner and he told me, “Not only is Dennis a really hard worker, he is athletic and he has a good sense of his body and balance, and good hand and eye coordination.” And I thought, “Well pitching being essentially about balance and hand/eye coordination, he'll be fine.”
He worked really hard for four months and got his arm in great shape. Mechanically, he got to the point where it gave me so much liberty in shooting that it was just great to be able to set the camera and let him throw. I mean, obviously he's not throwing the ball 98 mph or he'd be in Spring Training someplace right now but he got to where he could probably throw - I bet it was in the low 70s and right down the middle. Hey, that's all I need; I'll make it look fast.
Are you just friends with Kevin Costner or was he in consideration for the role?
Kevin did the first movie that I produced, “A Perfect World.” We became friends - not like we hang out or anything. I had actually gone to talk with him on the set of “Dragonfly,” and just hang out with him. We were talking about how much he liked Dennis as an actor and as a hard-worker and also his athletic ability. Kevin was never really a consideration - [we] felt maybe he had done too many baseball movies, that putting Kevin in it would signal “this is a baseball movie.” As much as I think baseball fans will like the movie, I didn't want to ostracize a lot of people who don't like baseball who also like the movie. And you can just see it coming, “Oh Kevin Costner, another baseball movie,” even though he is a wonderful athlete. Boy, it gives you a whole lot of latitude in what you can shoot because he looks really good throwing the ball - but so does Dennis now.
Baseball is a quintessential American subject yet you cast an Australian and a Brit in two major roles (Rachel Griffiths & Brian Cox).
Let's start with Rachel; I'm just a huge fan. “Hilary and Jackie” was kind of where she came into the radar for me and I thought, “Boy, what a talented actress.” So when I first started thinking about it, I thought, “Gosh, you know it would be really easy to plug somebody in here that feels right, that would be kind of a fine actress. Don't get me wrong - there would be a lot of different people, but you'd kind of see it coming.” You'd go, “That fits. Dennis and 'somebody' in a small town. That feels nice.” I felt that the role of Lorri was the real rudder for the movie because she, along with Jimmy's mother, represent women in the movie and women in Texas. And I didn't want it to be just a “Stand By Your Man” kind of thing. I wanted her to be a strong good partner, with her own opinions. I wanted there to be a playfulness in their relationship, too. I wanted there to be some spunk and some fun, so you'd go, “They've got a good marriage. They are good partners, they have fun.” She was good for that because I think she is beautiful but very real as opposed to somebody - there are a lot of people you could cast who are very beautiful and you'd go, “Give me a break. Like she's from this town, come on.” Whereas Rachel, for some reason even though she is very metropolitan and beautiful, there's just something about her. To a large extent it's because of her abilities to transform herself, and also I knew she was great with accents. I knew that wouldn't be a problem either.
With Brian it was just a matter of the best actor for the job. I love his face, I love his work, and everybody I talked to talked about how much fun it was to work with him and how smart an actor he was. I found it all to be true. So when Brian signed on, I was as happy as I could be. I had a “Hannibal Lector” - I was happy. The real “Hannibal Lector” (laughing).
Do you have any plans for the DVD?
Yes, actually we just had our first brainstorming session about that the other day. I pulled a bunch of scenes that were excluded from the movie, so I've got those as separate deals that I'll talk about. We'll do a commentary. I hope to get John Schwartzman, the cinematographer, to do something on it because I think a lot of the work that we did was trying to thematically work in concert with the scenes, and visually what we were doing in those kinds of things. He's a very bright guy. I look at things that I find interesting on DVDs. I like excluded scenes and to figure out why they were excluded - even some where you exclude them and you go, “I wish I could have that in the movie. In my perfect movie, that one would be in there.”
Is it easier, as far as studio interference goes, to do a true-life story? They aren't going to change the ending.
No, no, exactly. That's the thing; you couldn't make this movie if it weren't true. If you made this as a piece of fiction, everybody would just laugh. They'd go, “That's the most far-fetched thing I've ever seen.” Because you'd have him go to Yankee stadium and be in the World Series, too. But I mean, just the facts as they are, they'd say, “That's so preposterous. That would never happen in a million years.” And it did.
Will this movie convince some middle-aged men to go and try out for baseball?
I think the movie is less about going for that impossible dream and it's more about embracing that impossible dream about yourself. I think that all the anger and cynicism comes from suppressing things that we always wanted. It doesn't mean that you have to go try for it because, let's be honest, 9 out of 10 people are going to fail miserably. There are lots of things that I look at and go, “Wow, that would be a ball. Maybe I should do that.” I shouldn't do it but it's okay to admit that I wanted to do it. Somebody might say that they always wanted to be a fly-fishing guide in Montana and maybe they'll never get to do that but just by the virtue of having said it out loud, I think there's some power in that.
