Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Bull Durham

One of the worst things about being a guy who likes movies is that no matter how many movies you watch, there's always something you have wanted to see that you haven't gotten around to yet. This is most apparent when there's something I haven't seen that everyone else has seen, especially if they know I'm supposedly a movie guy. Everyone gets the old, "You haven't seen that?" thing, but I suspect I get it more than most.

Anyway, there are a few usual suspects that come up more often than others, and BULL DURHAM must be in the top 5. I've seen bits and pieces of it over the years, just never the whole thing. I've always known it was well liked, and always figured I'd like it. I just never got around to it. Until now. Now that I've seen it, I can stop saying I haven't seen it and you can stop saying, "You haven't seen it?"

One of the reasons I always figured I'd like it, aside from the universal praise for it, was the fact that I tend to like baseball movies. And, within the first few seconds of the movie, the baseball mythos gave me chills twice. The first time was the shot of Susan Sarandon approaching the minor league field at dusk, the lights illuminating the stadium from a distance. The second time was a few moments later, as the camera followed Sarandon through the dark tunnel and out into the bright ballpark, the field unfolding in front of her.

I think this was partly just because baseball is so ingrained in the cultural subconscious that it's tough not to react with nostalgia to shots like that, but also because it seemed to so accurately reflect my own experiences attending minor league games. I clearly remember the sights, sounds and smells approaching the ballpark on game night as a kid, and heading through that tunnel to see the field suddenly appear in front of me. The film lets you smell the grass, the beer, the hot dogs. And this is all before it even really starts.

Sarandon stars as a baseball groupie who delights in choosing one minor leaguer each year, blessing him with her sexual attentions, and improving his season before he moves on to the majors. I guess calling her a groupie is a little patronizing -- she's a three dimensional character who knows what she's doing and why she's doing it. She is not struck dumb by fandom and is not a tool for the players to use as much as the players are there for her to enjoy. She has a million philosophies about baseball and life, considers them to basically intertwine, and pulls from many literary and spiritual influences. Yes, she's kind of full of shit, but she kind of knows it. If you have to be full of shit, that's the way to do it.

Thing is, Costner is more of an intellectual match for Sarandon than Robbins is, and has something in common with her, spiritually, since both of them worship baseball as something more important than just a means to a material end.

BULL DURHAM is a perfect romantic comedy. Like the best romantic comedies, it doesn't dwell on the relationships at hand, specifically. Instead, it gives us a red herring, in this case baseball, and lets that stand in as a metaphor for what's really going on. To BULL DURHAM's credit, it knows way more about its red herring of choice than most movies like this tend to, so it never feels contrived. Because of this, no one would ever refer to it as that most dreaded, sexist term -- a chick-flick. Here's a Hollywood romantic comedy that doesn't feel contrived, doesn't feel sexist, and treats the sex lives of adults realistically as opposed to either shameful or magical. And, it's funny!

So, there's no wonder everyone loves BULL DURHAM. I do, too.

Sadie Says:

As Paul mentioned, when I recommended BULL DURHAM, I expected him to say, "Duh, I've seen it a million times." Much to my surprise and delight, Paul had never seen the film in its entirety, nor had he witnessed what I believe to be one the greatest romance and baseball movies of all time.

Fact: Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins met on this movie and fell in love. Goddamn I'm a sucker for offscreen romance. It still pains me personally that they "aimicably" decided to end their relationship several years ago and go their separate ways. However, in the case of BD, secretly, I always wished that behind the scenes Ms. Sarandon and Mr. Kostner got it on and were in fact the characters they embody so well.

Bring in a whole cast of misfit characters, a genius screenplay, and what was considered to be a "hot" bath scene and we got ourselves a classic movie. In many ways, this strong female lead in Sarandon (and so many others in Romancefest Sadiefest) are called on some of their shit. It doesn't in any way take away the intelligence, independence, or what I believe to be "cool factor" of these outspoken women, but in many ways these strong male leads bring them back to their most human and vulnerable state. This quality in film translates and is played out perfectly on the screen in Bull Durham in the style of many a Hepburn flick (see Philadelphia Story).

Never to be skipped on cable, Bull Durham holds up just fine on any day, even if it's supposed to be a rained out.