JFK

There’s only one thing everyone can agree on regarding the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy: he was killed on November 22, 1963. Everything else around this watershed event in American history has been subject to intense debate and one that has provoked people to question their own beliefs and those of their government. Yet, for such a highly publicized affair there are still many uncertainties that surround the actual incident. Countless works of fiction and non-fiction have been created concerning the subject, but have done little in aiding our understanding of the assassination and the events surrounding it. Oliver Stone's film JFK (1991) depicts the events leading up to and after the assassination like a densely assembled puzzle complete with jump cuts and multiple perspectives. Stone’s film presents the assassination as a powerful event constructed by its conspirators to create confusion with its contradictory evidence, to then bury this evidence in the Warren Commission Report, which in turn manifests multiple interpretations of key figures like triggerman Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK offers a more structured examination of the conspiracy from one person's point of view where everything fits together to reveal a larger, more frightening picture implicating the most powerful people in the United States government.
 
Stone’s film filters an examination of two conspiracies, one to kill the President and one to cover it up, from one person's point of view — Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) — the New Orleans District Attorney who then assembles all the evidence at his disposal to deliver a powerful and persuasive case for a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Stone saw his film consisting of several separate films: Garrison in New Orleans against Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), a key figure in the assassination, Oswald’s (Gary Oldman) backstory, the recreation of Dealey Plaza, and the deep background in Washington, D.C. JFK is the mother of all paranoid conspiracy thrillers, the ultimate one man against the system film with Garrison taking on the establishment, attempting to uncover one of the most nefarious plots in history. It created such profound shockwaves in the real world that Stone was criticized and vilified in the press.
 
“God, I’m ashamed to be an American today,” says Garrison when he finds out that Kennedy has been shot and we see people in the bar he’s in applaud the man’s death. Stone and cinematographer Robert Richardson desaturate the colors in the 1963 scenes, which creates a somber tone as the country reacts to the Kennedy assassination.

Six years later, the color returns to the film as Garrison shares a plane ride with Senator Russell B. Long (Walter Matthau) who plants the first seeds of doubt in the District Attorney’s mind about the Kennedy assassination. He points out that Oswald was a lousy shot and couldn’t have made all those shots in that time with that kind of accuracy. He also scoffs at the “magic bullet” theory – that one bullet created seven wounds and came out in pristine condition. “I’d round up 100 of the world’s best riflemen. Find out which ones were in Dallas that day. You’ve been duck hunting. I think Oswald is a good old-fashioned decoy.”
 
This encounter provokes Garrison to go through all the volumes of the Warren Commission Report and find that, “Again and again credible testimony ignored, leads are never followed up, its conclusions selective, there’s no index. It’s one of the sloppiest, most disorganized investigations I’ve ever seen.” He concludes that this was by design: “But it’s all broken down and spread around and you read it and the point gets lost.” He continues to dig deeper and the testimony of Lee Bowers (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who hints at another shooter on the grassy knoll, is the final straw.
 
Garrison walks the streets of New Orleans with two of his investigators Lou Ivon (Jay O. Sanders) and Bill Broussard (Michael Rooker), recounting Oswald’s time in the city in a brilliantly written and performed monologue (one of many). He points out to them that Oswald, a supposed communist sympathizer, spent his time in the heart of the government’s intelligence community with the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service and the Office of Naval Intelligence all within spitting distance of each other. As Garrison tells them, “Isn’t this seem to you a rather strange place for a communist to spend his spare time?” He tells them that they are going to reopen the investigation of the Kennedy assassination and this is where the film really begins to gather narrative momentum.

Garrison starts interviewing people that had some link to the conspirators, namely Clay Bertrand a.k.a. Clay Shaw, which gives Stone the opportunity to trot out a parade of name actors such as Jack Lemmon, John Candy and Kevin Bacon to portray a very colorful cavalcade of characters. The interviews paint a vivid picture of David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) and Shaw working with Oswald. Stone uses Bacon and Lemmon to detail the conspiracy on a local level, expounding a ton of expositional dialogue brilliantly, while Candy’s hipster lawyer conveys the danger Garrison faces digging into the murder of the President.

Stone presents a series of lengthy dialogue-driven scenes conveying an incredible amount of information in palatable fashion by having recognizable actors as his mouthpieces while dynamically shooting and editing them. He has a character spout a fact or theory and then cuts to a dramatic reenactment that depicts it in black and white and/or different film stock, often blurring the line between fact and fiction, which is the point. In a case as complex as this it is hard to discern which is which as witness testimony conflicts one another making it difficult to make sense of it all.
 
A great example of this is the sequence where Garrison and his team explain Oswald’s background leading up to the assassination with Stone cutting to staged footage, actual documentary footage and the famous Life magazine cover photograph that cemented Oswald’s guilt in the public’s mind but might be a doctored image. It is a bravura sequence that marries complex editing, pasting together all kinds of different formats, with past events being discussed in the present with many characters talking as the conspiracy deepens and the thriller elements take hold. It culminates with Broussard disbelievingly saying, “We are talking about our government!” to which Garrison replies, “No. We’re talking about a crime, Bill. Plain and simple…We’re through the looking glass, here, people. White is black and black is white.”
 
The scene where Garrison first meets Shaw is a fantastic clash between two characters as the former goes after the latter who defiantly deflects and denies any involvement in the assassination plot. During the conversation, Stone intercuts footage that shows he is lying or, at least, that is Garrison’s interpretation. Tommy Lee Jones is brilliant here as he changes tone on a dime, going from amused elegance to angrily indignant and back again all the while maintaining an air of cultured sophistication. Finally, Garrison tires of his act and accuses him of killing Kennedy. When Shaw finally leaves, he gives parting pleasantries but Jones gives Costner a lingering, threatening look. From this point on, the pressure on the D.A. and his team increases as the powers that be attempt to discredit him.

Stone’s portrayal of Garrison is reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – the last honest man in government – and he tries to temper this by showing the trouble he faces at home as his wife (Sissy Spacek) complains that he’s never around anymore and that he cares more about the Kennedy assassination than his own family. She is the film’s weakest character whose sole purpose, initially, is to provide strife on the home front. Stone then has her come around to her husband’s way of thinking after he tearfully tells her late one night that Robert Kennedy has been shot and killed. She admits he was right all along and they make love in a scene that is unnecessarily maudlin. These scenes feel shoehorned in and take away from the main thrust of the film. Stone is on more comfortable ground when he returns to more familiar turf as we see the press arriving in droves to Garrison’s office, making it impossible for he and his team to get any work done. Funding for his office has dried up and he is forced to use his own savings to keep the investigation going. We also see infighting among his staff and Ivon and Broussard butt heads as we see the latter scared off the case.
 
Another bit of tour-de-force acting comes from Joe Pesci in the scene where Ferrie rapidly unravels as he fears for his life based on what he knows about the plot to kill Kennedy. Ferrie gets increasingly manic as he rattles off the people and organizations involved, getting worked up until he utters the iconic line, “It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!” It’s hyperbolic and over-the-top to be sure but it does illustrate how complex the assassination plot is with fake Oswalds and conflicting eyewitness accounts. After the incredible outburst, Ferrie winds down as Pesci elicits sympathy for this terrible man who is under a lot pressure and is incredibly paranoid. This scene threatens to throw the film right off the rails as Pesci goes for it, acting his ass off, chewing up the scenery in breathtaking fashion.
 
The centerpiece of the film is when Garrison travels to Washington, D.C. to meet with an ex-high-ranking CIA officer known only as Mr. X (Donald Sutherland). In this bravura sequence he lays out the motivation for killing Kennedy including how and why. It’s an incredible amount of dialogue and Stone wisely cast a skilled actor such as Donald Sutherland to convey it in a coherent and engaging way. X lays out the most important aspect of the assassination: why? “The how and who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia – keeps ‘em guessing like some kind of parlor game preventing them from asking the most important question – why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefitted? Who has the power to cover it up?”

X posits that Kennedy was killed because he wanted to break up the CIA, make peace with Russia and end the Vietnam War, which not only pissed off a lot of powerful people but would cost a lot of money as he tells Garrison, “The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is the war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.” He encourages Garrison to “come up with a case. Something. Anything. Make arrests. Stir the shitstorm. Hope to reach a critical mass that’ll start a chain reaction of people coming forward. Then the government’ll crack. Remember, fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth.” This is the film’s idealistic mission statement. Judging from the critical reaction towards the film, Stone certainly succeeded in stirring up the shitstorm and in the court of public opinion he helped reshape the perception of the Kennedy assassination.
 
These increasingly dense and dynamic exposition scenes lead up to the mother of all courtroom scenes as Garrison goes in knowing he’s going to lose and goes for it anyway. It is Costner’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington filibuster moment by way of Gary Cooper as Garrison debunks the Warren Commission Report’s account of Oswald by audaciously showing the real Zapruder film that depicted the Kennedy killing in real time. Stone edits in recreation footage with actual footage of the assassination as Garrison lays it all out. The filmmaker also recreates Kennedy’s controversial autopsy and shows actual photos of the man taken at the time.
 
This scene involves a massive amount of dialogue and information to convey and Costner handles it like a pro, making this exposition compelling, especially at the end when the actor performs his final speech without the aid of intercutting other footage. It’s Costner out there on his own, even getting emotional towards the end at the most powerful moment when Garrison address the jury, “Show this world that this is still a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important. It’s up to you.” And with that last line, Costner breaks the fourth wall. That line is meant for us and is one of the most moving parts of Garrison’s speech.

While attending the Latin American Film Festival in Havana, Cuba, Stone met Sheridan Square Press publisher Ellen Ray on an elevator. She had published Jim Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins. Ray had gone to New Orleans and worked with Garrison in 1967. She gave Stone a copy of Garrison's book and told him to read it. He did and quickly bought the film rights with his own money. The Kennedy Assassination had always had a profound effect on his life and he eventually met Garrison, grilling him with a variety of questions for three hours. The man stood up to Stone's questioning and then got up and left. His hubris impressed the director.
 
Stone was not interested in making a film about Garrison's life but rather the story behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. To this end, he also bought the film rights to Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. When Stone set out to write the screenplay, he asked Columbia University’s Professor of Journalism Zachary Sklar to co-write it with him and distill the Garrison book, the Marrs book and all the research he and others conducted into a script that would resemble what he called "a great detective movie." Stone told Sklar his vision of the movie: "I see the models as Z (1969) and Rashomon (1950), I see the event in Dealey Plaza taking place in the first reel, and again in the eighth reel, and again later, and each time we're going to see it differently and with more illumination.”
 
Sklar worked on the Garrison side of the story while Stone added the Oswald story, the events at Dealey Plaza and the "Mr. X" character. To tell as much of the story as they could, Stone and Sklar used composite characters, a technique that would be criticized in the press, most notably the "Mr. X" character played by Donald Sutherland and who was a mix of several witnesses and retired Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, an adviser on the film.

In 1989, Stone met with the three top Warner Bros. executives – Terry Semel, Bob Daly, and Bill Gerber – who had been interested in his work for some time. At the time, Stone was trying to make a film about Howard Hughes but Warren Beatty owned the rights. Stone then pitched JFK to them in 15-20 minutes: “I told them I wanted JFK to be a movie about the problem of covert parallel government in this country and deep political corruption.” Semel remembers Stone asking them, “’Are you concerned politically? Would it affect your company? Are there negative reasons why you wouldn’t do it?’ My immediate reaction was, ‘No, we should do it.’ If it’s entertaining and it’s intriguing, a great murder mystery about something we all cared about and grew up thinking about, why not?” A handshake deal was done and the studio agreed to a $20 million budget.
 
Stone could have shopped JFK around in the international market but chose WB because, “I knew the material was dangerous and I wanted on entity to finance the whole thing and the history of WB, given Terry Semel’s record of political films (All the President’s Men, The Parallax View and The Killing Fields), was my first choice.” Kevin Costner signed on to play Garrison in 1991, which pleased the studio who wanted a bankable movie star attached to the project. In addition, independent producer Arnon Milchan came on board as an executive producer and doubled the budget allowing Stone to cast a star-studded supporting cast around Costner.
 
Stone ambitiously wanted to recreate the Kennedy Assassination in Dealey Plaza and his producers had to pay the Dallas City Council a substantial amount of money to hire police to reroute traffic and close streets for three weeks. He only had ten days to shoot the footage. Getting permission to shoot in the Texas School Book Depository was more difficult. They had to pay $50,000 to put someone in the window that Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have shot Kennedy. They were allowed to film in that location only between certain hours with only five people on the floor at one time: the camera crew, an actor, and Stone. Co-producer Clayton Townsend has said that the hardest part was getting the permission to restore the building to the way it looked back in 1963. That took five months of negotiation.

Filming was going smoothly until several attacks on the film in the press surfaced in the mainstream media including the Chicago Tribune, published while the film was only in its first weeks of shooting. Five days later, the Washington Post ran a scathing article by national security correspondent George Lardner entitled, "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland" that used the first draft of the JFK screenplay to blast it for "the absurdities and palpable untruths in Garrison's book and Stone's rendition of it.” The article pointed out that Garrison lost his case against Clay Shaw and claimed that he inflated his case by trying to use Shaw's homosexual relationships to prove guilt by association. Other attacks in the media soon followed. However, the Lardner Post piece stung the most as he had stolen a copy of the script. Stone recalls, "He had the first draft, and I went through probably six or seven drafts.”
 
The film depicts the events leading up to and after the assassination as a densely constructed story complete with jump cuts, multiple perspectives, a variety of film stocks and the blending of actual archival footage with staged scenes dramatized by a stellar cast of actors. This blurring of reality and fiction by mixing real footage with staged footage makes it difficult to discern what really happened and what is merely speculation. Stone does this to create what he calls "a countermyth to the myth of the Warren Commission because a lot of the original facts were lost in a very shoddy investigation," and simulate the confusing quagmire of events as they are depicted in Warren Report. Stone creates different points of views or "layers" through the extensive use of flashbacks within flashbacks. Stone has said that he “wanted the film on two or three levels — sound and picture would take us back, and we’d go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback ... I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission Report is like drowning.” This technique conveys the notion of confusion and conflict within evidence
 
Kevin Costner acts as the perfect mouthpiece for Stone’s theories. The auteur’s infamously forceful directorial approach to his actors pays off here as he reins in the Costner’s usual tics and mannerisms. Stone was no dummy — he knew that by populating his film with many famous faces, he could make the potentially bitter pill that was his film that much more palatable to the mainstream movie-going public. The rest of the cast is phenomenal. Gary Oldman delivers an eerily authentic portrayal of the enigmatic Lee Harvey Oswald. Tommy Lee Jones is note-perfect as the refined, self-confident businessman, Clay Shaw. Even minor roles are filled by such name actors as Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Bacon, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau.

The film throws many characters at us and it is easier to keep track of them by identifying them with the famous person that portrays them. Stone was evidently inspired by the casting model of a documentary epic he had admired as a child: “Darryl Zanuck's The Longest Day (1962) was one of my favorite films as a kid. It was realistic, but it had a lot of stars ... the supporting cast provides a map of the American psyche: familiar, comfortable faces that walk you through a winding path in the dark woods.” Future biopics with sprawling casts, like The Insider (1999), and Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and The Good Shepherd (2006) would use this same approach.
 
Seeing JFK now, one is reminded that first and foremost, it is a top-notch thriller. There are so many fantastic scenes of sheer exposition that would normally come across as dry and boring but are transformed into riveting scenes in the hands of this talented cast. For example, the famous scene between Garrison and X (Sutherland) where the mysterious man lays out all the reasons why Kennedy was killed and how is not only a marvel of writing but also of acting as the veteran actor gets to deliver what is surely one of the best monologues ever committed to film.
 
Once the film was released in theaters, it polarized critics. The New York Times ran an article by Bernard Weinraub entitled, "Hollywood Wonders If Warner Brothers let JFK Go Too Far.” In it, he called for studio censorship and wrote, "At what point does a studio exercise its leverage and blunt the highly charged message of a film maker like Oliver Stone?" The newspaper also ran a review of the film by Vincent Canby who wrote, "Mr. Stone's hyperbolic style of film making is familiar: lots of short, often hysterical scenes tumbling one after another, backed by a soundtrack that is layered, strudel-like, with noises, dialogue, music, more noises, more dialogue.” However, Roger Ebert praised the film in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, saying, "The achievement of the film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination, because it does not, or even that it vindicates Garrison, who is seen here as a man often whistling in the dark. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger which ever since 1963 has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche.”

Rita Kempley in the Washington Post wrote, "Quoting everyone from Shakespeare to Hitler to bolster their arguments, Stone and Sklar present a gripping alternative to the Warren Commission's conclusion. A marvelously paranoid thriller featuring a closetful of spies, moles, pro-commies and Cuban freedom-fighters, the whole thing might have been thought up by Robert Ludlum.” On Christmas Day, the Los Angeles Times ran an article entitled, "Suppression of the Facts Grants Stone a Broad Brush" attacking the film. New York Newsday followed suit the next day with two articles – "The Blurred Vision of JFK" and "The Many Theories of a Jolly Green Giant.” A few days later, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an article entitled, "Stone's Film Trashes Facts, Dishonors J.F.K." Stone even received death threats as he recalled in an interview, "I can't even remember all the threats, there were so many of them.” Time magazine ranked it the fourth best film of 1991. Roger Ebert went on to name Stone's movie as the best film of the year and one of the top ten films of the decade.
 
Stone paints his canvas with broad brushstrokes and powerful images. This isn’t a documentary or even a docudrama. It is a fever dream straight out of Stone's head. He’s a Baby Boomer upset that the death of Kennedy obliterated the idealism of the '60s and uses the film to vent about it. JFK is an important work in the sense that it accurately portrays the assassination of Kennedy as a complex public event surrounded by chaos and confusion. Stone’s film presents an intricate conspiracy at the source of the killing with one main protagonist who exposes the conspiracy to be an intricately constructed coup d'état. JFK takes a larger, confrontational stance by boldly implicating the government in the conspiracy and the mainstream media in conspiring to cover it up. Stone is using the persuasive power of film to reach the largest number of people he can to wake them up and to reveal how they have been deceived by higher powers. There is no mistaking the importance of the assassination of Kennedy in American culture. Based on the excitement that surrounded Stone's film, the American public was still greatly interested in the event with more and more people believing in a plot to kill the President. Kennedy's death continues to intrigue and interest people who are more open to the idea of a conspiracy that this film openly advocates. For better or for worse, it helped cultivate a conspiracy culture that has only grown larger and more unwieldy with the rise of social media. JFK continues to serve as a powerful piece of cinematic agitprop whose conspiracy theories can be questioned and criticized but its power as an engaging and moving thriller cannot.
 

SOURCES
 
Fisher, Bob. “The Whys and Hows of JFK.” American Cinematographer. February 1992.
 
Petras, James. “The Discrediting of The Fifth Estate: The Press Attacks on JFK.” Cineaste. May 1992.
 
Riordan, James. Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone. Aurum Press. 1996.
 
Scheer, Robert. “Oliver Stone Builds His Own Myths.” Los Angeles Times. December 15, 1991.

Open Range

Kevin Costner was already an acclaimed and popular actor when he starred in and directed Dances with Wolves (1990). The film was a critical and commercial success but he soon became too ambitious for his own good with the disastrous, high-profile one-two punch of Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (1997). The critics turned on him and they failed to connect with a mainstream audience like Dances had, prompting him to focus more on acting and be choosier with his directing gigs.

Open Range (2003) saw Costner not only return to the western genre but also to the director’s chair after six years. As he did with Dances, the filmmaker put up his own money to help make the film and adjusted his ambitions by making a straight-up crowd-pleasing story that married the entertaining thrills of a western like Tombstone (1993) with the no frills meditation on violence of Unforgiven (1992).

Four men are driving a herd of cattle through an open range in Montana, 1882. Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and Charley Waite (Costner) are the two veteran cowboys aided by two inexperienced young men Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi) and Button (Diego Luna). The film quickly establishes the dynamic between these men as they wait out an intense thunderstorm by playing cards. After the storm passes, Costner shows the men performing daily chores with little bits of business like how Charley approaches a skittish horse. Every man pulls his own weight as Mose says to Button and we see them work together to get their wagon out of the mud from the storm. Driving cattle is hard work and Costner doesn’t let us forget it. He also indulges in the romance of it with a montage of lovingly crafted shots of cattle being herded over the countryside.

On the surface, Boss is the grizzled cantankerous veteran, Charley is the ex-gunslinger with a dark past while Mose and Button are like brothers. It’s a testament to the skill of these four actors that after only spending ten minutes with their characters we are right there with them due to their camaraderie. We are invested in their story. When these men work and live off the land together like they have, a permanent bond develops between them. When this dynamic is threatened we want to see those responsible get their comeuppance.

When Mose fails to return from a supply run at a nearby town, Charley and Boss go investigate. They find out that he’s in jail after mixing it up with some local cattlemen. It sounds out of character for Mose and a conversation with Marshal Poole (James Russo) confirms that something isn’t right. Sure enough, local cattle baron Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon) chimes in. He doesn’t like free grazers like Boss and Charley because he doesn’t want the competition. He threatens them and they take the badly beaten Mose to Doc Barlow (Dean McDermott) and his beautiful assistant Sue (Annette Bening). Of course, Baxter won’t let things go and sends four masked men to intimidate them. The inevitable confrontation results in tragic consequences and the rest of Open Range plays out Charley and Boss getting revenge on Baxter and his men.

Costner expertly uses the widescreen aspect ratio right out of the gate as the title card appears over a wide vista with a cattle drive dwarfed by ominous storm clouds off in the distance. It not only gives a sense of place but also sets the mood. It is this kind of iconography that makes westerns distinctive from other genres.

One of the great pleasures of Open Range is seeing Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall share the screen together. They play well off each other with a believable short hand between their characters conveying years spent together working off the land. They get on each other’s nerves once in awhile, but they also have a great respect for one another. Over the course of the film they get moments where the two men tell each other things about themselves that they didn’t know. It gives us valuable insights into their respective characters.

Duvall’s Boss is a man who has a way with words, telling the townsfolk what Baxter and his men did to Mose and Button, or talking reassuringly to an unconscious Button. Costner’s Charley, on the other hand, is a man of few words but when he does speak he means every one of them. He’s a man who has lived a violent past and is trying to lead a better one but Baxter forces him to get in touch with his violent nature once again.

It is also refreshing to see Costner avoid casting some young, up-and-coming actor to play his romantic interest and opt instead for someone his age like Annette Bening who can more than hold her own. She doesn’t play a damsel in distress (until later) but someone who is capable of using her medical expertise to help Mose and Button after they’ve had run-ins with Baxter’s men. She’s lived life and is not afraid of Charley’s violent past because she’s seen the honorable man he is now.

Costner is a generous actor, giving Duvall and Bening plenty of screen-time and meaty speeches to show off their chops. That’s not to say he marginalizes his role in the film. Initially, Charley seems to be a man of few words but it is only because it takes him awhile to warm up to people. Around Mose, Button and especially Boss he’s not afraid to speak up and tell them what’s on his mind. It’s as if Costner is coming at the film like a fan and wanted to see a veteran actor like Duvall in another western.

Based on Lauran Paine’s 1990 novel, The Open Range Men, Open Range marked Kevin Costner’s return to the directing chair since The Postman and the first western he appeared in since Wyatt Earp (1994). At the time, it was considered a risky move for the filmmaker, which he was very much aware: “The western is a very scary thing for Hollywood, and I’m sure they’re saying, ‘Gee, if Kevin really needs a hit, what in the hell is he doing making a western?’” He and his fellow producers, Jake Eberts and David Valdes, were so committed to the project that they each put in a lot of their own money into it, much as he had done on Dances with Wolves.

They began scouting locations on March 15, 2002 in Canada when they realized it wasn’t feasible to shoot in the United States. They spent months searching the prairies until finding Nicoll Ranch at Jumping Pound Creek, the Turner Ranch and the Hughes Ranch for the cattle driving and range camp scenes. Looking for a place where the fictional frontier town would be located proved to be difficult until they finally discovered the Stoney Nakoda First Nations Reserve west of Calgary but it had no access road. Before the town could be constructed, a one-and-a-half mile dirt road had to be built across the reserve. The filmmakers spent four weeks conducting research and design in Los Angeles. The art directors and designers worked from history books and pictures by pioneer photographers like Silas Melander and Evelyn Cameron.

Putting in a significant amount of his own money allowed Costner to achieve the authenticity he desired, which included spending $2 million building a fully-functioning frontier town. Construction of the town took nine weeks with great care taken to recreate period detail. All the lumber was milled to historical period sizes and weathered for the exterior of buildings. The window glass for the town was hand blown and imported. Even the color palette that was used reflected paint sample charts from 1880. All of this attention to detail allowed Costner to film both exterior and interior shots on location.

The production encountered a few challenges. Nine weeks before principal photography began, Robert Duvall broke his ribs in a horseback-riding accident. Filming began on June 17, 2002 with a budget of $23 million. During the first few weeks, Costner’s appendix ruptured but went undiagnosed until he was rushed to the emergency room two months after the production finished.

Open Range received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Kevin Costner's Open Range, an imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western, works primarily because it expresses the personal values of a cowboy named Boss and his employee of 10 years, Charley.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Mr. Duvall knows the difference between underacting and overacting, and knows when each is called for. He plays his part, a thin fantasy of crusty frontier benevolence, as if it were a mediocre poker hand, bluffing Boss into someone bigger and more exciting than he has any right to be.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “There's a lot in this movie, simple, big, small and exciting. It's the year's first serious contender for big prizes. What's not to like about this picture?”

Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman gave the film a “B” rating and wrote, “Duvall and Costner play together like a seasoned team: They’re wary, unsentimental colleagues whose opposing rhythms — Boss is spiky and righteous, the mellow Charley is slower to anger — never undercut their silent allegiance.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Though his choice of roles has not always been wise, Costner is very much a movie star, and his reversion to an Unforgiven dark side is in many ways more believable than his fumbling courtship of the forthright Ms. Barlow.”

Costner doesn’t want to reinvent the western with Open Range. He simply wants to tell an entertaining story about hard-working men that stand up for their rights to live life on their own terms. The two-hour running time may seem indulgent to some but the film never feels too long. He lets things breathe and allows us to spend time with these characters and get to know them so we care what happens when things go south.

There’s something to be said for telling an entertaining story well. So often these days story is sacrificed for spectacle. In this respect, Open Range is a refreshing call back to classic westerns like Red River (1948) but with aspects of revisionist westerns like Unforgiven. This film is not afraid to tell a simple story where the good guys beat the bad guys and it works in part because it’s done in a sincere way.

SOURCES

Giammarco, David. “Costner’s Last Stand.” The Globe and Mail. August 9, 2003.

Kaufman, Sarah. “After Several Flops, Costner Defends Open Range as a Movie with Heart.” Washington Post. August 15, 2003.

Open Range Production Notes. Touchstone Pictures. 2003.

Bull Durham

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the Athletes in Film blogathon over at Wide Screen World and Once Upon a Screen.

How does a film helmed by a first-time director with a leading lady the studio didn’t want, about a washed-up baseball player in the twilight of his career become not only one of the greatest sports films ever made but also one of the best romantic comedies for adults? When it’s made by Ron Shelton from his own screenplay and it stars Kevin Costner as the aforementioned player who used his industry clout to give the writer/director his shot and fought for Susan Sarandon to be cast. The end result is Bull Durham (1988), a funny, insightful and sexy look at minor-league baseball and the people that love the sport.

While Kevin Costner is the star, Bull Durham is really about Annie Savoy (Sarandon), a baseball groupie who hooks up with one player for the entire season, imparting her knowledge of not just baseball but also sex and how the two are intertwined for valuable life lessons. Shelton establishes this right from the get-go by having Annie narrate her own story via voiceovers. In her opening monologue she compares baseball to sex and religion, rejecting the latter in favor of metaphysics. She is savvy about what she does and has no illusions:

“I make them feel confident and they make me feel safe and pretty. Of course what I give them lasts a lifetime. What they give me last 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade but bad trades are part of baseball.”

This voiceover plays over footage of Annie getting ready and heading off to the ballpark with church organ music playing in the background, commenting playfully on her devotion to the sport as she concludes, “I’ve tried ‘em all, I really have and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out, is the church of baseball.” Shelton proceeds to immerse us in the sights and sounds of the ballpark with shots of the team mascot, the section for the players’ wives, and a father with his sons. This conveys a sense of community, especially in small towns like this one where you get the sense that that there isn’t much else to do there.

The Durham Bulls are having a lousy season and what better time than to break in a new hotshot pitcher by the name of Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) who, when we meet him, is more concerned with figuring out his nickname then his professional debut. He starts and it is pretty obvious what his strengths are (a blistering fastball) and his weaknesses are – a lack of control as his first pitch goes flying into the stands. His next one hits the batter.

This intrigues Annie who asks fellow baseball groupie Millie (Jenny Robertson) what sex with Ebby is like and she offers up this memorable gem: “Well, he fucks like he pitches: sorta all over the place.” Shelton proceeds to give us a montage of Ebby’s wild pitches in amusing fashion. When the dust settles, the rookie has walked 18 players and struck out 18 – both league records.

After the game, “Crash” Davis (Costner) shows up telling the assistant coach (a hilarious Robert Wuhl) that he’s “the player to be named later,” brought in to hang out with Ebby and teach him how to play the game properly both on and off the field because he’s got “a million dollar arm but a five cent head.” The manager (Trey Wilson) informs Crash that Ebby is being groomed by a major league team. Naturally, Crash asks what’s in it for him to which the manager replies, “You can keep going to the ballpark and keep getting paid to do it. Beats the hell out of working at Sears.”

The first meeting between Crash and Ebby is a memorable one as the latter picks a fight with the former. Crash has already sized up Ebby and has a pretty good idea of what he’s like and taunts him, daring the pitcher to throw a ball at him, knowing that he’ll miss because he’s thinking too much about it. Ebby misses, of course, and Crash knocks him down with one punch, telling the rookie, “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ball club.” Annie decides that Ebby is going to be the player she is going to take under her wing but finds herself increasingly drawn to Crash.

Costner’s first appearance is an impressive one for how effortlessly and natural it seems. He walks in and is the character. You believe he’s a veteran player that has seen it all and grown tired of helping others make it to the big leagues. Bull Durham features one of his very best performances. He is particularly good towards the end of the film when Crash is told that he’s no longer needed on the team. Costner’s reaction when he’s told the news is well-played as the shock of it plays across his face and the actor conveys it in his eyes. It’s a really good bit of acting in a career defining performance. Another stand-out moment is when Crash imparts one last lesson on Ebby in a pool hall that crackles with intensity as the catcher has hit rock bottom and is jealous that the pitcher is being promoted to the big leagues while he remains in the minors. Crash lets his anger and bitterness out on Ebby in a really good scene that allows both actors to play well off each other.

Susan Sarandon brings an earthy sexiness to her role. Annie is not only very attractive but is also very smart. She certainly knows a lot about baseball and life, teaching Ebby some valuable lessons in ways that are funny. Shelton shows the contrast between her and Ebby and her and Crash when they finally hook up. With Crash, Annie is on much more even ground as they are both mature people that have been around the block more than a few times. This is evident in a scene where they get into an argument over breaking Ebby’s winning streak. It’s a real conversation that gives us insights into these two people as their attraction to one another is growing but they are afraid to commit because it might be something good and real.

Costner and Sarandon have really wonderful chemistry and this is readily evident from their first scene together. It really kicks in when Annie invites Crash to batting cage practice under the pretense of improving his swing but they cut right to the chase and find out that they have the same goal: to get Ebby ready for the big leagues. They also flirt like crazy with each other with Crash laying it out for her: “The fact is you’re afraid of meeting a guy like me ‘cause it might be real. You sabotage it with some, what is it, some bullshit about commitment to a young boy you can boss around.” It’s a really good scene because we are not only getting witty banter between Annie and Crash but they also get down to the heart of the matter – why she dates guys like Ebby and not someone like Crash.

Tim Robbins is brilliant as the clueless Ebby. It isn’t easy to play someone dumb and not come across as a caricature but the actor does it so well, like during Ebby’s first post-game interview where he offers his reaction to his first professional win: “It feels out there. It’s a major rush. I mean, it doesn’t just feel out there, I mean it feels out there. Kind of radical in a tubular way.” The way Robbins says these lines with a deer caught in the headlights expression is priceless. Throughout the film, the actor achieves just the right mix of cocky arrogance and cluelessness, providing funny comedic moments, like how Ebby breaks out a horrible cover of “Try a Little Tenderness” on the bus en route to the next game and gets the lyrics wrong (“Wooly”?!). As the film progresses, Robbins’ character undergoes a nice arc as we realize that Ebby isn’t really that dumb – he just lacks experience and that only comes with putting in the time and playing games, experiencing winning and losing streaks, and knowing how to deal with both.

Robbins and Sarandon have fantastic chemistry together and it isn’t hard to understand why they became a couple in real life. The scene where they first have sex is funny as Ebby is all in a hurry, quickly stripping down, while Annie tells him to slow down and ends up reading poetry to him instead.

The three lead actors are supported by a wonderful cast of character actors. There is Trey Wilson’s angry manager who tries to turn his team around and get them winning again. The actor brings an amusing gruffness to the role, playing well off of Robert Wuhl’s motormouthed assistant coach. He gets a funny moment during the iconic scene where his character approaches the pitcher’s mound during a game where several of the players have gathered, each with their own problem. Wuhl listens to the list of complaints and without missing a beat offers a solution that is quite funny.

Shelton’s screenplay is tight and chock full of wonderful truisms about baseball and life. It lets us into Crash’s head, showing how he thinks about baseball, like the internal debate he has with himself during his first at bat. We see how well he reads the game thanks to years of experience. We also see how superstitious some players are and how important the mental aspect is to how athletes perform. Crash spends most of his time teaching Ebby how to think or, rather, not to think about the game because he realizes that the rookie has great instincts and natural talent – he just needs to figure out how to channel it. To this end, Crash teaches Ebby interview clichés with gems like, “We got to play them one day at a time,” that we’ve seen actual players spout on television.

Shelton does an excellent job of showing the life of a journeyman ballplayer at the minor-league level, going from town to town. For every Ebby there are all kinds of Crashes that never make it and for them it is a job. That being said, Shelton still imparts a love for the game and how people in small towns all around America gather to cheer on their hometown team.

As Crash has grown tired of teaching young guys the fundamentals of baseball, Annie eventually grows tired of teaching young men about life and sex. She’s ready for someone like Crash who calls her on her metaphysical mumbo jumbo – only she doesn’t realize it until later in the film. As the film progresses, it asks the question, what do you do when you can no longer play the game? It becomes apparent that Crash’s knowledge about the sport would be better suited towards coaching and maybe that could be his path to the majors.

Ron Shelton grew up in Santa Barbara, California, graduating from Westmont College. He had always been a jock and wanted to be a professional baseball player. He ended up as a second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles’ Triple-A team in Rochester, New York for five years but made it no further. “I had made my living as a baseball player…But I didn’t want to be an aging 15-year minor leaguer. I decided simply to make a change and not look back.” He quit in 1972, got married, had two daughters, and received a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles where he painted as well as doing several odd jobs to support his family.

Shelton had wanted to write something about his experiences as a baseball player but didn’t have a story to go with the subject. During his playing days, he would spend his down time between games going to the movies. He finally came up with a story and wrote a screenplay entitled, A Player to Be Named Later about a veteran catcher and a wild rookie pitcher. When writing the script, Shelton wanted to include the notion that “most of the time in baseball is spent between the action.” He explained, “Most of my memories are of conversations on the mound or absurd arguments with umpires.” In addition, he wanted the film to “be about the players who were grinding it out trying to make a living in this game.” Shelton had known a lot of guys like Crash and guys like Ebby that “could throw a ball through a brick wall but who didn’t understand that if he didn’t take this seriously, he was going to be selling aluminum siding in five years.”

Shelton couldn’t sell his script but did get an agent. This led to him getting work on Under Fire (1983), rewriting the script for director Roger Spottiswode. The two men worked together again on The Best of Times (1986) where Shelton got a desire to write and direct his own film: “Movies are made up of tiny moments, and I really felt the desire to get down in the trenches with the actors and find those tiny moments.” He revisited his baseball script, reworking it and in doing so added new layers to the lead female character. Annie came out of Shelton “hating how women had been portrayed in sports movies, and from my love and respect for women.” When asked if Annie was based on anybody real, he responded, “Trust me, I never met anyone like her in the minors.”

Producer Thom Mount, who was also co-owner of minor-league baseball team the Durham Bulls, was, not surprisingly, passionate about the game: “Minor league ball is one of the last authentic bastions of small-town American life.” He had is own production company after spending years working in the Hollywood studio system. Mount hired Kevin Costner to be in a television miniseries but the network rejected the actor because he wasn’t a star. The producer felt differently.

When Mount met Shelton and read the script, he wanted to make the film and suggested Costner as the lead character. Originally, the actor was going to do either Eight Men Out (1988) or Everybody’s All-American (1988) but when he read Shelton’s script, he was impressed by the level of detail. Shelton’s original wishlist of actors to play Crash included Costner, Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell and Harrison Ford. Costner was the first one to say yes. As it turned out, Shelton was a fan of Costner’s work in Fandango (1985) and Silverado (1985). Despite being a natural athlete, the actor insisted on auditioning for Shelton at a San Fernando Valley batting cage. Shelton was impressed with Costner’s natural ability, which included being a switch-hitter.

Mount shopped the project around Hollywood and was turned down twice by every studio because baseball movies were not considered commercially viable at the time. Finally, Orion Pictures executives read the script. The studio was already making another baseball film at the time – Eight Men Out with John Sayles – and Costner didn’t think they’d go for a second film. Eighteen hours later Shelton was given an $8.5 million budget. Orion had made No Way Out (1987) with Costner and were convinced that he was going to be a big star.

For Ebby, the producers wanted Charlie Sheen but he had already committed to Eight Men Out. Orion wanted them to meet with Anthony Michael Hall. When the actor met with Shelton he showed up late and hadn’t read the script. Tim Robbins was a baseball fan and had been up for both Eight Men Out and Bull Durham, choosing the latter. The studio didn’t like him, however, perhaps as a result of his appearance in the high-profile flop Howard the Duck (1986), and Shelton threatened to quit if he wasn’t allowed to cast him.

Shelton also had to fight the studio over casting Susan Sarandon as Annie. Executives felt that her career was already over, was too old and not funny, and wanted Kim Basinger. Initially, Shelton wanted to Ellen Barkin but she passed on it. The studio wasn’t even willing to pay for Sarandon’s flight to L.A. (she was living in Italy at the time) but after reading the script, she paid her own way. The actress remembers, “I knew I had to put my ego aside and just go for it.” She met with studio executives and charmed them.

The conflicts with the studio over Robbins and Sarandon didn’t end there. During filming, executives were worried that the former wasn’t funny enough. After seeing dailies, then studio head Mike Medavoy called Shelton on the set and ordered him to replace the actor. Shelton threatened to quit if Robbins was fired. On the second day of dailies, one of the film’s producers confided to Sarandon that she didn’t look good in her close-ups. Shelton exploded and went after the man, telling him, “You ever talk to my actors again, I’ll kick your fucking ass.”

In order to accurately portray baseball in the film, Mount brought on Pete Bock as a baseball consultant. Bock was a former semi-pro ballplayer, spent three years as a pro umpire in the Appalachian, South Atlanta and Carolina leagues before spending several years as general manager of the Durham Bulls. He recruited several minor-league ballplayers and ran a tryout camp to recruit an additional 40-50 players for the game scenes. He also hired several minor-league umpires. In addition, Bock conducted two-a-day workouts and practice games with Robbins pitching and Costner catching. Bock said of the two actors – Robbins had “a lot of raw talent...But he didn’t have the mechanics down,” and Costner was “outstanding” and “amazing…We kidded him if he’d give up movies real quick, we’d sign him.” He made sure the actors performed like ballplayers (wearing their uniforms properly and standing correctly in the field) while also making sure the ballplayers acted.

Shelton scouted locations in the southern United States before choosing Durham, North Carolina – Mount’s hometown – because of its old ballpark. Shelton didn’t get the greenlight until late in the year and so Bull Durham was filmed in October and November. It was cold and the grass was changing color. The production staff had to repeatedly paint the baseball field green. In addition, many of the game scenes were shot at night to hide the fact that the leaves were turning brown.

According to actor Robert Wuhl, he came up with his character’s dialogue for the memorable pitcher’s mound scene. A week before shooting it, he was talking to his wife about a wedding gift to get a friend and her response is what he used in the film! Orion wanted to cut the scene because it had nothing to do with the plot but Shelton argued, “There is no plot. The movie is well-structured, but there’s no plot.” He even had to convince the studio to film the scene.

Interestingly, a Los Angeles Times profile on the film at the time suggested that Sarandon was aloof to the cast and crew, refusing to give interviews, even to the Orion film crew that had flown in to do a video press kit. They even quoted an anonymous cast member as saying, “Susan plans to see a rough cut of the film before making a decision to do any press. If she then does any interviews, it’s like she’s giving her blessing.”

Bull Durham received positive critical notices. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “I don’t know who else they could have hired to play Annie Savoy, the Sarandon character who pledges her heart and her body to one player a season, but I doubt if the character would have worked without Sarandon’s wonderful performance.” Pauline Kael called it a “sunny romantic comedy” that “has the kind of dizzying off center literacy that Preston Sturges’ pictures had.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised Shelton: “As a director, he demonstrates the sort of expert comic timing and control that allow him to get in and out of situations so quickly that they’re over before one has time to question them. Part of the fun in watching Bull Durham is in the awareness that a clearly seen vision is being realized. This is one first rate debut.” Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf wrote, “It’s a good movie and a damn good baseball movie.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson praised Costner’s performance: “For once Costner has role that he can sink into, that fits his skills, and he shows enormous authority and charm…and with this one performance, he emerges as a true star presence.” Finally, the Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote, “In the same vein, Annie, for all the tough/soft dimension that Sarandon gives her, is really a paper-thin vehicle for a man’s warmest imaginings.”

The first half of Bull Durham is in definite romantic comedy territory fused with a sports movie and then by the last third it integrates more dramatic elements when the Bulls lose after a winning streak and Crash is kicked out of the game for mouthing off to the umpire. It marks a significant turning point for the three main characters as Ebby finds out that he’s been promoted to the majors and Annie ends their relationship and starts one with Crash. The last third also takes on a slightly somber tone mixed with humor as Crash has to figure out what to do next. It’s a master class in how to depict a believable romance between two adults that is sexy without being too explicit. Shelton achieves just the right mix, which may explain why Bull Durham still holds up after all these years.

One of the things I like the most about Bull Durham is that you feel like you’ve been on a journey with these characters. They’ve changed in significant ways by its end. Crash and Annie learn that baseball isn’t everything and that what they have together is more important as he tells her at the end of the film, “I got a lotta time to hear your theories and I want to hear every damn one of them but now I’m tired and I just don’t want to think about baseball and I don’t want to think about nothing. I just want to be.” It’s a great sentiment to end the film on and Shelton makes sure we feel good about it with the final shot of Annie and Crash dancing in her house. In the wrong hands, this could have been too silly but because of where Shelton has taken these characters over the course of the film, we feel that they’ve earned it.

SOURCES

Goldstein, Patrick. “An Outta-the-Ballpark Look at Baseball.” Los Angeles Times. June 21, 1988.

King, Susan. “Ron Shelton Lets His Baseball Flick Stand as is for its Release on Special-Edition DVD.” Los Angeles Times. April 2, 2002.

Loverro. Thom. “Bull Durham, 25 Years Later.” Sports on Earth. June 11, 2003.

Mansfield, Stephanie. “A Dangerous Man.” GQ. October 1992.

Modderno, Craig. “Can Orion Hit and Run with Bull Durham?” Los Angeles Times. January 10, 1988.

Nashawaty, Chris. “Worshipping at the Church of Baseball.” Sports Illustrated. July 9, 2012.

Silverman, Jeff. “Creator of Bull Durham is Rounding Third and Heading for Redemption.” Chicago Tribune. July 29, 1988.

Van Gelder, Lawrence. “Consultant with Cleats.” The New York Times. June 10, 1988.