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The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit
by Ron Shelton
From the award-winning screenwriter and director of cult classic Bull Durham, the extremely entertaining behind-the-scenes story of the making of the film, and an insightful primer on the art and business of moviemaking.
Bull Durham, the breakthrough 1988 film about a minor league baseball team, is widely revered as the best sports movie of all time. But back in 1987, Ron Shelton was a first-time director and no one was willing to finance a movie about baseball—especially a story set in the minors. The jury was still out on Kevin Costner's leading-man potential, while Susan Sarandon was already a has-been. There were doubts. But something miraculous happened, and The Church of Baseball attempts to capture why.
From organizing a baseball camp for the actors and rewriting key scenes while on set, to dealing with a short production schedule and overcoming the challenge of filming the sport, Shelton brings to life the making of this beloved American movie. Shelton explains the rarely revealed ins and outs of moviemaking, from a film's inception and financing, screenwriting, casting, the nuts and bolts of directing, the postproduction process, and even through its release. But this is also a book about baseball and its singular romance in the world of sports. Shelton spent six years in the minor leagues before making this film, and his experiences resonate throughout this book.
Full of wry humor and insight, The Church of Baseball tells the remarkable story behind an iconic film.
"A marvelous book about a classic movie that is guaranteed to send fans back to the Church of Baseball to hear their favorite sermon one more time" —Booklist (starred review)
"In this spectacular debut, screenwriter and director Shelton reflects on the deeply personal passion that brought his canonical sports film, 1988's Bull Durham, to life…Shelton produces a work that's humanizing and intimate. In addition to his fascinating analyses of the script's genesis…readers will revel in Shelton's own accounts of playing baseball professionally in the minor leagues in the 1960s. As he writes, it was the "fragile and absurd... wondrous and thrilling" world he discovered there that ignited his dreams to write the film. The result is an immensely moving look into the mind behind the masterpiece." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A filmmaker's memoir about the making of one of the best sports movies of all time. Shelton's book is not simply a jaunty recollection of his directing debut, with all its attendant breakthroughs and headaches. The author, who displays sheer, unadulterated love for his subject, also delivers a savvy, unusually informative tutorial on how to take a motion picture from the concept stage to script development, casting, production, and post-production. Shelton examines all of this in a charismatic style that decodes jargon and engages from first page to last. There's plenty of gossip (mostly generous), surprising insights, useful screenwriting strategies, and tips for would-be directors on how to combat studio meddling. Even certified film buffs who have read numerous how-to books by those in the industry will find the author's advice sound and clarity refreshing. "Making a good and successful movie is a minor miracle every time," he writes in the introduction. He goes on to prove his point several times over, chronicling a montage of maddening impediments, unexpected reversals, scheming, happy accidents, and the unpredictable alchemy that is screen chemistry… He set about demystifying a game that clings to its mysteries like pine tar to a bat only to rediscover that some of those mysteries are real—and poetic. Fans of the film will have new reasons to appreciate it—and the team that made it." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"If you loved Bull Durham, you obviously must read Ron Shelton's book about how it was made. Less obvious, but equally true: if you simply love movies, you must read it. No insider has ever written so well, and so revealingly, about the script-rewriting, the studio-fighting, the actor-coddling, the entire sausage-making process of any movie." —Daniel Okrent; author of Last Call, The Guarded Gate, and Nine Innings
This information about The Church of Baseball was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ron Shelton's Bull Durham launched a writing-directing career that includes White Men Can't Jump, Blaze (1989), Cobb, and Tin Cup, among other films. He also directed Jordan Rides the Bus, a documentary about Michael Jordan's year in the minor leagues. A former professional baseball player, he holds degrees from Westmont College and the University of Arizona. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his family.
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