Field of Dreams
Short description
Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer, lives with his wife and young daughter and is struggling with debts and the fear of ending up like his father, a man who never pursued his dreams. One evening, walking through his cornfield, he hears a voice telling him that if he builds it, someone will come. Uncertain what it means but willing to believe, he tears up part of his crop and lays out a baseball diamond. When the field is finished, players from the past appear on it, among them the long-dead star Joe Jackson. The voice does not stop with that instruction, so Ray sets out to understand what is being asked of him and why.
Phil Alden Robinson wrote and directed the film, the second he made as director after In the Mood in 1987. Kevin Costner plays Ray, with Amy Madigan as his wife Annie, Gaby Hoffmann as their daughter Karin, Ray Liotta as Joe Jackson, Timothy Busfield as Mark and James Earl Jones as Terrence Mann; thirty-six cast members are credited in all. Produced by Lawrence Gordon and Charles Gordon for Universal Pictures, Carolco Pictures and Gordon Company, it cost about 15 million dollars and took roughly 84 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on its budget.
Audiences rate it 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb from around 138,000 votes and 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller base, while a critics' rating stands at 8.2 out of 10 from 65 reviews, placing critical opinion above the general audience score.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Ray travels to Chisholm, Minnesota in 1972 in search of Moonlight Graham, "The Godfather" (1972) is playing at the local cinema.
- Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was a real baseball player. On June 29, 1905, he played one game in the Major League with the New York Giants. Five days later, he abandoned his dream of a professional career to become a doctor.
- The actual field from the film still exists in Dyersville, Iowa, approximately 20 miles west of the city of Dubuque. Downtown Dubuque was the primary location for filming most of the scenes supposedly set in Boston, including the location where Ray found Terence Mann’s apartment by the single window without a chicken hanging in it.
- An interesting fact: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are among the thousands of extras in the Fenway Park scene, and are also listed in the credits. More than ten years later, when Phil Alden Robinson invited Affleck to star in “Fear,” Affleck said, “Nice to be working with you again,” after which Robinson asked what the actor meant by “again,” and Affleck explained the connection.
- The film is based on the novel "Shoeless Joe," written by W.P. Kinsella, a graduate of the University of Iowa. In the novel, instead of searching for the fictional writer Terence Mann, Ray Kinsella searches for the real author of the 1960s, J.D. Salinger. In 1947, Salinger wrote a story titled "A Girl Without Flaws in the Cursed Forty-First" featuring a character named Ray Kinsella.
- When Ray asks Barefoot Joe what he likes most about baseball, Joe replies, "The thrill of the grass." This is the title of a 1985 collection of baseball stories by W.P. Kinsella.
- W.P. Kinsella, the author of the original novel, was asked to write a review of the film for a Canadian magazine. He gave it four out of five stars for two reasons: first, he didn’t think the character of Mark was villainous enough, and second, because Gaby Hoffmann didn’t look like the daughter of Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan.
- In W.P. Kinsella’s novel, the main character Ray reconnects with his twin brother Richard (a subplot that did not make it into the film).
- The fictional novel by Terence Mann in the film is called “The Boat Rocker.” Many people tried to find copies of this book after watching the film, unaware that it doesn't actually exist.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
