Actually, I guess I’m asking more about Europeans and Aussies, here. Given how much US culture gets exported across the globe, and the fact that a goodly portion of our movies revolve around baseball, I wonder if a) those movies are exported at all, and b) if they have the same impact, if they make any sense, or if they do well in theaters at all.
So, EuroDopers, I ask you: Did you cry watching Field of Dreams ? Did you like The Natural? Did Major League ever get released over there? And when you were watching it, did you just ignore the baseball stuff you didn’t understand? Or is it just such a common part of American culture that you’ve managed to pick up what’s going on in a 3-2 count with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th with the game on the line?
I’ve watched a few movies about baseball and have pretty much just ignored all the stuff I didn’t understand (just about anything that has to do with baseball).
Same with football, I have absolutely no clue about what the idea of that game is, but I’ve watched a few movies where it’s in anyhow.
Baseball - as I understand it - is cricket with chewing tobacco.
So, yes, I got Field of Dreams. As for the rules, they’re about as clear to me as hurling. But if it’s a good film you can always tell what the significance of a scene is supposed to be.
Two of my all time fave movies are about baseball! “Field of Dreams” & “Stealing Home”. We do have baseball & softball here anyway and it’s very similar to a game we play (mainly in primary school) called rounders. So yeah, we “get” baseball movies. “Major League” was brilliant! “There’s no crying in baseball!!!” Luv it.
One of the standard rules of marketing American films in foreign countries is that baseball (and other purely American sports) movies don’t sell well overseas. Here’s a list from the book Pop Culture Wars by William D. Romanowski of what sorts of American movies sell well internationally and what sorts are usually disappointments compared to their U.S. audience figures.
Do well internationally (compared to their U.S. audience figures):
Animation
Movies that were blockbusters in the U.S.
Star-driven films
Action/adventure movies
Sex/exploitation films
Films intended for art house theaters
Don’t do well internationally (compared to their U.S. audience figures):
Films with themes too specifically American (racial prejudice, American political history films, films about American institutions that aren’t well known outside the U.S.)
Films with nearly all-black casts (and all-Hispanic ones or other films aimed at a ethnic audience)
Westerns
Light comedies
Films about American sports
I’m a huge movie fan, but I have a viseceral aversion to competitive sports (unless they show a lot of skin . . .) and so I often find I don’t like a sport-themed movie as much as a sports fan does. More later perhaps; I’m on a library machine and it’s timing out.
I’m a deeply sports-phobic American, but I love sport-themed movies. Because, of course, the sport is basically a McGuffin for the drama of the plot. I don’t need to know my infield fly rule from my designated batter to enjoy the relationship between Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. And, while I may not care for baseball myself, I can appreciate the passions it kindles in other people. The Natural does nothing for me as a movie about baseball, but it works wonders as a movie about people who love baseball.
BTW, psychotropic, the line “There’s no crying in baseball!” comes from A Leage of their Own, not Major League.
Nope. I can understand the point, and I can understand why they might have an emotional impact, but to me it just seems far removed from something I can really appreciate.
Well, right, but you DO have to know what a second baseman is, or have a vague idea about the rules, to understand a good number of scenes. As an American, no matter how sports-phobic you are, you’ve picked up the gist of baseball. You understand at least the basics of baseball, and could describe the rules fairly briefly, in the sense of “There’s nine innings, 3 outs an innings, 3 strikes in an out, and you have to get to the base before the ball does.” Do people in other countries understand that much of baseball? Because I know I don’t understand how many overs there are in a wicket, or who the flanker just tried on that drop goal.
No, you really don’t. Sorry, but from this European’s point of view it’s not essential at all. Mainly becuase the intellectual level of most movies made in Hollywood is made so a 12 year old will get the plot points, McGuffins, main conflict, find the protagonist and antagonist.
And yes, they do get theatrical release.
I enjoyed Field of Dreams and Bull Durham. Any given Sunday was just tiresome, Major Legue was cheesy fun.
Well I can’t speak for other countries, but I think there are enough sports fans in Britain, Australia and New Zealand who already have enough of a grasp of baseball rules so that the films you’ve mentioned don’t completely confuse us. They may not have been major theatrical successes but Field of Dreams and Major League are often shown on television in the UK, and *Cobb[i/], Eight Men Out and A League Of Their Own have been shown too among others.
A lot of the significant plot elements of Major League can be transferred to other sports anyway - the boring road trips, club politics, the relationship between team and fans, the problems faced by a player rising through the ranks of minor leagues and his end-of-career decline etc. are constant preoccupations for followers of our own sports.
Surely a good sports film is one that operates on more than the simplistic level of the game’s rules?
To turn this discussion around I watched Lagaan, an Indian movie about Kricket, and I totally got it. I knew absolutely nothing about the sport. And despite that I still got what was going on in every scene. It’s all in the film making.
Here in the UK we have a regular program on American sports (NFL + Major League mainly). (And there’s always Meatloaf’s classic ‘Paradise by the dashboard light’ to provoke interest!)
I understand baseball is based on rounders (simple UK children’s game).
I must say that most sports movies are pretty easy to follow, even if you don’t know how close the hero is to losing.
I know Field of Dreams and The Natural were released here in the UK, but I don’t recall Major League.
I’ll have a go at the jargon you mention:
The pitcher tries to get the batter out by throwing strikes (3 and you’re out?). If he misses some defined area, it’s a ball (presumably you’re allowed 4 of these). So the 3-2 count is balls and strikes.
3 outs ends an innings, so 2 outs means no more mistakes.
9 innings each in a match, presumably bottom means ‘near the end’.
on the line = close match, could go either way.
Do let me know how close I got.
WARNING - if you poke fun at my ‘ignorance’, you will be given a test on cricket.
No, I don’t think you need to know anything about the sport in question to enjoy a movie about the sport. Let’s take, say, Major League as an example. You can be 100% pig ignorant about baseball, and still pick up that Tom Berenger needs to hit the little white ball really hard with his stick to win the big game at the end of the movie. Movies give you plenty of other cues to figure out what’s important, even if you know nothing about the sport itself.
Let me give you another example: Trading Places. This is one of my all time favorite movies. Watched it a dozen times. I still have no idea what’s going on in the climactic scene on Wall Street. I understand that the two characters just made millions trading orange juice. I don’t get how they did it, but I understood what they were doing and that they were successful. Same thing with sports movies. You don’t need any knowledge of the sport to understand who the hero is, what his goals are, and wether or not he meets those goals. And that’s what makes a good movie, no matter what the subject matter is.
Bob Hope once said of Bull Durham, “It’s a movie all about our national pastime, with a little bit of baseball thrown in.”. As I rather suspect that other non-American countries share the same national pastime, I don’t think that it would lose too much in the translation.
The thing is, you just can’t make a good movie about sports. You can, however, make a good movie about something else, and put it in the context of sports. There are sports movies about sex. There are sports movies about following your dreams. There are sports movies about kids who succeed against the odds. There are sports movies about miracles. But there are no sports movies about sports.
And by the way, glee, you got all the terminology right, except that there are other ways to get an out than by strikes (for instance, if you hit the ball and someone on the other team catches it before it hits the ground, you’re out), and “bottom” of an inning specifically means that it’s the second half of the inning, which is when the home team is up to bat.
Except for the “bottom” of an inning. An inning is divided into two halves–one where the visiting team bats (until 3 outs are recorded) and then the home team bats (until 3 outs are recorded). Referred to as the “top” and “bottom” of the inning, respectively. So each inning has a bottom. The bottom of the 9th is the last half of the last inning (unless the score is tied, and there are extra innings.)
Well, in a way.
The genre, as made in Hollywood sorta died in the late 50’s early 60’s. To some extent, I think it went together with social changes during the 60’s too. I guess it was kinda beaten to death with endless tv-series.
But the public was still hungry for westerns in the theatres. The Italians step in, most notably with Sergio Leone. The films were shot in Spain and produced some really good stuff and some truly awful too (Trinity, anyone?). Of course, with the success of the Spagetti Western, Hollywood took part of the franchise back. But that’s another story.
All truly good westerns from the 40’s and 50’s are Hollywood made.
