Bull Durham (1988)

Dir. Ron Shelton

Starring: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson 

Chance turns on the slightest things. Nowhere is this more true than in sports. What makes a great sports player? Genetic freak, like Usain Bolt? An iron will and determination to win, like Terry Butcher? Years and years of honing one’s skill? The random element: the old ‘one in off the backside’ that strikers need to rediscover their form? A gust of wind, a bobble on the green, a slip on wet grass: all these can make or break a chance. It is no surprise that sportsmen are almost perversely superstitious. 

In Bull Durham we meet a struggling minor league baseball team called the Durham Bulls. They have their superstitions. Jimmy prays before every game. Jose rubs his bat with a chicken bone crucifix, and when his girlfriend puts a curse on his glove he cannot catch a single ball. And then there is Annie (Susan Sarandon). She is a woman looking for something to believe in. After going through every religion available she has finally settled on her true calling: “the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball”. She lights candles for the saints of long gone players. And every year she picks a Bulls player to be her lover. That player always has the best season of his life. And this season she has hers eyes fixed on cocky bowler Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a gobby punk with a “million dollar arm” who needs to learn control. She gives him sensible advice (bending his back), not so sensible advice (breathing through his third eyelid) and a mixture of the two (wearing her suspender belt to remind hum to not pull his hips out). When he does hit a rich vein of form he resolves to not do anything to upset it. And this, to Annie’s increasing frustration, includes sleeping with her. 

There is one other person trying to hone LaLoosh. Laloosh likes to be called ‘Nuke’. ‘Crash’ Davis (Kevin Costner) calls him ‘Meat’. Crash is a Minor League veteran, moving wherever the next contract is. He does not have the God-given gifts that Nuke does, but he is canny and can read the game like no one else. Like Annie he is a thinker and a scholar of baseball. He has been brought in to tutor Nuke and make him ready for his move up to “The Show” (the Majors). It is his reading of the game that helps Nuke to demolish batsman after batsman with contemptuous ease, once he has trained him to not overthink. It is not a role that Crash particularly enjoys. He once played in the Majors himself, for “the 21 greatest days of my life”. And now his career is waning. He compares himself to a stable pony, a racehorse being put out to stud. His goal is to help Nuke achieve a career in the Majors, something that he himself never managed. 

Crash combines brains with ingenuity. He does not believe in superstitions. Baseball to him is, in the words of the team coach (Trey Wilson), “a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.” In the middle of a terrible losing streak some of the other Bulls wish that the next game would be rained off to give them a chance to regroup. Crash literally brings the rain – he breaks into the baseball stadium and turns the sprinklers on. He doesn’t wish and pray and hope: he takes action. This is why he walks away when Annie invites both him and LaLoosh back to her house to “try out” for the role of her favoured player for this season. He has, he tells her, never tried out for anything. His record speaks for itself, even if he doesn’t boast that he is just six home runs away from the Minor League record. He has reached the stage in his career when he is drafted in to fix a temporary deficiency, but then will have to make way for the next bright young talent the bosses want to develop (and sell on at a profit to a bigger club). It is a lonely life, and he and Annie are kindred spirits.  

 

He couldn't believe Crash had fallen for the old
'black eye telescope' prank again...

 

This is Costner’s fourth appearance this year. He cycled in American Flyers, he fought crime in The Untouchables, and he was in love with baseball in Field of Dreams. In Bull Durham he is in love with baseball again; the problem is, baseball doesn’t love him back. Susan Sarandon’s groupie is a million years away from her chaste Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking. This is Tim Robbins’ first appearance however – opposite his future wife Sarandon, whom he first met here – and it is probably his mouthy and unworthy star player that will stick longest in the memory. Not least for his own interior monologues. I love his thoughts about wearing the suspender belt, which turn from finding it actually kinda sexy, to defensively denying to himself that this makes him queer. 

Bull Durham is not your average sports movie and this makes it quite interesting. Usually the formula, as in Best Shot, is that a raggle taggle bunch of underdogs are taken all the way to the Final by a coach with unorthodox techniques. Annie certainly has the unorthodox techniques, but she is not the coach. She is merely a groupie. But we do not get the overview of the Bulls’ season. They play poorly then – when Nuke gets into his groove – they start to play really well. But the story finishes before the end of the season. LaLoosh gets his call up to the Majors. His work done, Crash is released. This gives the film a melancholic air. The undeserving shit gets the prize (as Annie says, “the world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness”), and our hero rides off into the sunset. Though he does return for a completely unnecessary five minute sex scene. Frankly it could have been longer (the film, not the unnecessary sex scene). I feel like we barely got started with the love triangle. I would have liked to have seen more of the Bulls’ season. And I would have liked to have worked out what the difference was between a fast ball, a curve ball and a break ball, because they all looked the same to me. 

What have I learnt about North Carolina?

The baseball scene isn’t the most glamorous in the world. Teams take part in the Carolina League. So presumably when Americans talk about the ‘Minor Leagues’ these are not the equivalent of English football leagues with a vertical structure across the nation, but a horizontal distribution of many different regionally-based leagues. In the minor leagues the dressing rooms are cold and bare, and the manager has little more than a desk, a chair and a calendar. They carry their own bags on to the team bus. They can, however, afford Porsches – well, those whom the Majors have their eye on, anyway. The lower-league teams seem to be feeder clubs for the larger ones. 

Baseball is watched by all generations. Games are spiced up by other forms of entertainment – dancers, money dropped from helicopters, free steaks if you hit an advertising hoarding etc.  

Can we go there?

Not only are the locations featured genuine, but so too are the teams. The Durham Bulls really exist, and they did play their home games at the stadium shown in the film, the Durham Athletic Park, on Morris Street in central Durham. Sadly the Bulls moved out in 1994. That local area is their stomping ground. Annie’s house was 911 N Mangum Street in Durham. Crash and Ebby almost come to blows in the alleyway outside Mitch’s Tavern at 2426 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. The bar still has the glass door broken by LaLoosh. Another fight occurs in the Green Room pool hall in Durham (although the pool hall is now across the street from where it was at the time of filming). After being released Crash walks by the old Liggett and Myers Tobacco warehouses between Duke, Gregson and Main Streets. 

On their tours around North Carolina they visit the Burlington Athletic Stadium and the Greensboro World War Memorial Stadium. Crash later finds a place with the Asheville Tourists. 

Overall Rating: 3/5

Nights in Rodanthe (2008)

Dir. George C. Wolfe

Starring: Richard Gere, Diane Lane, James Franco, Viola Davis 

On the storm-lashed shore of North Carolina’s Outer Banks Adrienne (Diane Lane) finds a twisted and warped piece of driftwood. She resolves to fashion it into a keepsake box. Legend has it that such a box will protect the contents placed within. The more ugly and battered the wood, the greater power it has when it is made into something beautiful.

That, you see, is a metaphor. In the world of Nights of Rodanthe it is a metaphor for the two lonely and troubled souls who find themselves in each other’s arms in an out of season hotel. Adrienne has been hurt by her husband leaving her and conflicted by his expressed desire to return. She put her own life, ambitions and career on hold to be a good wife and mother; when her son is hospitalised by an asthma attack hundreds of miles away in Florida she questions whether she is even that. Paul (Richard Gere) likewise gave up part of his life. He scarificed his role as a husband and father to be the best doctor he could be. Now, haunted by the death of a local woman on his operating table, he is forced to question whether the loss of his wife and son was worth it. These two battered individuals have washed up here on the sand. The question is, can they make something beautiful between them? 

Of course they can. Paul gives Adrienne the strength she needs to choose her own path, whether her ex-husband and children like it or not. And she gives Paul the compassion and humanity to reconnect with his son Mark (James Franco) who is working as a doctor in remotest Ecuador (we can tell that it’s Ecuador: the scenes there have a pan-pipe soundtrack). They become better people through knowing each other. The film is entirely predictable. Both Adrienne and Paul are entirely blameless for their problems. They have a glass of wine, they experience a moment of mild peril in a storm… of course they are going to end up in bed together. The one surprise is that there isn’t a happy ending. Look away now if you don’t want to know the ending (SPOILER ALERT!), but Paul is drowned by a flood of crap. After watching Nights in Rodanthe I know how he must have felt. 

There are positives to the film. It has a nice setting. The sand flats and dunes of the Outer Banks, with the wide grey Atlantic behind, form a nice back-drop. And the bed and breakfast of Adrienne’s best friend Jean (The Help’s Viola Davis) is quirky and characterful. Almost too quirky and characterful. It looks like a set from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: a tall, slightly ramshackle, clapboard house teetering on the tideline. The interior (clearly a set rather than the actual seafront property) is crammed eccentrically with local art and crafts. It is a nice enough place for two bruised individuals to hide away from the world. But the spiritual and healing house was all just part of the heavy-handed metaphors the film employs. At the end of the film Adrienne returns to Rodanthe, and what should she see running down the beach but the ‘Bankers’ the wild horses of the area, descendents of those steeds who were shipwrecked in times gone by. They too are a wild, glorious metaphor of… something. I’m not sure what. I suppose they were strong enough to escape their servitude and now represent freedom. Adrienne herself is now free. 

Passion probably wouldn't have flared had they stayed
at the Linton Travel Tavern (off Junction 9 of the M11)

The film Nights in Rodanthe is based upon a novel by bestselling author Nicholas Sparks. Sparks sets many of his novels in his home state of North Carolina: Message in a Bottle, The Last Song, Dear John, The Notebook. And so many of them have now been turned into movies (though The Notebook was relocated to South Carolina when it was filmed). Frankly, after seeing this I do not feel much urge to see any of the others. Let’s hope it was just a bad adaptation. 

What have I learnt about North Carolina?

The one strength of Nights in Rodanthe is its local colour. We travel from Raleigh (pronounced ‘Rar-lee’, not ‘Ralley’) to the coast, over by ferry to the sand spit islands. Here there is a community of salt-lashed fishermen and old timers, battered by never beaten by the area’s frequent hurricanes. They have joyous celebratory festivals when a storm passes, gorging on crabs on crckers and dancing on the piers to the music of double bass, fiddle, Jew’s harp and washboard. Or that is what the tale would have you believe. The islands are populated by wild horses, descendents of shipwreck survivors. There are legends about pirates like Edward Teach ('Blackbeard'). There are other superstitions held by by the locals too, like Jean’s great-grandmother, whose tales about spirits and tradition still resonate.

Can we go there?

Nights in Rodanthe was filmed in Rodanthe and North Topsail Beach. Both are on Hatteras Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Paul and Adrienne dance on Rodanthe Pier. And Jean’s characterful bed and breakfast really exists. The building is called Serendipity and is a rental house. Shortly after the film was released the building was actually damaged in a storm. Its present owner paid for the entire building to be moved further south and further inland and plan to open it for business again, albeit without the tide sweeping around its piles. It should be pointed out that the interiors were filmed on sets, rather than in the building. However, the owners have announced that they intend to redesign the interior to resemble those seen on screen, so you too could give in to passion in the Blue Room. If that floats your boat.

Overall Rating: 1/5

Cape Fear (1962)

Dir. J. Lee Thompson

Starring: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin 

In 1962 Gregory Peck played two memorable lawyers on screen. He won the Academy Award for his principled Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Earlier that year he appeared as another noble lawyerly paterfamilias, but one whose morals are increasingly troubled. This was Sam Bowden in Cape Fear.

Bowden is a different calibre of lawyer to Finch. Just looking at his grand house with its sprawling and well-kept grounds shows the viewer that he is much more successful than ‘30s small-town lawyer Atticus. Instead of two children he just has the one, Nancy (Lori Martin). He also still has a wife, Peggy (Polly Bergen). But he still strives to do the right thing. Why, eight years ago he even intervened to stop an “attack” – a rape – on a young woman. His testimony was enough to get the perpetrator jailed. 

But eight years later that criminal is out of jail and wants pay-back. Robert Mitchum portrays Max Cady as one of the nastiest characters ever committed to celluloid. He is a sadistic rapist – and kudos to writer James R. Webb for bringing him to the screen in an era when the word rape could not be uttered. Cape Fear pushed the limits of what was acceptable in the cinema. To be released in Britain around six minutes of cuts had to be made (now reinstated on the DVD I watched) and it still came out with an X rating. Cady wants vengeance on Bowden for the eight years he lost. He does not associate his imprisonment with his attempted rape; he blames it all on Bowden’s intervention. And so he seeks out Bowden. He is strong, vicious, amoral and – worryingly – smart. Eight years of studying law in gaol has taught him exactly far he can go in his war of nerves. He is careful not to overstep the mark. He lets Sam know he is in town. But he cannot be linked to the poisoning of the Bowden’s pet dog. He terrorises bad girl Diane (Barrie Chase) so that she refuses to testify after he rapes her. When Sam catches him eyeing 14-year-old Nancy he attacks Cady; Cady refuses to retaliate. And in fact Max does everything requested of him by the police – before bringing in his own lawyer to protest that he is being victimised. When the police can do no more Sam’s friend the Chief (Martin Balsam) suggests he turn to a private detective. When Charlie Sievers (a young Telly Savalas – with hair!) can do no more he suggests Sam hire some heavies to run Max out of town. Sam, desperate, finally resorts to this, but it backfires. In danger of losing his licence to practice law Sam has one last chance – to use his wife and daughter as bait to lure Cady out to their houseboat on the Cape Fear river. There he will attempt to ambush him. 

And he has to use his family as bait. It is his family that Cady targets in the hope of ruining Sam’s life – “I got something planned for your wife and kid that they ain’t nevah gonna forget. They ain’t nevah gonna forget it… and neither will you Counsellor. Nevah!” He continually makes comments about how sweet Peggy looks – and how young Nancy is developing just as well. In particular it is the young girl that he has eyes for. And what eyes! Mitchum has the heavy, lazy gaze of a predator. His entire carriage screams malevolence. No wonder Nancy runs away in terror when she spots him in the street. He has a human cunning, but no human decency. Time and again Cady is referred to as “a beast”, “an animal”; Diane tells him “you’re just an animal: coarse, lustful, barbaric” (this is actually a turn-on for her!). Sam says that he belongs in a cage. He is absolutely grotesque – but at the same time he is clever and has a sort of feral charisma. How else could he seduce Diane while being arrested? Above all he is confident, and confidence is attractive. He is confident in his own strength, he is confident in his power over the Bowdens, and he is confident that the law cannot touch him. As Bowden complains “Either we’ve got too many laws or not enough.” It really is Mitchum’s performance that lifts the story above the humdrum and turns it into something truly chilling. Classic moment? When he corners Peggy on the houseboat. In anger he suddenly grabs an egg and crushes it in his fist. This was entirely improvised and Bergen’s shock and revulsion were real. 



"Hey Atticus - I stole your hat!"

The final confrontation at Cape Fear is electrifying. I suppose we should know that Sam would win out against Max – it’s a film from 1962 from heaven’s sake, and Max is so evil and Sam is so, well, Gregory Peck, that anything else would have been unthinkable. But Cady certainly pushes it to the wire. To be honest, I think we have lost something with the move to colour films. Black and white work brilliantly in menacing night-time scenes like this. The  moonlight and the shadows of vegetation stripe Max’s half-naked body as he slips from the river and prowls into the undergrowth as lethal as a jungle beast. I find it hard to imagine how it would look in colour if I’m honest. 

Though I should know. While this was my first occasion to watch this original, I have previously seen a different version. In 1991 Martin Scorsese remade the film with Nick Nolte as Sam and Robert De Niro as Cady. In many ways the later version is superior. De Niro is a terrifying pumped-up steroidal Frankenstein’s monster. He is also mad, as becomes clear towards the end of the film. He is more of an obvious physical threat than Mitchum’s terrific shark-like circling of the Bowdens. Mitchum’s Cady is not mad; his danger comes from the fact that he is perfectly rational. At the same time Nolte’s Sam is less Dudley Do-Right. In the Scorsese version he was the lawyer defending Cady and he covered up some of the evidence in order to get his client sent down. It is implied that he is having an affair with a colleague. Sam is less scrupulous and his family is less perfect. Probably its main strength is the relationship between Cady and Sam’s daughter (now called Danielle). He infiltrates her life, and she responds to him. Mind you, she is played by Juliette Lewis! The climax is much more action-packed and ends in a death. Finally, Scorsese sets the film in North Carolina. Despite the name of the film (Cape Fear is a promontory and river in the south of NC) the bulk of the action in the original takes place in Georgia. Which I didn’t realise before I watched the film! 

What have I learnt about North Carolina?

Not as much as I would have hoped. The Scorsese remake lulled me into a false sense of security. In the 1991 version Sam Bowden practises law in New Essex, North Carolina. In the original he practices in Georgia. The only scenes set in North Carolina are those of the climax on the Bowden’s houseboat on the Cape Fear river. Frankly, the only link to North Carolina is that river – and the only reason that river is used instead of any other Georgian rivers (which would make more sense) is because it has a cool name. How could a police officer from Georgia be permitted to stand guard in North Carolina? 

But we learn that there is indeed a Cape Fear river, and that it is a recreation area. It is a maze of small islands and wild vegetation. The bird-life sounds almost tropical. 

Can we go there?

No filming took place in North Carolina at all. Filming did occur in Georgia, however – in Savannah (location of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). Several of the historic plaques can be seen around town behind the action. In an odd case of art imitating life Robert Mitchum, as a young man, had in fact been charged with vagrancy (one of the charges the police attempt to throw at Cady) and sentenced to work on a chain gang. Quite understandably he was quite reluctant to revisit the town. As a result a large number of the scenes were shot back in California. The scenes on what is meant to be the Cape Fear River were hence actually filmed at Ladd’s Marina in Stockton. 

Overall Rating: 4/5

Week 34: North Carolina

"I'm a mile and a half off the tracks
 In Raleigh, North Carolina,
 With my foot all jammed up from
 Driving fourteen hours;
 And my body can't sit upright,
 Hanging around watching the TV on mute..."
 - 'North Carolina',
 Melissa Ferrick

Now I've done some research here, and fourteen hours from Seneca Falls, New York, to Raleigh, North Carolina, actually sounds about right. Maybe Melissa Ferrick is taking the same journey as us...

After a month in the 'News' (Hampshire, Jersey, Mexico and York) we now have a fortnight in the 'Norths'. But before we get to North Dakota we have North Carolina to look at. And there's plenty in the state's history to be interested in. Raleigh is named after Sir Walter, who brought back to England the potato and tobacco from here (after he'd figured out which one to eat and which one to smoke). The Roanoke Settlement was somewhere on the coast in North Carolina, and the state witnessed the first birth of an English child in North America (Virginia Dare). Tobacco remains important as an industry to this day. But Kitty Hawk out on the Outer Banks also saw the Wright Brothers make the first successful powered flight. And there are major universities and research institutions in the inland triangle made up of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.

From the shoals and sounds of the sand-banked Atlantic coast, through the fields of tobacco and studenty cities and all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west there is a lot to cover in North Carolina. And I only have three films to do it in. So let's turn the TV off mute and get started. My North Carolina movies are: 

• Cape Fear (1962)
• Nights in Rodanthe (2008)
• Bull Durham (1988)