25th Anniversary: Bull Durham
Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 11:08PM 
Tim here, in celebration of the silver anniversary of one of the best movies on the 1980s. On June 15, 1988, Bull Durham opened, immediately becoming one of the best-loved romantic comedy/sports movie hybrids ever made, and a quarter of a century on, it seemed like the ideal moment to look back to see just how well the quintessentially ‘80s movie has aged.
The answer, I am happy to say, is: pretty darn well, notwithstanding the set-in-stone timestamp of any movie that features Kevin Costner as a romantic lead (or features Tim Robbins looking like a 12-year-old). The chief appeal of Bull Durham remains exactly what it was 25 years ago: it really does offer something for everybody, in the words of the cliché.
At least, everybody who’s a grown-up (the film comes by its R-rating fairly, and without pandering). Sports fans have one of the best movies about baseball ever made: it opens with a literal prayer to the sport, as though it were in and of itself a deity. Romantic comedy fans get one of the best romantic triangles in the last couple generations of cinema, with a woman torn between a dopey charming boy and a cynical handsome man, neither of them transparently painted as the “bad” choice, as happens so damn often these days. Actressexuals – and I suspect that might be a larger population here than the first two – have the spectacle of Susan Sarandon giving on of her freshest, least-fussy but richest performances ever, a sexually vital woman with a curious idea of physical spirituality. Nobody else could have played it half as persuasively, in the late ‘80s or ever: the exact mix of post-hippie flakiness, maternal authority (Sarandon had a full decade on either of her co-stars; imagine that happening in a romantic comedy today) and erotic self-awareness couldn’t possibly be embodied better.
That’s what works in the film, primarily: it has strong characters, each a little idiosyncratic without stumbling into the dread Quirky, all played well by ideally-cast actors (if Sarandon gives one of her best performances, Costner is giving his absolute best performance ever, by such a margin that No. 2 can hardly be spotted). It’s quite a grown-up movie, made in the last period when such movies were regularly produced and released to broad acclaim and financial success, and by “grown-up”, I simply mean this: it is about normal-sized emotions, and humor that grows naturally up through the characters and situations without relying on extreme absurdity or over-the-top slapstick. It rewards you for being intelligent and caring about humans, without requiring that you wade into the thorny maze of lacerating art house cinema.
Not bad for a movie set in the decidedly offbeat world of minor-league baseball, where a downrent team called the Durham Bulls is struggling to maintain a winning record, chiefly aided by veteran catcher Crash Davis (Costner), and talented, undisciplined pitcher Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Robbins). The latter of these is adopted as the season’s project by Annie Savoy (Sarandon), who picks one promising player every year to make her lover, inspiring him with her positive sexuality and erotic adoration of baseball to have the best season of his career.
There’s nothing in that scenario that screams “heavy conflict”, and that’s exactly how Bull Durham plays out: low-key, low-stakes entertainment, given depth and gravity because of Oscar-nominated writer-director Ron Shelton’s tangible love of the world he’s depicting (he was himself a minor-league player in the 1960s), not because he or any of the actors try to fool us into thinking that this is a world-changing series of events. Sure, the characters end up in very different places from where they started, but the movie’s perspective remains steadily non-urgent. These people might be changing, but baseball remains as constant as ever, and that is, in the end, the film’s biggest concern: how the sport inspires the people who are obsessed with it.
In the end, then, Bull Durham is an odd sort of love story indeed: as much about how Annie’s love of baseball deepens her life as how her love of either of two semi-professional athletes affects any of them. It’s about the things that give life meaning and shape in addition to sex and relationships, not the things that give life meaning until a relationship comes along, which makes it one of the most sensible romantic comedies imaginable. That thing is baseball, because Ron Shelton knew baseball well enough to depict it with some considerable detail and affection; but the real takeaway is that there are three people here engaging with their favorite thing, and finding long-lasting, important human contact along that way. It’s that kind of basic, genuinely nice humanity at the center of it that has kept Bull Durham a solid classic that’s still entirely delightful even after all these years.
Reader Comments (17)
I don't know, Tim. Kevin Costner was pretty good in "The Upside of Anger." Can that performance really be that far below the one in "Bull Durham"?
Okay, that's fair. But I maintain that what he's up to in Bull Durham is leagues better than anything else he did in the '80s or '90s.
Bull Durham marks career-best work from all three main actors — Sarandon, Costner, Robbins. Ok, Louise (of "Thelma and Louise") is just as immaculate a creation as Annie Savoy. And, yes, Costner was wonderfully vanity-free and pitch-perfect in "The Upside of Anger, but he's so intoxicatingly self-confident and electric here. Absolute classic this one.
thank you for this lovely piece about this wonderful film! I still remember how happy I was when I saw it the first time and I had to restrain myself to immediately watch it again, it was so perfect to me. Now I can hardly wait to go home and watch it again.
Oh, I love Annie Savoy!
Peggy Sue,
I'm actually a big fan of yours too!!!
NC boy in the house!!! I've been to the ballpark where this was filmed many times. So glad for the tribute! BULL DURHAM!!!
...and there he is. Costner. The man I WILL marry someday, as soon as he figures he really does work for our team. (It's been a long, slow process.)
Great film with a well-deserved nomination for Screenplay. I still wonder how Sarandon did not get any traction for Best Actress that year.
And hooray for Male Nudity in the 80's!!!
Oh Annie! Let's be friends.
I am a Costner apologist (probably the only one in existence), so take this with a grain of salt, but I can think of many performances in his career that are closer than you think: JFK, A PERFECT WORLD, THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, OPEN RANGE, TIN CUP, SWING VOTE, and ROBIN HOOD (okay, that one's a joke). Some of those are certainly better performances than they are movies, but I like how comfortable he is in films like THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, SWING VOTE, and TIN CUP. And I like that he was finally able to direct himself to a good, quiet performance in OPEN RANGE. And that speech at the end of JFK is something else...now, when he has to have those horrible arguments with Sissy, that's another thing entirely, but I thought he nailed the big scene at the end of that movie.
You're right, Tim, BULL DURHAM is his best performance; I guess I just don't see the other good ones as far apart as you do.
Kevin Costner in underwear ironing... Such good memories. When did movies become so aseptic and cold?
Hands down my favorite baseball movie. Also the only movie I can stand Kevin Costner in. My mom (big baseball fan) can recite the "things I know" speech from memory, and I'm not unconvinced that I became a catcher because I watched this so often.
Since the Dodgers suck this year, I'll get my baseball fix re-watching this and Bad News Bears.
This is from a decade when older actresses hitting 40 or beyong where getting interesting varied roles,now all we have is heigl,aniston and diaz clogging up cinemas,thank heavens for jennifer lawrence.
Only a handful of sports movies I would watch on a constant loop because they are just so satisfying: Slap Shot, Bull Durham, and the original Bad News Bears (and I actually like the Linklater remake). Although Tatum's character in BNB and Annie Savoy are close to the only females in their worlds all three films that I mentioned actually deal with the portrayal of the sexes pretty well (Nancy Dowd's great script in Slap Shot also helped).
Thanks for a great memory-jogging post. I saw this at the movies in '88, watched it on video when it first came out and then heaps of times after I recorded it off the TV onto VHS (I know!). But it must be 15 -20 years since I've seen it; high time for a revisit.
tim - I love this movie SO MUCH. and I'm totally surprised and delighted to see this tribute that popped up while i was away.
forever1267 -- actually, if i recall correctly (this was in the first few years i was paying attention) she did get talked up a lot... but 1988 was one of those years where they chucked the early favorites to the side and went all december. It's horrible horrible to ponder but basically melanie griffith booted her out of the lineup by opening for Christmas in a huge hit and best picture nominee (working girl) which is in its own way delightful but not half the film that Bull Durham is (sigh)
mark -- well... yes and no. i think ageism is still very prevalent but it has pushed back a decade (you can still work until at least 44 now ;) but the problem is despite the longer space for careers the films aren't really there because hollywood has stopped making movies about middle aged people.
costner was my favorite part of man of steel. surprised the hell out of me too.