When Dwier Brown left home in the summer of 1988 to shoot “Field of Dreams” in the middle of nowhere, Iowa…he likely had no idea that he was about to end up shooting one of the most iconic scenes of the last quarter century.
Now, 25 years later, Bown is celebrating the anniversary of the experience with If You Build It…, a book about fathers, fate and, naturally the Academy Award nominated film itself.
HOVG: First of all, I am not going to say the famous quote to you. I promised myself that I would refrain from that joke at all costs, because I am sure you have heard it ten times a day for every day of your life for the past 25 years.
BROWN: (Laughs) That’s alright, it never gets old.
HOVG: You know what, that is something I wanted to ask you about. So I guess we will start there. Is it hard, or do you ever get sick of people bringing up “Field of Dreams”? Has it ever been a nuisance at any point?
BROWN: It really hasn’t. I was just telling my wife, that it is sort of a nice level of fame to have. I can live most of my life pretty anonymously. You will run into the person who had that movie strike them so deeply that they can somehow pick me out 25 years later, when I’ve got three days of beard growth and my hair is a mess. I always say that the rest of the cast and the crew, they did all of the hard work of opening the audiences heart. All I did was take off my catcher’s mask. You feel honored to have been given a free pass to people’s most tender feelings. Usually when people come up to me, they are wonderful. It’s sort of the definition of heaven. Everybody you run into is happy to see you and have a story about how that movie impacted their life. And even though my part was small, I have learned to just take it in because maybe I am the only person they will ever be able to tell that to. And I want to receive that kind of compliment as openly as I can. So it has never gotten old so far? No.
HOVG: You kind of answered this a little bit, but from an actor’s perspective, is it ever hard to know that your actual role in the movie is the biggest part, even though you are only on screen for a small portion of time? I cannot think of a lot of other movies that are like that. Is that weird for you at all?
BROWN: I think all of us as artists, no matter what field you are in, want to be remembered for doing something that you love to do. Despite the fact that I had a small part in the film, I had hundreds of small parts. (Laughs) I just try and do a good job. There I have been times when I have done good work that wound up on the cutting room floor or ignored. So to have anything that really resonates with people so deeply, is amazing. I feel very lucky. There are really fine actors out there, giving great performances all of the time, but it is never necessarily one that people will walk up to you 25 years later…and tell them some incredible way that a movie, you were a part of, changed their lives. To have that, is every artist’s dream I think. I try to honor that by always being present, listening to what people have to say, and responding however I can because it really is an honor.
HOVG: I would imagine it is pretty cool…being remembered for something like that. That movie fell right into a very impressionable period of my life. That movie came out when I was six years old, my Dad taught me how to play baseball and took me to games…and that movie for me flipped the switch from liking baseball to loving baseball. So it’s really cool to talk to you, if I haven’t told you that already. This is the first interview I have done were I am genuinely nervous, so I can confirm that you do have a certain impact on people. I can’t explain it…this is just too cool.
BROWN: Thanks, Lou.
HOVG: No thank you necessary. Umm, I want to talk about your book. But first, when I found out I would be interviewing you I stumbled across your IndieGoGo page. I had planned to make a donation…but I missed it by like a day and a half…like you had just closed it. So my apologies for that.
BROWN: (Laughs) That’s alright.
HOVG: Since I am sure everyone asks you to give a synopsis about the book, I want to switch it up. Keep you on your toes. Why should everyone buy your book?
BROWN: That’s a great question. If you loved “Field of Dreams”, you will love my book. I purposely tried to create the great energy that the book Shoeless Joe and, of course the movie (Field of Dream) created. What I love about them is that they sort of tell this story, and if you go on the journey with them…like you don’t know why this voice is talking to Ray, and then he builds the field. So if you buy that…that he would plow over his corn, then you sort of make this commitment to the story. Then the next thing is, he’s got to go off to get Terrence Mann …if you buy that, then you get invested in the plot. And then by the end of it you get the payoff, which is so rewarding at the end because no one is expecting it…not even Ray. People thought they were going to see a baseball movie, but they were taken on this emotional adventure story. And then in the end, it comes back full circle and rewards the audience and Ray. That’s a pretty great, not only surprise but a great fulfillment of what the movie was all about. And I made a conscious effort to do that with my book. I have always wanted to write a book. Two and a half-years ago I thought, “Geez, what could I write about?”. It occurred to me that dozens of people had come up to me over the years and told me stories about their fathers and how that movie changed their relationships. You know, they hadn’t spoken to their Dad in years and they saw the movie…ran out of the theater went and grabbed their Dad and took him right back to the theater. They would sit through the movie and by the end, they start crying and hug. They somehow forget the drama or whatever it was that had kept them separated for years. Sometimes strangers have told me stories and by the end they are crying, I am crying, and WE hug each other. I thought, these are stories that I might be the only one privy to. I was thinking that everyone involved with the movie: James Earl Jones, Amy Madigan, and Kevin Costner certainly would certainly have people come up, but if you ran into James or Kevin…you would have 15 other movies you might want to ask them about. You would probably be more inclined to bring up Star Wars to James Earl, than ‘Field of Dreams”. (Laughs) But for me, people recognize me usually for “Field of Dreams” and because I am the character whose face appears when everyone’s heart is open, I am the guy that they remember and for whom the emotion is ripe. So the book started as those stories, then it made me think about my father…so I started writing about my experiences with my own father. It was troubled, but fortunately it had a happy ending. Then I figured, I should probably tell some stories about baseball. I’ve had a very interesting relationship with the game of baseball. My very first memory is my mom hitting me in the mouth with a bat.
HOVG: (Laughs) Ouch!
BROWN: Yeah, it’s a funny story now. Obviously, I don’t want to make it sound like my mother was beating me with a bat…I was five years old and she was teaching me to play. It is a funny story that has been around our family because she had the best of intentions of teaching us how to play baseball. Ironically, I was playing catcher and I was crouched too close behind her and she swung the bat around and I ended up with nine stitches inside of my mouth. Another story, I once batted .000 for an entire season of Little League. I thought…that is something. My picture wound up in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, so that is another thing. I made it there by way of the movie, but I don’t know too many people who bat .000 in Little League and end up in the Hall of Fame. So I have tried to weave all of these stories together and periodically drop in one of these stories about the fans who have come up to me over the years. I think the book is an interesting ride. It jumps around a lot and I think it also requires you to kind of pay attention to which story I am on. I hope I am doing a good job of that. We have gotten some very good reviews from the New York Times, The Daily News and message boards and the like. Which is great. But you know, I wrote the book I wanted to write. I think it is entertaining and I hope it has the same kind of impact that the movie does. It’s early, but I have already been told that it reminds them and makes them think of their father. It’s kind of great, because I never knew what to get my Dad for Father’s Day. My kids never know what to get me for Father’s Day, so I figured I would write a book! So anyway, that is the long answer to a short question.
HOVG: No, no. I am here for you and your words. (Laughs)
BROWN: I think people will love the book. I am the kind of person who would not want a book out there with my name on it, if I wasn’t proud of it.
HOVG: A friend of mine was curious to know if there would be an audio book available?
BROWN: You know…we just got the books. So I am busy addressing them and sending them to the people who supported the IndieGoGo campaign. Sorry, Lou, you are not one of them.
HOVG: I know…I really whiffed on that one. I have no one to blame but myself.
BROWN: No, it’s fine. We raised the money that we needed to do that we can do our old-fashioned book tour. We are going to be stopping at several minor league ballparks all around the Midwest, it is going to be great. But I would love to do an audio book, and I want to. I have done voice over work and other stuff like that. What I would really like is to do the audio book myself and do all of the voices, you know, have fun with it. Some of the stories come from Boston and West Virginia, for example, so I thought that if I do the audio book…I want to do all the voices. You know though, there are also parts of the book that make me cry, like talking about my dad. So if I start crying during the recording of the audio book, I think I’ll just leave it in. Which is something they would take out if I did it in a studio. So if I do the audio book, which could happen in a few weeks, I am going to make it my audio book and hope that everyone will enjoy hearing me tell my own story.
HOVG: Well let me know if there is an IndieGoGo for the audio book. I want to get in on the ground floor for that one.
BROWN: Oh, well, thanks. But I think on this one, I know people who are musicians and have their own recording studios that I could use for fairly cheap. So I could do an IndieGoGo for like, $100 or so, but I am not sure it would be worth it.
HOVG: Fair enough. So you were talking about how baseball impacted your life growing up and I have question about that. When I was doing research about you for this interview, I stumbled across a blog post from fairly large television network’s site. I don’t know if you have ever seen this before, but it is titled “Actors who can’t throw a baseball, even with movie magic”. Now, you somehow made it on there. I want to dispel this. No joke, I went and watched the famous “catch” scene about twenty times after that, and I can tell you whole-heartedly (as someone who has played baseball his entire life) that there are far worse offenders. FAR worse offenders. I think that your throwing motion is perfectly fine. If you are a catcher, your throwing motion is never going to look quite right anyway.
BROWN: Thank you for that. I have to say, I saw that blog post and it really hurt my feelings. Not really in a bad way…I was able to laugh at it, but I have played a bunch of baseball, so I am not that worried about it. A little something special for your readers…when I saw the movie, I thought to myself. “huh, I do kind of look funny”. So let me offer up this in my defense…first of all, other than getting hit in the mouth with a bat by my mom, I was never a catcher. So I tried to study. You’re right, the throwing motion is a little different. You’re in a squat and you’ve got the umpire behind you. That makes it hard to have any kind of wind up for your throw. And also, in the movie, that final shot was the real money shot of “Field of Dreams”. It was a medium budget film, but that was where they spent a bulk of that money. That’s not CGI…that’s 1988! Those are all real cars, 1,500 of them lined up leading to the field in Dyersville, Iowa. They all had their headlights on. Over 3,000 extras inside of those cars. Then, of course, they had the helicopter for that final shot. That helicopter just sat there in left field just waiting to take off. The whole film crew had to hide their cars, or trailers. No camera trucks, because once that helicopter gets up there it will be able to see roughly twenty miles of Iowa farm land. They had to halt train service and blackout the entire town. On top of that, the shot has to done where it is light enough in the sky to match the scene where Kevin (Costner) and I started playing catch, but dark enough so that you can see the headlights. That leaves a fifteen to twenty minute window of time when we can shoot that scene. So, with all that going on, I am wearing a vintage 1950’s catcher mitt, which was completely inflexible. Normally you can tell when the ball goes in there, but for whatever reason this was a new, antique catcher’s mitt. It was so heavily padded that you couldn’t even tell when the ball was hitting the mitt. That meant I was going to be catching with two-hands. All of that pressure and probably $5-10,000 per minute, with the cost of filming that shot, and I was just worried about dropping the ball. I thought, “how embarrassing would it be if the helicopter takes off, the extras are moving towards the field in their cars, and then the ball hits me in the mitt and dribbles out”? So there was a little more pressure. Suddenly you are playing catch with Kevin Costner, who is a good baseball player, and I was just worried I would drop the ball or throw it over his head. When you are playing in that kind of pressure situation, you get a little conservative in your throwing motion…which is what I did. I don’t think it was as bad as that blog post made it sound.
HOVG: I would agree with that 100%. As someone who is a student of the game, I thought you did a great job. I want you to know that I think this blog article is nonsense and you have no place on there. I mean, they had some good ones on there…but I took issue with a few of them. It will be my life’s quest now, to squash this outrageous blog post.
BROWN: Well, thank you so much. You know, whenever I watch sports movies…I can always tell within a second if somebody played baseball or not. You see them shoot in the scene, and so I have definitely been the guy who says “Come on…that guy has never played baseball before in his life!” But, yeah, I think that me being on that list is a little unjust. I mean, they coached us to play more in the style of 1920’s baseball. Everyone had a stiffer gate.
HOVG: Sure, different throwing motions, batting stances, and overall technique. Almost a different game. But, you certainly did not deserve to be on there.
BROWN: Well, I write about it in the book, with more detail. So, if you are interested, I encourage you to read my side of the story. (Laughs)
You can learn more about Dwier Brown and purchase his book, If You Build It…, over at his website. You can also following the actor on Facebook and on Twitter. Brown, some of his “Field of Dreams” castmates and some former Major Leaguers will be heading back to Dyersville, Iowa for the 25th anniversary of the film Father’s Day weekend.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
