Can Orion Hit and Run With ‘Bull Durham’?

“Hit Bull Win Steak.”

The billboard--featuring the image of an angry bull and erected for the shooting of Orion’s baseball comedy, “Bull Durham”--stands behind the right field fence of El Toro Field, daring batters to stroke one out of the park. But that’s not likely to happen on this freezing night.

The actors--from stars Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins down to minor leaguers recruited for bit parts--are having enough trouble performing the scripted infield hits, errors and bobbled balls. And more trouble making it look like a steamy August evening as a pennant race heats up, as the script requires, instead of the 23 that show on a stadium thermometer.

El Toro, a long home run from Duke University, is ordinarily home for the Class A Atlanta Braves minor league baseball affiliate, the Durham Bulls. But for now, the fictional Durham Bulls and their fictional opponents are on the field. Fans--200 locals recruited through newspaper ads--fill splintered seats, applauding the “heat” thrown by strikeout pitching ace Calvin (Nuke) LaLoosh, played by Robbins, to catcher Crash Davis, portrayed by Costner. Although Costner will lift one unexpectedly over the left field fence 275 feet away while fooling around tonight, he won’t dent the bullish billboard until a crucial moment later in the script.

“Bull Durham,” recently wrapped, is a humorous look at a zany, young phenom pitcher headed inevitably for the majors (Robbins) and his competitive relationship with Costner, a marginally talented catcher who had his shot at the majors years ago and is trying a final comeback. They battle over women, types of pitches to be thrown, attitudes toward the game and what it means to be a ball player.

Whether Orion can hit a home run with this baseball movie when it’s released next summer remains to be seen. Baseball films like “Bang the Drum Slowly” (1973), “Blue Skies Again” (1983) and Neil Simon’s “The Slugger’s Wife” (1985) have struck out resoundingly at theaters (the star power of Robert Redford in “The Natural” helped make that baseball fantasy a middling commercial success). Last summer, “Long Gone,” an HBO original movie about a minor league baseball team similar to “Bull Durham,” received mixed reviews and was only a marginal audience success, according to an HBO executive. The studios’ unwritten rule on sports films--the “Rocky” series being the notable exception--has it that the public won’t pay to see a subject dramatized that’s so available on free TV.

Producer Thom Mount, a Durham native who co-owns the real Bulls in real life, believes the combination of this baseball story and the hot Costner will break the jinx. Mount convinced Orion, which already has John Sayles’ baseball film “Eight Men Out” on its 1988 summer schedule, to finance the $9-million “Bull Durham.” Costner, who played shortstop in high school at Visalia, Calif., is getting a major league superstar salary--$3 million--for his work.

At 33 and with two back-to-back summer hits (“The Untouchables” and “No Way Out”), Costner has suddenly become bankable in Hollywood. But he’s a virtual nobody in Durham, population 103,000 and set in tobacco country.

Two extras, Chip and Barbara Winstead, a young couple from Raleigh who work in advertising and insurance, respectively, fail to pick out Costner on the field until their fifth attempt.

“He looks a lot smaller than he did on the roof in ‘The Untouchables.’ But he does look like a ballplayer instead of an actor,” says Chip Winstead, who brought his wife to the 5 p.m. filming only to be bored and leave two hours later to head home to watch “The Cosby Show.” Many of the other paid “fans” will likewise disappear before shooting ends at 5 a.m.

“This is basketball country, not baseball land,” explains Steve Wilson, a Greenville doctor who stopped for gas nearby and was drawn to the brightly lit stadium. “If the movie was about a minor-league basketball team or a member of the Duke Blue Devils then people would pay to be in the movie.

“The only time people here pay attention to Hollywood is when their movies come to the dollar video store,” says Wilson, climbing into a new van that bears two bumper stickers: “Life is too short to dance with ugly women” and “The shotgun I’m carrying is loaded.”

Back in his unmarked trailer, Costner jokes with visiting buddies. The conversation is light as they tease the actor about his sex-symbol image and his hitting, which he practiced at a batting cage near his Pasadena home while the movie was in pre-production.

He also observed Dodger games from the press box last summer looking for details to help him with his role. Suddenly, he shows a visitor his bat. “This is an official bat, and it even has my character’s name on it,” he says, pointing out his engraved name.

“It’s little things like this that make me feel like an actual ballplayer. This is the only film I’ve worked on where the actors don’t run to their trailers between setups. They all look around for someone to throw a ball to.”

Costner turned down “Eight Men Out” and director Taylor Hackford’s football film, “Everybody’s All-American”--about to shoot for Warner Bros.--”because of negotiation problems. I really wanted to do ‘Everybody’s All-American’ (Dennis Quaid got the role) but they didn’t fulfill their end of the deal. It was very painful. I couldn’t back down.

“Power is a misleading thing. Larry Kasdan (Costner’s ‘Silverado’ director) told me when I was doing ‘The Big Chill’ that it’s important to maintain that power even if you don’t have it at the time. If I think I’m special, others will too.”

(Hackford, contacted by Calendar, refused to comment on Costner’s remarks.)

Costner won’t classify “Bull Durham” as a baseball movie: “The film is not about what you’ve done, but who you are. I play a man with a great passion for baseball who once played 21 days in the major leagues and is still hanging on to his dreams of getting back there. The movie is about him not letting go and not hanging on.

“It’s good to see someone not get the apple and still go after it. Americans throw their dreams out first. The last thing Crash Davis throws out is his dream. Once your dream gets shelved, we take it for granted, which I think is a cop-out.”

Costner says he’s recently had 35 offers to make movies, yet he has trouble articulating why he was so attracted to the script by Ron Shelton (“Best of Times,” “Under Fire”), who makes his directorial debut on “Bull Durham.” But he tries: “It is a people movie. If I had just wanted to do something about baseball, I’d shoot a home movie of me and my friends playing on Sundays.

“The analogy in my character and my pursuit of an acting career is that I didn’t hit it until I was in my 30s. I always have to find out why I like people to play them. I like the Jack Nicholson line in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ where he says ‘At least I tried damn it.’ ”

Back in the ballpark, extras huddle in blankets and crowd around a few small heaters between breaks in the filming. Even Costner and Robbins shiver in the chill air. Only co-star Susan Sarandon, who plays an aging, ditzy baseball groupie, seems to get the star treatment. She is assigned a crew member whose job is to stand by and hurriedly wrap a warm coat around her after she completes scenes.

The ballplayers/actors pass the time playing catch, stretching on the infield grass or ducking behind the first base bleachers for snacks and hot coffee. Except for its old-fashioned seats and press box, the park’s major league distance to its fences and big lights give the visual impression of an average baseball stadium on a frosty evening. Still the temperature doesn’t inspire anyone to stay on the field if they don’t have to.

Comedian-actor-writer Robert Wuhl, who plays the team’s wisecracking pitching coach, leaves the dugout and motions to a visitor to join him in his trailer. Along the way he passes Sarandon, who ignores his cheerful greeting and turns coolly away.

In his trailer, Wuhl attempts a defense of the aloof Sarandon, but quickly turns the conversation to Costner, complimenting the actor for keeping the crew’s spirits up: “He’s always thinking about the film rather than himself or how he’s going to look on camera.”

It may be a backhanded dig at Sarandon. Not only does she appear cool to cast and crew, she’s not giving press interviews, even snubbing an Orion film crew flown in to do a video “press kit” on the production for future TV promotion. Offers one cast member sarcastically: “Susan plans to see a rough cut of the film before making a decision to do any press. If she then does any interviews, it’s like she’s giving her blessing to the film.”

On the field after hours of work, the college, rookie league and Class A ballplayers who are portraying the Bulls and their opponents miss pitches and pickoff throws and make errors in the field--some intentional for comic effect, some accidental because they’re growing weary and lax at 4 a.m. Since few of these miscues are in the script, the filming begins to resemble an endless game where the outcome has long since been decided.

Trey Wilson, a Tommy Lasorda lookalike who played the father of the kidnaped baby in “Raising Arizona” and is the team manager in “Bull,” shakes his head and spits tobacco. “I hope they play music over some of these scenes tonight,” he says, heading for his medium-cool trailer, “just so you won’t hear the sound of these boys’ teeth chattering!”

Screenwriter Shelton, 44, seems at ease around the diamond. Tall and stocky, he has the build of a weekend softball player. But it’s Shelton’s pro baseball background and script “A Player to Be Named Later” that led Mount, who was a production executive at Universal Pictures in 1979 when he read the baseball opus, to hire the ex-Baltimore Orioles’ minor league infielder to create a film on minor league baseball.

Like some of the players his script parodies, Shelton doesn’t want to talk to any media after a bad game--or, in this case, back-to-back nights of slow, lackluster shooting. Shelton also establishes ground rules through the film’s unit publicist that he won’t answer questions about his own sports background.

“This is a baseball movie and it’s not a baseball movie,” he says in Casey Stengel-ese. “If you’re a baseball fan you can enjoy the story in ways that you couldn’t if you’re not.

“I was attempting to write a story that you didn’t have to like baseball to connect. It’s largely from the woman’s point of view. Professional sports and show business share a common craziness. You’re both playing in a high-pressure world with a spotlight on you and you have just four or five years to make it.”

Though Shelton feels major league sports have become “plastic” and “oversaturated on television,” he believes in his movie’s commercial potential.

“Part of the appeal of baseball is that it doesn’t televise well, and that’s one of the charms of it. Going to a ball game you see it differently than you do on television. Especially in the minor leagues where there’s no AstroTurf, no roof on the stadiums and you can hear guys yelling. Baseball movies have failed in the past because they weren’t believable. Tony Perkins played Jimmy Piersall in ‘Fear Strikes Out’ and he couldn’t even throw a ball. I never thought Robert De Niro could actually catch a pitcher in ‘Bang The Drum Slowly’ either. Our actors can actually play ball.”

The tall, lanky Robbins, a lifelong Mets fan who looks far younger than his 28 years, has the physical presence of a genuine athlete (he played outfield in high school). Despite a stage background and roles in “Top Gun,” “The Sure Thing” and the forthcoming “Five Corners,” the New York native’s most-noticed part has been in one of Hollywood’s biggest bombs.

“Here I am freezing to death at 4 in the morning between (takes) pitching at a camera in the stands and you want to ask me about ‘Howard the Duck,’ ” Robbins remarks, seemingly amused and amazed that the reporter actually saw the film.

“The ‘Howard the Duck’ experience was a good humbling experience because you can go into a film feeling so good and it can turn out disasterously. If you don’t have the high expectations, you don’t fall so hard. My father used to say to deal with the immediate first, then the global. I went through my pessimistic phase and now I’m optimistic, especially about this film.”

Out on the field, Costner finishes signing a photo from a Playboy magazine spread on “Sex Stars of 1987.” It includes a color shot of the happily married father of two holding the naked breast of his “No Way Out” co-star Sean Young, slugged “Torrid Twosome.”

Asked what he wrote, Costner flashes a goofy grin. “ ‘Don’t believe everything you see,’ ” he says, laughing. Then he picks up his catcher’s mitt and tosses a ball to another actor.

“Now show me some real heat,” Costner yells passionately. “It’s time to play some serious games!”