The Final Season is being released on DVD, and my daughter has a fast-pitch softball game today.
And I'll be there. I don't think I have ever missed a game she's played in (or any that her brothers have played in when they were in Little League -- except when I was on location...hey, they gotta eat!) and before I show up at the game I'm going to the store and I'm buying 20 copies of my own film! She wants to give them to her teammates to watch for inspiration. I swear I'm not making this up. She's just about 10 years old, the perfected Apple-of-My-Eye and, I have to say this (Oh, hell yes I'm gonna say it!) an exceptionally fine judge of motion pictures. She knows a great movie when she sees one.Making The Final Season was an enormously difficult undertaking owing to a whole bunch of factors and reasons...and it was also the most creatively satisfying thing I've ever done. I have so many great memories of making The Final Season, it would be impossible to list them, but I get asked about it all the time. "What was it like making one of the best baseball movies ever made?" No, I'm not making that up, yes, I get asked that all the time - which is very flattering and I appreciate it. It's when I get this question that I feel like having a "Sophie's Choice" moment: "So, which movie do you like better The Final Season or The Sandlot?"
The one thing that stands out sharpest in my mind when I think about making TFS are the people I met. It's the only film, or story for that matter, that I've had the monumental good fortune to have made in the exact physical location the actual story took place, with access to the exact people who lived the story. Gives a new and better meaning to "Based on a True Story," don't you think?
You never make a movie all by yourself (although I know some Hollywood Director types that'll tell you they do!) and this is a blog, not a thank-you acceptance speech. But there are three guys without whom the film would never have been made, Jim Van Scoyoc, Kent Stock and Tony Wilson. Good men all, and I'm proud to say they're also my friends. I met them making this film. I am enormously proud of what we achieved, and I am satisfied I did my best, and I still cry when I watch The Final Season. I'm buying myself an extra DVD today, and I hope the actual disc lasts as long as I expect my friendship with Jim, Kent and Tony to last. Roughly...forever.
Go buy The Final Season on DVD (I recommend the two-pack) and you won't be disappointed. In fact, you'll be really, really, really happy you did. And oddly, there's a rumor that if you buy it, and you love it, you'll wake up the next morning with the ability to crush every ball the machine at your local batting cage pitches at you when turned to the "Koufax" setting.
Just something I heard...
More soon...
DME
P.S. And this from writer James Grayford -- also my AD -- who was there every moment:
"As a boy, I remember waiting anxiously for winter's passing and spring's arrival. Spring lived next door to summer and for any kid with a Rawlings glove under his pillow and Louisville slugger under his bed, summer is baseball. Just like Norway.
"To paraphrase Coach Van Scoyoc, for me, the objective of working on this movie was "to get home". And every day we shot on the Norway diamond, I felt a part of those championship teams whose story we put on the screen. Baseball's at the heart of every American experience, and I'm proud America has the chance to experience THE FINAL SEASON in their home.
"In a time when the cinematic family experience relies on concession and tolerance, it's refreshing to have a story each generation can relate to during a shared viewing experience."
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