Trailer
Plot summary
Ray Kinsella lives on a corn farm in Dyersville, Iowa, with his wife Annie and their daughter Karin. He regrets that he and his father John, a devoted baseball fan, were estranged when John died. One evening Ray hears a whisper in the cornfield that no one else can hear, and then sees a baseball diamond there with the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson standing on it. Though money is tight, Annie agrees to turn part of the field into a ballfield. When Joe returns to throw, he asks Ray to bring more players.
Cast
- Mary Anne Keanas Feed Store Lady
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Field of Dreams (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In the book, the writer Ray seeks out is the real-life author J. D. Salinger; when Salinger threatened the production with a lawsuit if his name was used, Robinson rewrote the character as the reclusive Terence Mann, written with James Earl Jones in mind.
- A production assistant drove from the set into town and measured the distance, working out that 1,500 cars would be needed to fill the shot; Dyersville was then blacked out, local extras drove their vehicles to the field from Commercial Club Park, and local radio stations broadcast the director's voice to them.
- The only change Costner made to the script came in a scene where he had to miss a ball. "Do you know how hard it is to miss something on purpose?" he asked the director, offering instead to hit it straight down so it dribbled forward about four feet, which would be "more humiliating".
- Robinson and the producers did not originally consider Kevin Costner for the part of Ray Kinsella, because they did not think he would want to follow Bull Durham with another baseball film; the role was first offered to Tom Hanks, who turned it down.
- The film takes liberties with the real Graham: his lone major league game occurred in June 1905, rather than on the final day of the 1922 season, and he died in 1965, as opposed to 1972 as the film depicts.
- Irrigation had to be used to grow the corn quickly to Costner's height, with the water brought in by tanker from Lake Michigan.
