FIELD OF DREAMS
Revisiting Iowa: 25 years after the classic film.
This Father’s Day weekend marks the anniversary of one of Hollywood’s most notable father- and-son movies ever. “Hey Dad. Want to have a catch?” Field of Dreams’ Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, says in the film’s final scene, after earlier asking, “Can you believe that? An American boy refusing to have a catch with his father?”
This weekend, the iconic fatherssonsand- baseball Americana classic celebrates its 25th anniversary at the Dyersville, Iowa, cornfield baseball diamond where most of the movie was filmed. Its theatrical release was in April 1989.
Yet despite its Americana theme, Field of Dreams was based entirely on the story penned by longtime B. C. resident W. P. ( Bill) Kinsella. His novel Shoeless Joe, published in 1982, was the basis for the screenplay adaptation.
“It’s kind of nice to have your work become a classic,” Kinsella told The Vancouver Sun. “I imagine it will be around for another 25 years. I’ll be long gone, but it will be ( around still).
“It wasn’t anything I ever planned,” the grey- haired author said humbly, in his large Yale living room. “My whole reason for writing was to make a living and I didn’t care if my work survived or not, as long as I got properly paid for it. But I am very pleased that some of it is going to last.”
Shoeless Joe became Field of Dreams, which is as much about father- and- son relationships as it is about the all- American pastime of baseball.
Both the novel and the movie tell the tale of how long- dead suspended 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball star Shoeless Joe Jackson and his colleagues find heaven in an Iowa cornfield where they are allowed to play again.
And so this weekend the movie’s cast members, fans, retired professional baseball players and an NBC television crew descend on the cornfield to celebrate Field of Dreams, baseball and Father’s Day.
“I’ve seen it a dozen times, I suppose,” the 79- year- old Kinsella said. “When it came to the White Rock theatre, I went down and set up a table in the lobby and sold books when
The thing is, it’s not really a baseball movie. I mean, it’s really about a lot of things in life. It’s evocative, and it’s nostalgic. It wouldn’t be the kind of thing that you’d expect they’d make a movie out of because it would be debatable how much commercial success it would have. It was very well done.
DAVE EMPEY WRITER AND BASEBALL COACH
people came out of the theatre. I’d go in and watch the final scene and listen to everybody in the theatre snuffling, and then sell books.”
Kinsella was born in 1935 outside of Edmonton and raised there until he left for B. C. in 1967. In 1970, he started taking writing courses at the University of Victoria where he earned his literature degree. Kinsella would subsequently live in White Rock, Chilliwack and Yale.
“I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa and I wrote the story that became the first chapter of Shoeless Joe while I was at the workshop, the last weeks of the workshop,” Kinsella recalled.
It was June of 1978 when he wrote the short story Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa, which character Terrance Mann mentions in Field of Dreams’ final scene.
“It was a short story and it was published in an anthology,” Kinsella said. “The anthology was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and an editor in Boston saw the review. ( He) wrote to me and said if it was a novel he wanted to see it, and if it wasn’t it should be. So that was the point when I started writing Shoeless Joe, which would have been sometime in 1980, because it was published in ’ 82.”
Shoeless Joe won the Canadian Authors Association Prize, and Kinsella was subsequently awarded the Alberta Achievement Award, the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship.
Kinsella was named winner of the Leacock Award in 1987 and in 1993 the prolific novelist was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
In 2005, Kinsella was awarded the Order of British Columbia, and in 2009 he was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
But not everyone in Canadian literary circles is as impressed with Shoeless Joe or Kinsella’s contribution to Canadian literature.
According to Albert Braz, who sits on the executive committee of the Canadian Literature Centre — selfdescribed as the “the western hub of the Canadian literary community” — Kinsella occupies a problematic place in Canadian letters.
“Like other Canadian best- selling authors, from Ralph Connor and L. M. Montgomery to Pierre Berton, he’s more popular with everyday readers than with academics,” Braz said by email. “While he’s generally considered a creator of compelling narratives, there are doubts about his esthetic achievement.”
“No matter ( how) dexterous, his baseball works are often seen as politically suspect. After all, not only is Kinsella writing about another country’s national sport, but about the country that politically, economically and culturally dominates Canada. So, for a number of Canadian critics, it’s as if he’s contributing to the cultural emasculation of his own country.”
Shoeless Joe is less Canadian literature about Canada, and more reflective of the fact Kinsella finished his postgraduate studies at the University of Iowa, married an Iowan woman and spent a sizable part of his life living there. Kinsella reportedly sold the rights to his book to Hollywood moviemakers for $ 250,000, but he says he hasn’t seen a penny of royalties from the movie’s profits since it was released.
“I theoretically have one- and- ahalf per cent of the profits of Field of Dreams,” Kinsella said, adding he’s never seen a penny of it. “Every year they can charge off the bombs that they make against the profits from my movie so that there never are any profits. That’s the only thing I’m a little bitter about. I should have gotten many thousands of dollars in my share of the profits.”
Kinsella hopes a current project to turn Field of Dreams into a Broadway musical will yield a payday for his daughters after he’s gone.
Nonetheless, Kinsella said, “I don’t see how they could have made a much better movie out of it.”
He added: “So many authors are such assholes when it comes to having their work adapted. They don’t want to change a comma, or change a character, or change a phrase. I don’t give a damn. I just said, ‘ Do what you have to do’ and hope it turns out well.”
Kinsella said he gives “whole credit” to director and screen adaptation writer Phil Alden Robinson for capturing Shoeless Joe’s story.
“Phil was absolutely in love with the book and he kept in touch with me and sort of kept apologizing, saying, ‘ You know, there’s no way we can get a 320- page novel into an hour- and- 40minute movie. We have to cut characters. We have to telescope time. We have to move this and move that,’” Kinsella recalled with a chuckle.
“But he did a marvellous job with the screenplay and then got to direct it so it didn’t get changed. Because you could just see someone getting a hold of that script and saying, ‘ Yes, this is a nice little movie, but we need a fist fight here and a car chase there and some hot sex here,’ and completely destroying it.”
For his part, Robinson gushed over Kinsella’s novel.
“I’ve never sat up an entire night and finished a book in one sitting,” Robinson said for the film’s 20th anniversary. “I mean, it was morning when I finished reading his book Shoeless Joe, and I literally couldn’t put it down.”
Kinsella is legendary among local writers and baseball aficionados.
Dave Empey used to coach the Vancouver Cannons and North Shore Twins of the BC Premier League, where he once coached retired pro player and current Major League Baseball Network analyst Ryan Dempster. Dempster was supposed to take part in the Field of Dreams anniversary but had to withdraw for family reasons.
Empey, whose background includes work as a sports writer and newspaper editor, considers Kinsella one of his heroes.
“I’ve written two novels and five movie scripts and I consider Kinsella to be one of the premier writers of our time,” Empey said. “His use of similes and analogies is an education for any writer.”
“I read Shoeless Joe and I learned a lot about writing while reading him.” Empey also loved Field of Dreams. “The thing is, it’s not really a baseball movie. I mean, it’s really about a lot of things in life. It’s evocative, and it’s nostalgic,” Empey said. “It wouldn’t be the kind of thing that you’d expect they’d make a movie out of because it would be debatable how much commercial success it would have. It was very well done.
“Costner did a very good job and it worked. It appealed to a lot of people because so many men grow up with baseball as a nostalgic thing from their youth, and they relate to that kind of stuff. It was good.”
To this day, Kinsella continues to write at his Fraser Canyon home and said he was four books ahead of his publisher.
He was non- committal about attending the Field of Dreams anniversary this weekend, citing health issues that make travel a challenge for him.