There is no secret to making a classic movie. There’s no tried-and-true formula or a can’t-miss piece of source material that equates to a masterpiece provided you assemble the right director, writer(s), and actors. And as Francis Ford Coppola learned while making “The Godfather,” there’s no guarantee that, once you seemingly have all the right pieces in their right place, the studio will sit back and let you shoot your shot.
All-timers can also sneak up on you. Director Michael Curtiz thought he was making an escapist World War II entertainment when he took the reins on “Casablanca,” but even though leads Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman didn’t get along on set, he wound up knocking out a film many people consider to be the acme of Hollywood moviemaking. Alternately, when acclaimed director Robert Benton rolled cameras on Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s “Billy Bathgate,” one of the finest novels of the second half of the 20th century, he misfired badly despite having been gifted a cast including Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, and Steven Hill.
So it’s always interesting to hear from artists on the other end of the production, perhaps years and years later, as to when, if ever, they realized they were making a classic. For Kevin Costner on “Field of Dreams,” it was shockingly early on.
Kevin Costner had a notion about Field of Dreams
During a 2004 press conference held to commemorate the 15th anniversary DVD release of “Field of Dreams,” Costner revealed that there wasn’t one element in particular that clued him into the specialness of the film. It was just a “notion.” Per Costner:
“I was very grateful to be cast in it. I remember distinctly reading it on my couch and thinking I really want to do this movie. I remember thinking, what a beautiful [film]. I felt like I had a giant secret. I knew a year from then everyone else would know the secret.”
This must’ve come as a surprise to the unimpressed-with-the-script Ray Liotta. In any event, there was, however, a moment during the shoot that, for Costner, indicated “Field of Dreams” was a project born under the right sign. As he said at the press conference:
“There’s a scene where we say goodbye to Joe Jackson and he disappears out in the corn as he walks away, there’s a fog that hangs over the corn. Phil saw this fog coming in, it came in from left field and it hung around the middle of the field. Phil quickly shot the scene and then the cloud began to drift away never to come back again. It was rather strange, very mystical — the kind of thing you always hope happens that you can’t count on in a movie.”
If you’re a fan of the film, you can probably hear James Horner’s dreamy cue when you think of that scene. Nowadays, that moment would probably be replicated by CGI. But in 1989, you had to be quick on your feet and roll cameras. Nature provided, and “Field of Dreams” continues to enchant 35 years later.
