This is something I’ve wanted to write for a long time, something I have felt since the first time I saw Field of Dreams actually. It has to do with the wife in Field of Dreams, Annie, played by Amy Madigan.
Her role, and how distinct and strange it is, is often overlooked. Mostly overlooked, I would say. All you need to do is look at how that role could have been played, and how it could have been written, and you can see immediately how ubiquitousness cliches are in “wife” parts. She, however, startlingly, in moment after moment, is not a cliche. Her behavior does not fit into a Hollywood box. It’s easier to write cliches, because you don’t have to work as hard, you don’t actually have to try to create a real person. That’s why they’re so common. Sometimes the cliches work; they’re a device, a shorthand, but I sure am sick of the “supportive wife cliche” and have no tolerance for it anymore. It is lazy.
The cliche of the wife role in such movies goes something like this:
There is a man, who is the star of the film. The man has an idea. Or maybe the man is good at something. He’s an inventor, an athlete, a politician. The man has greatness in him. Maybe he has unconventional ideas. He might be ahead of his time. Or maybe he is afraid of taking a risk but then he gets a chance to get close to his actual dream … and in movie after movie the wife is there to talk him down, chastise him for dreaming big, keep the prosaic concerns of his domestic life at the forefront. She is there to make him small. “But how will we make the rent?” “Sure, it’s great that you want to split the plutonium-sapphire and in doing so you will cure cancer … but don’t forget to take out the garbage, and you also have a family to feed.” The wife’s primary concern in movies like this appears to be to chip away at her husband’s dreams, make sure he keeps his feet firmly on the ground, and discourage him from breaking loose from the pack. Then, at the end, when her husband has triumphed over the odds, she is there to clap for him, energetically, beaming with pride and wifely love. It angers me. You think you get to bask in his glow now, after you weren’t there for him in his darkest moments, and you hectored him about paying the bills while he slaved over the Bunsen burner? Oh no, lady, you don’t get to only be there for him only when it’s good. The woman’s circle of vision is very small and domestically-bound in these movies. She is the classic “idiot”, described so perfectly by Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Her husband isn’t philandering about, or abandoning her, or anything like that: he has something he has to do, something has nothing to do with her, and Movie Wives, in general, are not down with that.
I know there are wives like that in real life. I call them Fair-weather wives. They want their husbands to be a nice little square peg fitting in a nice little square hole, and if the husband breaks out of that little role, these wives try to rein him in, control him, belittle him. If he dares to dream big, she will hector him about his responsibilities to the family, to the grocery bills. She will not take a risk with him. She wouldn’t even understand what I was talking about here, so blinkered is she. What does she fear? Unconventionality, mostly. Instability. Making waves. Looking foolish to others. Also, maybe: of letting her man be great. Because what would that mean for her? How would she be able to control that?
But in my life, in my experience, wives are not, for the most part, like that. Now remember: a lot of the people I know are actors. Most of my male friends are actors, and most of their wives are not actors. So in marrying my male friends, these women have had to not just marry the man – but also marry his dreams. It is my belief that marrying someone’s dreams, and falling in love with your mate’s dream is part of marriage, maybe the most important part, regardless of what profession you happen to be in. It’s not just actors that have to deal with this – but the dynamic just seems to come out in a clearer fashion within artist marriages, because the dream is, usually, not manifested yet. It’s invisible. Merely a potential, something invisible you must invest in. And so the partner, too, has to buy into the big dream, believe in the possibility of the intangible. You have to stand by your man, through the darkest times of this hellish career. If you don’t? Then you have no business marrying an actor. This is not about blowing smoke up someone’s ass, and lying to them, and saying, “Oh my God, you were so great as Hamlet” when they actually sucked. No. But for me, as an artist, it is essential that I believe in my mate’s talent. Whatever it is. I fall in love with talent, anyway. That’s my whole bag. I fall in love with someone’s dream, the passion that far pre-dates me. Passion makes people interesting, and I like people with big consuming interests. There is, probably, a fine line between supporting someone’s dream which hasn’t come true yet, and enabling someone in going on with some sort of self-destructive delusion. You have to be honest. You have to really believe in someone’s dream. And here’s the catch: you can’t believe only in the final result. Nope. That will not work. You have to believe in the journey itself. If you start dating an actor, and then impatiently count the days until that person becomes Sharon Stone, or Russell Crowe, then you are not really falling in love with the dream. The dream exists regardless of the result. I think it’s telling that Russell Crowe, after making it huge, and shtooping everyone in Hollywood, finally went back to New Zealand and married his old girlfriend who knew him when. It’s easy to love someone once the big dream has come true, and all is going great. But it takes real character to believe in that dream when nothing on the outside is encouraging, when there is no sign or affirmation that that dream even exists. Actors are fringe dwellers, even when they become celebrities. It is not a respectable business, and it is based on fantasy. Even when you have success. Jack Nicholson talks about the fact that at every wrap party for every film he does, he thinks: “Huh. Wonder where my next job will come from?” It never ends. It’s just the salary that changes.
So wives who get that, and who sign up for that journey have my deepest admiration. (There are husbands in this position as well, but this is a post about wives.)
It’s about letting yourself be okay with uncertainty, first of all, with being okay with not knowing how things will turn out. It has to do with Faith. And Hope. Belief.
This is what Field of Dreams is all about. Maybe that’s why it moves me. It’s about not knowing the end, about realizing that there is no such thing as a destination, about not knowing why you have to do a certain thing, but following through anyway, even though the majority of people will tell you that you are crazy. Ray Kinsella doesn’t know where that voice in the cornfield comes from, or why he has been chosen. But he obeys. He follows the path, he gets frustrated, he is not believed in, he is scorned. But he’s listening to a deeper voice, something else is going on, he can tell. The same is true for Terrence Mann (played by James Earl Jones). He initially treats Ray Kinsella like a kook. Mann is angry, defensive, contemptuous. But eventually, Kinsella’s own belief, and own certainty (even though he can’t explain why) melts Mann’s resistance. He realizes that HE has to follow this dream, too. That’s the thing about big dreamers. Usually, they get other people invested in their dream.
In a more conventional movie, the wife would not be invested in this crazy dream. A baseball field in the cornfield? What? She would give him looks like: Come on, honey. Grow up. She would be oblivious to his distractions. She would not get onboard. She wouldn’t be a witch, no, nothing that blatant. Wives in movies like this are never actively hostile. No, they are passive-aggressive martyrs, with little worried lines in their foreheads, as they stand there in their terricloth robes, looking at their husband burning the midnight oil, saying to him gently (but oh, with such pressure): “Honey, you’ve worked long enough. Come to bed.” Wives in movies like this are always telling their husbands to “come to bed”.
It’s a cliche I despise. Obviously.
But in Field of Dreams? It don’t quite go that way. And, to my mind, this is one of the main reasons for this film’s enduring and heartfelt success. It’s not that she doesn’t have real-world concerns. She does. But somehow, it doesn’t take that old cliched form. Ray goes off on his mad road trip across the country, he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t even know where. Meanwhile, she stays home, dealing with some serious issues with the bank. They are going to lose the farm. We see shots of her, talking with Ray on the phone, and then going back into the dining room where a bunch of bank manager types sit grimly, waiting for her. There are serious black clouds hovering over this Field of Dreams of her husband’s. She is not a perfect woman. She is not a Pollyanna. When faced with the seriousness of the situation, her response is not a sunny, “Oh, it’s okay – My husband has big dreams!! I BELIEVE IN HIM!” No, it’s tougher than that. Belief is not easy. Belief does not come cheap. It takes work. You have to work at it. And it’s during those black-cloud times that it is most important to maintain the belief in someone else’s dream, in someone else’s greatness. But oh my. It is the hardest thing in the world to achieve. That’s why it’s so rare, and that’s why actor-marriages, in particular, are so strenuous, and so divorce-prone. Because there are so many black clouds.
I didn’t mean to write so much about acting, but I guess it is through the writing of this long-percolating piece that I am really realizing what the film means to me, and what the story has to say to me, personally. The analogy is perfect.
Belief takes work. It takes work to believe in your own dreams, and it takes work to believe in someone else’s.
Annie is preparing fish sticks, when her husband walks into the house, at the beginning of the movie, looking shell-shocked. He tells her he heard a voice in the cornfield. Her response, and how she handles him, completely bucks the cliche, it is unexpected. And therefore it is real.
The other scene? The one not filmed? The cliche one? The husband walks in, stunned from hearing the voice. She is busy with the fishsticks, bustling about. She glances at him but doesn’t even notice the look on his face. Or if she does, she’s too busy to mention it, or ask about it. He tries to talk to her, he confides in her what he heard. She brushes it off. “It was the wind, honey. Could you grab me that potholder?” He tries to tell her again. She listens with growing impatience, trying to be nice and supportive, but her mind is clearly on the fishsticks. “You’ve had a long day, Ray … come on, dinner’s ready … I’m sure you heard nothing.” That’s how these scenes normally go in films. And what is the message to our hero in such a scene? The message is: You. Are. Alone. Do not share your dreams with her. She doesn’t get it. You. Are. Alone.
But that’s not the way it goes at all in Field of Dreams. Granted, Amy Madigan doesn’t immediately drop what she’s doing and listen with baited breath. No. She kind of jokes with him about it, she listens, she asks more. But it is not an instant closed door. We know, and Ray knows, that he is not alone. It is so refreshing. It is such a generous portrayal of a wife, I think.
It takes some time for Annie to get on board with the weird dream, and her process goes through different stages. For example, Ray walks into the house, and tells her he has heard another voice. She bursts out laughing and said, “Oh no. Did they tell you you’re supposed to build a football field now?” But it’s her journey, as well as his. She has her own stuff to go through, and needs her own proof (like the two of them having identical dreams about Terence Mann in Fenway) before she signs on. But she’s there. Through the whole thing.
She meets Shoeless Joe. She stares at him with an open wondrous smile. She “gets it”. She gets the wondrous thing that is happening here. Ray doesn’t have to fight with her to make her believe.
Annie, unlike other movie wives, is not concerned with the status quo. The townsfolk think her husband is losing his mind, because of the baseball field. But does she care? No. There she sits, in the bleechers, watching Shoeless Joe and all the other dead players playing a game, and she’s screaming: “BATTAH BATTAH BATTAH”, she’s yelling at the Ump, she’s totally into it.
She gets that her husband is onto something with this field. She doesn’t know what it is yet. He doesn’t know what it is yet. But it is worth believing in. It is worth succumbing to the uncertainty of it all, the fear, the embarrassment, because they know that this dream is worth believing in. That something is going ON out in that field, and they do not want to get in the way of it, whatever it may be.
There are countless examples of the worrying-prosaic-wife cliche. Miracle is one of the most recent ones. I liked the film a lot, but I thought: “Patricia Clarkson is so much better than this tired cliche.” How amazing would it have been if the wife had jumped on board with Herb Brooks’ dream. Instead, Clarkson (a fantastic actress) is given lines like: ‘Honey, please come to bed. You’ve worked long enough.’ Or ‘Honey, who is going to pick up Little Susie after school? I can’t do everything around here!’ I wanted to take her aside and give her a talking to. “Your husband is coaching a team for the Olympics. THE OLYMPICS. It’s a limited engagement, it’ll be over in a year, but he needs to give it 100% right now, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I think you’re gonna have to pick up some of the slack. We’re talking about someone’s lifelong dream here, lady.”
A similar recent film that handles the wife in a human and interesting manner is The Rookie. It’s not so much that she blindly leaps forward with him. She has her own stuff to go through. Fears he will hurt himself again, having been through that with him before, money worries, all that. But in a quiet moment of revelation, standing over her sleeping son, she realizes: “What message will I be giving my child, if my husband doesn’t go for this?” From that moment on, there is no turning back for this “strong Texas woman” (played by Australian actress Rachel Griffiths), and she’s in it with him. It’s not easy. But she invests in the weird dream.
It seems like writers and directors don’t know what to do with wives in movies such as these, and so they resort to cliches, handed down. Received interpretations, formed from lazy assumptions. Like any cliche. I can practically hear the script meetings, it’s all so obvious: “Okay, so he’s a great man, and he’s got a great opportunity, but we’ve got some chances for a couple of good fight scenes with his wife – when she wants him to spend more time with the family …”
But Field of Dreams doesn’t go that path. And it is certainly not a film devoid of conflict, or tension. It’s just that she doesn’t fit into that customary role. It’s not written that way, and she doesn’t play it that way.
I’ve always thought that if I’m ever a wife, I’d like to be like the Amy Madigan wife in Field of Dreams. Not a Pollyanna. I couldn’t be a Pollyanna if you locked me in a motel room and played “Don’t Worry Be Happy” directly into my ears without cessation for four days. But someone who is willing to have a little faith and courage, someone who is able to say: “Okay, man, have no idea how this will turn out – but go. Just do it.” To stand by him, to support him, to let him go … but most of all: to believe in his dream.
In Field of Dreams, Annie gets to be a believer, too. She looks at her husband, and she gives him a big beaming freckled smile, and she openly accepts that Shoeless Joe is hanging out in her backyard, and ghosts are running across her lawn wearing old-timer baseball uniforms, and she loves it all. It is evidence of her husband’s awesome gift, for whatever it is, for creation, for sheer belief … and when she smiles at her husband like that he knows that he is not alone.
That’s an excellent, excellent post.
You hit the nail on the head. It always hits the button for me, Field of Dreams does, in that Faith wins through in the end.
I have to admit that I’d never really thought about Amy Madigan’s character beyond the fact that I’d just taken it for granted that she was a free enough spirit to believe in the magic, to have faith at the drop of the hat.
My bad.
Never really thought about it in the terms that you put out. The strength and the fortitude it took for her to believe not so much in the magic, but in Ray.
Very nicely put.
Thanks, Tommy!
yeah – I just don’t think it would be as satisfying a movie if she took on the typical ‘wet blanket wife’ role.
She takes a deep breath and leaps too. With him.
Awesome.
Another great post, Sheila.
Amy Madigan’s role as John Candy’s girlfriend in “Uncle Buck” (also made in 1989; pretty good year for her!) strikes me as very similar to your take on how she played the wife in “Field of Dreams.” Among the many characteristics that the two roles share are feistiness and believing in her partner. I have to believe that casting her in both of these movies is more than coincidental.
She also played Stella (in Streetcar Named Desire) on Broadway back in the early 90s. Stella shows the DARK side of ‘stand by your man’, eh?
Sheila, this is one of my favorite movies. I cringe at first to see any commentary on it because the characters are all so unique and nuanced and most criticism misses the heart of the thing.
I read your post all the way through twice and I don’t have time to comment as fully as I would like (ah, chemotherapy beckons!) so I will sum up: you should send this entire post somewhere properly literary where they can give you an award, or at least a large check. You are a gift.
Tossing a little culture to you savages.
Here’s a nice read while I’m at the doc’s: Sheila’s take on the wife in Field of Dreams. You’ll also note that just below this post, she linked to Popping Culture, which just shows she has taste….
Dan – thank you. :)
Sounds like Mrs. Popped Culture has that whole “stand by your man with feisty humor” thing down pat.
Good luck today.
Well, it’s about time! ;)
Seriously, it was worth the wait.
Good post. I do have a somewhat different interpretation of Miracle tho. As I recall, the coach never really gave his wife a choice or opportunity to buy in to his dream. Maybe things would have been different if he’d sat her down and _asked_ her to help him, to tell her he _needed_ her help to fulfill this lifetime dream. Instead of just dropping everything in her lap..
Paul -
Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed their scenes together, and I very much enjoyed the scene when Brooks comes into the room and says: “Okay … sorry we never talked about it … I really need you to get behind me on this.” And then – after that – she’s fine. She just needed to be asked. Fine – the acting in those scenes is good, but it’s the cliche that annoyed me.
In my view, though, if she needed to have it explained to her why this was a big deal to him, and why he would need to focus on it totally – then she didn’t really know the guy she married. Some things SHOULD be self-evident. To me: “Coaching the US Olympics team after being booted from the US Olympics team when I was a player” should need no explanation.
Watch the scene where he gets the news that he has been chosen Coach. She has literally 2 seconds of happiness for him before her concerns start coming up, and little worry-lines appear on her brow. “But wait … when are the Olympics? So … it will mean how many months of training? But … what about our trip to Aruba?” Or whatever … I don’t know. It pissed me off. Like: her role in life was to think small, and to bring up small things – as opposed to seeing that her husband had a chance to do something GREAT.
What … she thought he would always be home for supper while he was doing this Olympics thing? If she thought that, then she was nuts.
How did you know this movie was on SpikeTV last night?
And if you did know it was on, how would you know Alex’s game would be rained out and we’d be home at 8:00 instead of at the ballfield?
Or that he and I would be in my bedroom when he turned on SpikeTV to watch wrestling, and I said, “Oh, Field of Dreams! You’d like this movie, sweetie; it’s about baseball.”
How could you know that while he and I (and eventually Dad and Hayden) were curled up on the bed, listening to the rain, watching Field of Dreams, that I remembered you’d mentioned a while back about how you loved Amy Madigan’s character (whose name is Annie, btw. The daughter’s name is Karen. No biggie.) and you were going to write about her and I wondered when that would be?
Weird.
Awesome post! The percolating worked, out came beauty.
I remember standing around with a bunch of actors in Chicago discussing the movie, and the cast was filled with strong, wonderful women, yet I remember them all agreeing that although the movie was great they couldn’t understand why Amy Madigan, a strong wonderful actress like them, would agree to play a mealy, weak woman in that film. I was paralyzed because I didn’t agree with them at all but didn’t have near the articulateness that this post has to rebutt. It was many years ago and the movie did fly in the face of convention of the strong independent woman, independent of her husband, and clearly these women were all living non-traditional lives and out there fighting for their own dreams and not at home following their husbands. But they missed the subtlety of her belief in her husband (obviously you didn’t). Something that this “independence” has threatend in marriage, I believe. We’re all so busy being independent that we’re missing what it means to “believe in someone else’s dreams.”
God, now my mind is overflowing. I have so much to say. It would be fascinating to see a movie where the woman has a strong powerful dream and the husband has to pick up the pieces while she hears this calling. Where the husband has to work his ass off to believe in her dream. I would LOVE to see an honest portrayal of that relationship. Maybe there’s one out there.
It’s interesting that baseball movies seem to capture this. In “The Rookie” Dennis Quaid and, one of my favorite acresses, Rachel Griffiths, play out a similar relationship. It’s beautiful! And it’s even harder because he gave up the dream and here it comes again, at a time when it is a thousand times more impractical and improbable. I love the line when he says, “Do you know how many people can throw a ball 98 miles per hour?” and she says, “Not many.” She gets it.
Great post Sheila! I’m sending it to Maria.
Sheila- I love this post!! I have always felt that way about Amy Madigan and “Field Of Dreams”. I watch it and LOVE it over and over again, in spite of my otherwise strong aversion to Kevin Costner- Your old Chi. friend from LBH- Kelly
David – Yes – totally – The Rookie is another awesome example of a woman willing to just throw in her faith with her husband. And again: IT’S NOT EASY. She has that line: “God knows I’m ready for the other side of the bed to be warm again myself…” But what are her options? Not let him go for it? Then would she end up hating him.
Kelly???? Holy crap! I was just thinking about you – because Rachel Hamilton just moved here, and I saw her last week – we laughed hysterically about LBH, and wearing those damn towels. hahaha
Lisa – GOOD CALL with the Karen/Annie thing. hahaha
yeah, the movie was indeed on last night and I caught the last hour of it … which then spurred me on to finally write the dern post!!
OK, So as a sraight white man I am setting myself up for complete ridicule but this post is blowing my mind. As a straight white man I obviously can not understand what it means to grow up as a woman in this culture. But I do understand that it ain’t easy. It can’t be. It can’t be underestimated the feelings of inferiority that women must feel in regards to men. Even today, after all the enormous changes and strides. So this cliche’ that you speak of has been sold to women as a way to show your strength. It has been accepted that women should not follow their men and should stand up and have their own dreams. I believe that most women see these cliche’s as strong women, standing up for their beliefs, families and marriages. That’s how it’s been sold and it’s roots are planted in this movement for independence. But your post brilliantly exposes this as not a strength but a weakness. These women actresses in Chicago I spoke of were all strong, intelligent women and they, in my mind, were being duped by this “sell”. Amy Madigan’s character, well ahead of it’s time, proves that there is great strength and integrity in believing in your husband’s dream.
Damn, dude … you need to write a scholarly paper on this topic. It’s awesome.
The fact that anyone could look at that Amy Madigan character and see her as “weak” is stunning to me, and incomprehensible. Yup – a lot of people are duped by the attitude/theory you speak of. A lot of men are too – by the way.
By the by – I completely expect my husband to give as good as he gets. I’ve been with guys who think my dreams for myself are … well … kind of silly. They don’t get it, they don’t get behind it, and … it makes them nervous.
I think of the time when I auditioned for summer stock, and got a bunch of callbacks for different theatres. Really exciting. I came home, all aglow, ready to rave about my prospects. I will never forget the look on my boyfriend’s face. He started chewing on the inside of his mouth, as I talked – didn’t even say “Congratulations” or “What shows?” or even (horrors) “Tell me everything right now.” … The first question he asked was: “So … how long will you be gone?” Now, I know it’s understandable that he would not want me to go away for 4 months at a time – but the fact that that was the FIRST thing he said (as opposed to the 3rd or 4th) told me a great deal. Being involved with an actor is certainly not for everybody. It takes a certain kind of person who can deal with the separation, and he couldn’t. He couldn’t even FAKE it. (Of course, when he got a job all the way across the country I was expected to just pick up and follow him.) The whole thing was messed up … and it’s a good thing it didn’t work out.
Whenever anyone has fallen in love with me – sure, they love me, Sheila – but they also love what I dream for, my hopes, my wishes. The things that haven’t come true yet. They were, in a huge way, on my side. If that makes sense.
Makes a HUGE difference in the relationship to know that someone believes in you!
David – And this is kind of a brilliant observation – one I don’t think I would have made myself, because it wouldn’t have occurred to me:
“So this cliche’ that you speak of has been sold to women as a way to show your strength. It has been accepted that women should not follow their men and should stand up and have their own dreams. I believe that most women see these cliche’s as strong women, standing up for their beliefs, families and marriages.”
Hmmm. I will have to think upon this a lot. You’re a bit closer to this than I am, because of your own experiences in the marriage realm – but it certainly fascinates me.
I guess I do sense that, at times, with women – Yes. Keeping the husband on a short leash is somehow seen as liberation – Like: they won’t put up with any SHITE like the women in the past supposedly did. It’s weird, and seems extremely messed up to me – makes no sense at all – but I have seen it at work around me.
I mean, there are plenty of guys who are all-talk no-action – They aren’t really big dreamers, but more like fantasists. I’m not talking about getting behind an illusion or a delusion … but if you’re in a situation where your mate has a chance to do something huge, and go for a long-deferred dream – I really think that you have no business standing in that person’s way.
You should not, in other words, have as your first question: “So … how long will you be gone?” while separation-anxiety flickers in your eyes.
I’m not saying this is easy, or comfortable. It takes work – and it’s scary – and you have to deal with the fact that this person may be going on a journey that doesn’t really include you. But for me it’s the only way to go.
Hence – I’M NOT MARRIED.
Hmmmm ….
David – and one last thing to add to your observation: “Amy Madigan’s character, well ahead of it’s time, proves that there is great strength and integrity in believing in your husband’s dream.”
Amy Madigan’s character also seems, frankly, happier than the wives in other movies. She gets a kick out of life, and she gets a kick out of her husband, even when he’s acting like a lunatic. She doesn’t belittle him. Ever. She has her own learning curve – she doesn’t just leap right in and say, “Sure! Who cares about the mortgage! Plow over the corn!!” But once she gets into the spirit of the thing – she starts to have fun with it.
The cliche-wives, and the real-life Fair-weather wives – don’t seem to enjoy marriage all that much, frankly, and don’t ever seem to “get a kick out of” their husbands. They’re too busy wearing terricloth robes, and trying to make their husband “come to bed”. (Translation: Stop having an interest that excludes me, please.)
Wow. I believe 100% in what your saying. Committment in a relationship is about following your partner’s dreams, crazy, sane and in between. Luckily, I have just come to realize what that really means. I came home the other night with this brilliant idea of what I really wanted to do with my life. I have my career, for the most part, and am very happy with it. But I realized that I really wanted to specialize in just one aspect of it. And I figured it out the other day. When I told my boyfriend, he was SO excited, so happy, so enthralled. His eyes filled up with tears and he told me how proud he was. He asked me how he can help and gave me great ideas for how to start. Now, this my “brilliant” idea isnt all that novel. But his reaction just enforced my thoughts tenfold.
Anyway, it IS about following dreams and being supportive. Its about being selfless at times and just understanding how important things are to that other person. Its seeing that spark in their eyes and just knowing what is right.
David:
I think that Say Anything is a wonderful example of the gender reversal thing you talked about.
She has a journey to go on, she has stuff to do … and he, without sacrificing his own personality, or becoming needy or pussy-whipped – chooses to throw himself in with her dream.
He believes in her more than she does herself.
Just in time for Father’s Day
Our old pal Sheila has a “ginormous” post about Field of Dreams, examining the role of Ray’s wife Annie, played by the scrumptious Amy Madigan. Field of Dreams is one of the movies I’ll admit to crying while watching. Damn…
Mar … Beautiful story. Thanks. And good luck in your pursuit. :)
Blog Idol
We all have a blog idol, or more than one. Someone whose blog you kick yourself for not having in a way. Someone with a way of putting things or a cachet you wish you had. For me, one of
Amy Madigan’s character has always been what sets that movie apart in my mind. It’s not just that she’s twice the character any of the other characters are in that particular film; she’s one of the great characters in any film, period.
I love the fact that they make her so strong and so supportive and yet so real and flawed — the scene where she and Beulah are going after each other and obviously they have BOTH gone temporarily insane is wonderful precisely because the scriptwriters have the guts to let Annie lose it and make an ass of herself, even though clearly the scriptwriters love Annie like their own daughter. (Nobody can understand a person as well as the scriptwriters understand Annie unless they love them.) And the side of her that causes her to go bonkers over Beulah’s bovine stupidity — and therefore to imitate in herself but from a stupid Sixties child angle rather than a stupid fundamentalist angle — is precisely the same go-for-it-and-deal-with-the-consequences-later attitude that makes it possible for her to support Ray…perfect, just perfect.
Dorothy Sayers talked once about how a great character can come alive and take control of a novel away from the novelist — a truly realized character becomes real enough to have free will and to stop cooperating, sometimes, with what the author had intended to do in the book. The character just refuses: for the sake of the plot, you need for the character to do something, but you realize there’s no way she ever would…it’s just not her, and she refuses to put up with it, and you have to go change all kinds of other stuff in the book just to get her to relent and agree to go along with it. I have no doubt that Annie came alive in the scriptwriters hands more than did any other character in the story, and I’ll bet she caused them more trouble and forced more rewriting of script and incident and tone than any other three characters in the story — she’s not just a strong-willed and feisty woman-in-the-story, she’s real enough to have been a strong-willed and feisty character with the authors. In great stories, you have to make the great characters happy — by which I mean not that you have to have a happy ending, but that the characters have to be willing to play the role you want them to play. In that sense, Annie is one of the most satisfied characters in the last twenty years of Hollywood, IMHO: she, more than all but a very few Hollywood characters (certainly female characters) was allowed to become gloriously and individually herself. Orson Scott Card has said of the last three Star Wars films that, thanks to heroic exertion by talented actors, you can almost believe that human beings might actually have talked like the characters in the film. Somewhere. Maybe. But with Annie, not only can you believe that a woman could live and talk and love and flounce and dig in like that…not only that. No, even though you would never have thought Annie up on your own, now that you’ve seen her, your heart knows not just that such a woman could have lived, but that such a woman DID live — because your heart knows that Annie is alive, whatever your head may say. Few characters ever reach that level of incarnation.
I grew up playing uncounted hours of catch with my dearly beloved dad and I cried when Ray and his father started that game of catch. But the moment that has always stayed with me from the film is not that game of catch. It’s the secret smile on Annie’s face as she looks out at the boys playing catch and turns on the park lights. To me, that moment is the essence of the movie.
So, I mean, I liked your post.
Kenny
Ken – tears are literally streaming down my face. I cannot thank you enough for your GORGEOUS comment.
As for those actresses standing around dissing Annie’s character…isn’t it easy to imagine precisely how cheerfully, charmingly and unhesitatingly Annie would tell them where they could go? Does my heart good just to think of it…
Listen, your post really was a great post, even though I babbled on for a while without getting around to telling you so. Obviously you touched a chord there. Thanks for raising a delightful topic and discoursing on it…well, delightfully.
KP
KP – Yup. Annie would bitchp-slap such ideologically-rigid women in a heartbeat!! Does my heart good to think of it too.
And this might be a cliche – but I do believe in the truism that “no man is an island’. Men who have women who believe in them like that stand taller… I think it’s an awesome thing.
Fascinating observations. Are you going to rename your blog something akin to baseball movies? What about The Natural and Bull Durham? Lots to discuss there – especially the aspect of female characters.
In his novel, Shoeless Joe, W.P.Kinsella does devote an incredible energy to how much love, passion and gratitude has for Amy. And if one way, I think the film fails that. There’s that great scene where Amy squares off against the cliche wife over the books in schools. Amy stands up for her passion, defends her position and succeeds brilliantly. What bothers me about that part of the film, is that Ray isn’t even paying attention or reciprocating any of the priority Amy gives him. But perhaps that is the statement the film makers were trying to make.
- and yes, as any son who ever played catch with his Dad knows, the ending is killer.
And one of my favorite movies ever: The Rookie. That’s another movie where the wife doesn’t have to be a drip, and a crimp in his plans … she lets him go. God. LOVE THAT MOVIE.
I love Bull Durham. I want that romance. I want to dance around in my robe, and eat cereal, and talk about reincarnation on a rainy day, and then go watch baseball. Love love love that movie.
The thing about Bull Durham that I like, that even for a film about baseball, the sport almost takes a back seat to the story. There are no incredibly important games, no amazing performances, the one stat that is commented on is Crash’s most hits or homers in the minors — a rather dubious distinction. It passes without fanfare or jubilation. Rather an accomplishment for the everyman. It is not the story of a superstar – but someone who loves what he does and has only succeeded at being mediocre. Even Susan Sarrandon, this outrageously spiritual artistic figure is trapped teached community college in Hicksville. I mean I doubt Durham, N.C. has any statues built to honor Walt Whitman. Symbiotic to Field of Dreams in a way, there are relatively few pots of gold at the end of rainbows for us. The gold is in the community around us, not always in chasing the dream. Crash has spent a lifetime journeying, and perhaps without roots or a connection to anyone. We must celebrate those rainy days and take the time to bathe with your loved one. All the romance we long for is only a box of cereal away. A beer and hot dog watching the game is a feast and a banquet. In fact, Iowa is heaven, (if you have a wife like Amy that is).
Or not.
The Wife
I just happened upon a blog where the writer is talking about the wife character in the movie, “Field of Dreams.” You know the one… he builds a baseba…