My Mother Was Nuts (30 page)

Penny and Tom Hanks on the set of 1992’s
A League of Their Own
“A League of Their Own” © 1992 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
.

A
FTER
AWAKENINGS
,
PETER GUBER
and Jon Peters, who were running Sony Pictures, offered me a production deal. They said something like, “If you come with us we’ll even let you do that girls movie.” They were talking about
A League of Their Own
. Fox had pulled the plug on David Anspaugh seven weeks into pre-production, so the Lowell Ganz-Babaloo Mandel script was back on my desk when I resurfaced and began looking around for my next project.

I went to Barry and told him about Sony’s offer. Unable to match it, he encouraged me to take it—and do the movie. So did Bob Greenhut, who called around the same time and said, “Let’s do the baseball picture. Sets are already built and in storage somewhere.”

I had already made up my mind after asking Tracy if she’d want to play Betty Spaghetti. She did—and that was enough for me. She started to practice and would come home happy. In a way, I saw in her what I wanted to capture in the movie: empowerment and pride. Don’t be ashamed of your talent.

League
chronicled the inception of an all-girls baseball league started by a clever team owner who needed a gimmick to keep the sport going and fill the stands while his star players were overseas
fighting World War II. Top female players were recruited and organized into teams. The league got off to a rocky start, but the women eventually ended up in Cooperstown, proving greatness wasn’t a men-only club.

I wanted my production team to include Anton Furst again. He had designed my offices at Sony, but declined the movie. “Let Bill do it,” he said, referring to Bill Groom, the art director on
Awakenings
. Anton was suffering through a deep, deep depression. Whatever was going on in his life, he couldn’t deal—or didn’t want to—and that included work. His turned into a tragically sad story. In November, after we’d completed filming
Awakenings
, Anton committed suicide. As his doctor was checking him into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he went up to the parking lot roof to smoke a joint or something and jumped to his death. It was terrible.

Unlike Anton, Miroslav eagerly reupped with me. He didn’t know anything about baseball. I took him to his first game. All he talked about was the food people ate. “Ah, it’s an American picnic.”

True enough. But baseball was also a sport, and as I put together a cast, I had an unusual requirement: The girls had to be able to play. I couldn’t double them in the movie. They were going to be in little skirts. It wasn’t like making a football movie where you could hide athletes inside a helmet and pads. Any girl I cast had to be able to throw, catch, hit, run, and slide. So I had longtime USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux run the girls through the paces. It was probably the toughest tryout any of them had ever had for a movie. Some of the actual AAGPBL women who lived locally also judged them. I heard batting cages around the city were packed with actresses learning how to hit.

Anspaugh had wanted Sean Young in the lead. Demi Moore had been my first choice for Dottie. I had run into her prior to
Awakenings
and asked if she could play ball. It turned out she could. She was coordinated—and a strong actress. Perfect. But she was pregnant when the role came around again. She literally got fucked out of the part.

I was able to choose anyone in the world, but great actresses don’t necessarily make for great athletes. One showed up in ballet slippers. Sorry, not right. Marisa Tomei sent me a tape of herself playing ball. I saw that Joe Pesci had been teaching her as they made
My Cousin Vinny
. As much as I loved Marisa, though, she wasn’t a ballplayer. Farrah Fawcett, an excellent athlete, wanted in; unfortunately she was a little too old. Lori Singer was an excellent actress who could play, but she wanted a bigger part. The list of buts went on.

Finally, I gave the lead to Debra Winger, who signed up with a great deal of enthusiasm—and she could play. She was a tough girl. We were eager to work together, too. Nearly a decade had passed since we talked about
Peggy Sue
. Because of her, I cast Lori Petty as her sister, Kit Keller, a part that I was thinking about Moira Kelly for, until she hurt her ankle while making
The Cutting Edge
. Lori was perfect, though. Scrappy, athletic, confident, she was the only actress who stood up to Debra Winger when they read together.

It ain’t easy to read with Debra, either. She’ll fuck with you. She’ll throw in extra lines or add asides. It flusters some people. Which is why she does it. You have to stay together, and Lori did. She was also a hell of a player.

Then Tom Hanks asked for that role of Jimmy Dugan, a former star player (based on slugger Jimmie Foxx) whose drinking problem had driven him out of the big leagues and into a last-chance job as manager of the Rockford Peaches. Tom had done a handful of not-so-hot pictures, which happens when you work as often as he did, and he was reading scripts, looking for a movie that would get him back on track. He wanted a part where he wasn’t the lead, but audiences would be happy every time he came on screen.
League
was perfect.

“Can I have it?” he asked.

I thought he was wrong for the part. But he’s a great guy and gets along with everyone. I just couldn’t let him look the way he looks. He would seem like a distraction to the girls. They would be thinking he
was cute. So I tried him in glasses, messed with his hair, and finally I said, “Eat! You’ve got to eat. Get fat.” Tom ate his way through our locations in Chicago and Indiana. He lived on pork, “the
other
white meat,” as numerous signs in Indiana claimed, and Dairy Queen.

Rosie O’Donnell was at the other end of the spectrum. I told her not to eat. To this day, she says that I’m the only director that ever told her to lose weight. Well, I say those things if they need to be said. Lindsay Frost, a tall, blond, pretty actress, was all set for the role of “All the Way” Mae, a character originally written as a California hottie. But then her TV pilot got picked up and all of a sudden I had to find another girl who could play ball
and
dance.

I went to Madonna after reading a magazine article in which she mentioned she wanted to act in more movies. When I met with her, she asked if I wanted to see her pitch. I said, “No, I already have a pitcher. But I do have to see if you can play.” She was on her way to Cannes for a screening of her documentary
Truth or Dare
, but she stopped in New York and worked out for three hours with the coaches at St. John’s University. They gave her a thumbs-up. She was trainable. And that’s all I needed: trainable. So she was in.

But that pissed off Debra. “You’re making an Elvis movie!” she said. I didn’t understand what that meant, and I suppose my lack of understanding frustrated her even more because she dropped out of the picture. I wasn’t going to look for another “All the Way” Mae. Lowell and Babaloo were rewriting the role to fit Madonna, turning Mae into a sassy, cigarette-smoking centerfielder. Rosie was enamored of the superstar singer. I knew their chemistry could work onscreen.

I helped that friendship along, too. At our first meeting, I began referring to them in a single breath as Ro and Mo (I couldn’t get the word Madonna out), and I issued them marching orders: “You’re going to be best friends. Mo, you teach her how to set her hair, and Ro, you teach her how to play ball.”

Geena Davis slipped into the lead. She had read
League
but wanted
to meet with Lowell and Babaloo about them writing another script for her. She ended up at my house. Her agent said not to play ball with her, but I took her out in the backyard anyway and discovered she was a natural. I had my new Dottie.

Obviously Geena and Lori Petty didn’t look like sisters, but I wasn’t going to recast Lori, who was a sensational player, one of the best natural athletes of all the girls. Instead, I matched their hair color. Suddenly they were sisters.

As for the rest of the cast, Megan Cavanagh, an actress, was waitressing at Ed Debevic’s, a ’50s-style hamburger joint, when she was cast as Marla; she learned to switch hit. Like her, Anne Ramsay and Bitty Schram could really play, and Freddie Simpson was so skilled, Tom joked that “she dipped Skoal.” Renée Coleman and Annie Cusack were trainable. Robin Knight, another excellent athlete, showed up after we were already cast. However, she refused to take no for an answer. She got herself to Chicago, talked her way in, and slept in another girl’s room every night. How do you say no to that kind of effort?

After some final workouts in L.A. with Rod Dedeaux’s crew, we left for Chicago. When Jon Lovitz, who played the scout Ernie Capadino, heard that Madonna had checked into her hotel under a pseudonym, he registered under one, too: Edna Poop-a-dee-do. Rehearsals included daily workouts.

Garry flew in at the last minute to play team owner Walter Harvey after I couldn’t afford my first choice, Christopher Walken. I had called him on a Friday and said I needed him on Monday. He was a good sport and a natural at playing the boss. He wasn’t the only family member I pressed into service, though. In addition to Tracy, my niece Penny Lee worked in the editing room and my other niece Wendy was a PA in charge of getting the girls from their campers in hair and makeup to the field. Like my brother, I cast family out of loyalty.

It turned out Bobby De Niro was also in Chicago, researching one of his upcoming pictures,
Mad Dog and Glory
. Tracy got involved with his personal trainer, Dan, who she knew from
Awakenings
. Bobby corralled me into going to crime scenes with him. He knew the cops would talk to me while he wandered around and observed. After a couple field trips, though, I told him that I couldn’t go with him every time a body turned up.

“I have to work,” I said. “I have a movie to do. It’s about baseball!”

As shooting began, I felt more like a coach than a director. The girls worked constantly on their throwing and catching, and took daily batting practice. Even Tom took his cuts. He didn’t want to miss out on the fun. But I was a stickler for authenticity. I wanted them to throw like players. I also brought in a Slip ’N Slide so they could practice slides (and have fun at the same time). Working that hard, though, made injuries unavoidable. One day a ball sailed through Anne Ramsay’s old-fashioned mitt and broke her nose. (In practice, they used larger, modern gloves with more webbing and padding.) Rosie broke her finger after we began shooting games. In the scene where Lori and Geena did a double slide into home plate, Lori turned her ankle after catching her cleat on the base.

Lori was much faster than Geena, and when we shot the scene where they were running for the train that took them to Chicago for tryouts, Lori kept passing Geena and she wasn’t supposed to. She complained that Geena was too slow. I told her to stay behind anyway. If you watch the scene, Lori’s feet are going faster than she is moving forward.

One of the most inadvertently funny moments was never seen onscreen. It happened as we shot the scene early in the movie when Jon Lovitz visited the girls at the farm after scouting them on the ball field. He walked into the barn as Dottie (Geena) and Kit (Lori) were milking cows and made his pitch about the league. However, as he said his lines, the cow next to him fell down and began to give birth.
Somehow Jon didn’t even blink. He didn’t even notice. He said his dialogue without interruption. But I couldn’t ignore the drama—or the noise—happening directly behind him. I yelled cut.

“What?” he asked, upset.

“Didn’t you notice the cow behind you just fell over?” I said.

He turned around and, as only Jon could, said, “Oh.” The farmers named the calf Penny.

Later, we were outside and Jon was interrupted by a mooing cow. This time he heard and he stopped. I asked what he was doing. He said the cow kept mooing. I said, “Well, tell it to shut up.” He did and it got a big laugh in the movie. One of his best ad libs came after he dropped Dottie and Kit off at tryouts. As he turned to leave, they asked what was next for him.

“I’m just going home to grab a shave and a shower and give the wife a pickle tickle,” he said, “and then I’m on my way.”

That was why I used Lovitz.

Tryouts were shot at the Cubs’ stadium, Wrigley Field. I brought in more than a hundred girls on the field. Madonna cracked, “I was a star and you turned me into an extra.” The other girls included Téa Leoni, who played first base for the Racine Bells, and Janet Jones, their pitcher. She was an excellent athlete, with a great look. My brother had used her in
The Flamingo Kid
. But she disappeared sometimes. Maybe she went to see her husband, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, or her kids. I don’t know—and didn’t have time to worry about it.

We only had the stadium while the Cubs were away. To save me time, I spoke with directors who’d done baseball films, including Phil Alden Robinson (
Field of Dreams
), Barry Levinson (
The Natural
), and John Sayles (
Eight Men Out
). Their tips were invaluable: Run your cables on the dirt so they don’t kill the grass (Barry); buy a ton of green paint in case you have to paint the grass (Phil); and don’t yell “cut” each time they throw and catch and run—don’t stop. Let them keep batting and throwing. Otherwise it will take for-fucking-ever. Keep the cameras running (John).

And John was right. I would scream at the makeup people as they ran into scenes to apply touchups. “Get the fuck out of there.” I hated all the
patchkeying
. But there were lovely moments, like the day Miroslav turned to me and complimented Megan. “She has beautiful eyes, like a cow.” There were also quick asides you wouldn’t have heard anywhere else, such as when I told Madonna to stop her upper-body workouts. “Your arms are getting too cut,” I said. “Your legs are fine. And keep the food out of Rosie’s mouth.”

After finishing the train scenes in the train station in Union, Illinois, we moved to Evansville, Indiana, a small town near the border of Illinois and Kentucky. We had found a great field there to shoot games as well as old-fashioned-looking diamonds in neighboring areas. We camped there for what seemed like forever. It didn’t take long before I lost patience with the makeup people interrupting all the time to try to match the dirt on the uniforms. Finally I just had the girls roll in the dirt on the baseline. “Get some dirt on your arms and legs.”