Bull Durham - Production

Production

According to Shelton, "I wrote a very early script about minor league baseball; the only thing it had in common with Bull Durham was that it was about a pitcher and a catcher." That script was entitled, The Player To Be Named Later; a single anecdote from that script made it into Bull Durham. For Bull Durham, Shelton "decided to see if a woman could tell the story" and "dictated that opening monologue on a little micro-recorder while I was driving around North Carolina."

Crash was named after Lawrence "Crash" Davis but was modeled after Pike Bishop, the lead character William Holden played in The Wild Bunch: a guy who "loved something more than it loved him." Annie Savoy's name was a combination of the nickname ("Annies") that baseball players gave their groupies and the name of a bar; she was a "High Priestess could lead us into a man’s world, and shine a light on it. And she would be very sensual, and sexual, yet she’d live by her own rigorous moral code. It seemed like a character we hadn’t seen before." After Shelton returned to Los Angeles from his road trip, he wrote the script for Bull Durham in "about twelve weeks."

When Shelton pitched Bull Durham, he had a hard time convincing a studio to give him the opportunity to direct. Baseball movies were not considered a viable commercial prospect at the time and every studio passed except for Orion Pictures who gave him a $9 million budget (with many cast members accepting lower than usual salaries because of the material), an eight-week shooting schedule and creative freedom. Shelton scouted locations throughout the southern United States before settling on Durham in North Carolina because of its old ballpark and its location, "among abandoned tobacco warehouses and on the edge of an abandoned downtown and in the middle of a residential neighborhood where people could walk".

Shelton cast Costner because of the actor's natural athleticism. He was a former high school baseball player and was able to hit two home runs while the cameras were rolling and, according to Shelton, insisted "on throwing runners out even when they (the cameras) weren't rolling". He cast Robbins over the strong objections of the studio, who wanted Anthony Michael Hall instead Shelton had to threaten to quit before they backed off.

Producer Thom Mount (who is part owner of the real Durham Bulls) hired Pete Bock, a former semi-pro baseball player, as a consultant on the film. Bock recruited more than a dozen minor-league players, ran a tryout camp to recruit an additional 40 to 50 players from lesser ranks, hired several minor-league umpires and conducted two-a-day workouts and practice games with Tim Robbins pitching and Kevin Costner catching. Bock made sure the actors looked and acted like ballplayers and that the real players acted convincingly in front of the cameras. He said, “the director would say, 'This is the shot we want. What we need is the left fielder throwing a one-hopper to the plate. Then we need a good collision at the plate.' I would select the players I know could do the job, and then we would go out and get it done”.

The scene in the pool hall where Nuke tells Crash that he is going to "the Show" was originally shot in a black whorehouse with Costner's character playing "Unchained Melody" on the piano to a 60-year-old hooker while drunk. Nuke came in and the two men fought in an alley with several black hookers cheering Crash on. Costner remembers, "The pool hall was somehow thought to be a better experience for the audience, because we didn't want to see him with a black woman, I guess. But it was perfectly in line with who he was".