The Crosspatch Times 3 - On Movies and Baseball (Part 1)

If you’ve never seen Richard Linklater’s 2016 masterpiece, Everybody Wants Some!!, a connection between movies and baseball more obtuse than it really is. I’m not talking about baseball movies, but the thematic links between playing baseball and being on set, as well as what makes baseball more inherently dramatic than any other sport.

In the film, college freshman pitcher Jake (the now forever-canceled Blake Jenner) talks about the Sisyphean myth with regard to baseball. It’s not the most complex comparison, but I found it extremely poignant. The obvious comparison lies in the high rate of failure every ballplayer must endure, but on a deeper level, baseball is mythology–it’s drama and storytelling and magic and larger-than-life figures achieving the unbelievable. In Linklater’s film, the recipient of this speech is Beverly (Zoey Deutch), a theater major. It’s no surprise that the two students find more in common than they initially thought.

Speaking of things that come as no surprise, I was a baseball player in college. For a long time in my life, baseball was THE THING that I cared about. I still love everything about baseball, from the way the field looks, to the silly handshakes, to the smell of the gloves, to rally caps, to the crack of the bat, to overpriced beer, to the near constant heartbreak it brings.

One of the things I love the most about production is how much it reminds me of baseball. Mostly, I see the comparison to baseball in the team aspect, in the stakes, and in the heartbreak. But there’s an argument to be made that silly handshakes have a place in production culture as well.

I have too much to say about heartbreak to fit in this one post, so look for that on Friday.

The Team

No one told me that being on set would feel so similar to playing sports–you’re a member of a specialized team, and over the course of a set number of scenes and/or hours, you’re going to go all out to complete a goal. It’s not competitive in the sense that there’s another team going against you (although certain clients on-set can feel that way), but you’re still testing your own skill and resolve constantly, and the combined effort of all these people determines how positive the result is. Plus, there’s a clock!

I don’t think I, or anyone, would enjoy set life if not for the people. And frankly, when people don’t enjoy set life, it’s usually because of the people. Working with people who are rude, selfish, or ignorant, is the worst experience ever (even if they’re talented). Feeling like you’re connected and in sync with your team, in baseball and in production, is one of life’s great joys. Everyone is on the same page, doing their job, aware of everyone else, and we’re all picking each other up. 

This is, I believe, one of the most under-the-radar corollaries between production and baseball. Not everyone played team sports growing up (though a surprising amount of people in production did) and not everyone has had that experience. I’ve been on set with a lot of fantastic  people who roll their eyes at “sportsball” but guess what? They’re still great teammates, even if they don’t know it.

I remember a shoot when we had the ambitious task of getting first shot up within an hour of arriving at location (a Sandy Springs house that we’d later use for my short film as well) for the first time. It was a closeup in a bedroom, and the room was mostly dark. All we had to do was push the light of a phone onto the lead actor’s face. The idea was it was a simple, isolated setup that we could knock out while a larger setup was underway elsewhere in the house. At the production meeting, I gave an impassioned (intentionally comedic) speech about how much I believed in us, and lo and behold: we got it done!

I might not have literally hi-fived everyone on the crew that morning, as if we’d just scored 5 runs in the first inning, but I did it in my head.

The Stakes

Now, you’re generally supposed to “win” on a shoot more often than you do in baseball–a historically great baseball team wins maybe 70% of the time and if your shoots are successful 70% of the time, then you probably should find a different career. When I first started in production, the fact that, if I did everything right, I would have consistently positive results, was mind blowing. After all, I came from a world where a 30% success rate was very good. It made everything seem easy.

But the devil, they say, is in the details. As shoots got more complicated, so did the metric of success. When there are 5 people on your crew, it’s pretty easy to make sure they’re all happy and comfortable. When there are 30, or 100+, well, the principles are the same, but it’s harder. Like hitting a 90+ mph fastball when you know the pitcher has nothing else vs. gearing up to hit the same fastball when he might throw you a curve, slider, or changeup instead.

That’s where stakes come into production: it’s not about if you can do the job, it’s about how you do the job. Do you have passable shots or exceptional ones? Did you wrap on time or were you late? Is your crew happy or are they miserable? And there’s the big, obvious question of if we’re going to go over budget.

Like in sports, I think it’s best not to actively think about these things while you’re in the act of shooting. That’s game time. You want to prepare, prepare, prepare, then trust that preparation will carry you through. Even when the unexpected happens, it’s on your preparation to adjust and keep the ship afloat.

The other part about stakes in production and baseball is that it’s all kinnnnnda made up. Like, we don’t need to care so much about whacking a ball with a piece of wood anymore than we need to spend hundreds, or thousands, or millions of dollars on videos, shows, and movies. At the same time… yeah, we do.

What’s Next?

In truth, this half of the blog post is really an amuse bouche. Part 2 is much meatier, as it was my real chance to wax poetic about movies and talk about Shohei Ohtani’s crazy 2024 stats with runners in scoring position at the same time. If that doesn’t entice you back, I don’t know what will!