Fabulous Film & Friends
A podcast for the true cineaste. This podcast examines the impact great or memorable films have on us both personally and culturally. If you've ever bonded with someone or joined a lively discussion circle based on your love of cinema, this is the podcast for you.
Fabulous Film & Friends
Episode #4 - The Natural With George Young, Author of Time Blinked
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On this episode of Fabulous Film & Friends I talk with George Young, author of the forthcoming novel Time Blinked, about Robert Redford & Barry Levinson’s seminal 1984 love letter to baseball, The Natural , based on the novel by Bernard Malamud. The multi-talented Mr. Young, whose exciting and varied career includes working as a professional dancer and then as an in-demand line producer for motion pictures television and commercials, has now added published author to his long list of accomplishments.
I’ve known George for almost 20 years, when he took a chance on a very green production assistant named Gino Caputi to work on an American Express commercial he was line producing involving Michael Andretti driving an ice cream truck down Taylor Street in an homage to the car chase in Bullitt.
Little did I know then that George had the writing bug in him and that 15 years hence, he would give up his successful career in film and television to become a full-time author, moving to New York and doing the writer’s grind. The hard work paid off and now he has a publishing deal for Time Blinked.
Time Blinked tells the story of Robert “Bobby” Young, a high school baseball phenom, who, during a promotional homerun contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Phillies, gets caught in a mysterious ripple in time and finds himself at bat against the 1975 Oakland A’s in an exhibition game where his towering 550 foot game winning smash sets off a chain of events that not only alters Major League Baseball history but threatens Bobby’s very existence on earth.
And now it's time for Fabulous Film and Friends. Today on Fabulous Film and Friends, I'm going to talk with my friend George Young about Robert Redford and Barry Levinson's seminal 1984 love letter to baseball, A Natural, based on the novel by Bernard Malinbow. But before we jump in, the multi-talented Mr. Young, whose exciting and varied career includes working as a professional dancer and then as an in-demand line producer for motion pictures, television, and commercials, has now added published author to his long list of accomplishments. I've known George for almost 20 years when he took a chance on a very green production assistant named Gino Caputi to work on an American Express commercial he was line producing involving Michael Andretti driving an ice cream truck down Taylor Street in an homage to the car chase in Bullet. Little did I know then that George had the writing bug in him and that 15 years hence he would give up his successful career in film and television to become a full-time author, moving to New York, and doing the writer's grind. The hard work is paid off, and now he has a publishing deal. George, welcome, and congratulations on the forthcoming launch of your novel, Time Blinked.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, Gino. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. Uh looks like I didn't fake too much stuff. Um, but thanks for having me on. I'm I'm very interested in talking about the natural, which is one of my favorite, not only books, but also movies. So really looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_00Do you want to give a quick synopsis of your book or should I?
SPEAKER_01Um why don't you do it? You you're uh I think you're um better equipped at this point in time to do it podcast style. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Time Blinked tells the story of Robert, Bobby Young, a high school baseball phenom who, during a promotional home run contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Phillies, gets caught in a mysterious ripple in time and finds himself at bat against the 1975 Oaklands in an exhibition game, where his towering 550-foot game-winning smash sets off a chain of events that not only alters Major League Baseball history, but threatens Bobby's very existence on Earth. So I had the pleasure of reading the first 50 pages of the novel of a form, and uh it seems to me that we get a very detailed look inside the locker room and outlook of the 1975 Philadelphia Phillies. Though now I understand the Phillies are going to be changed to the Quakers. Do you want to tell us about that?
SPEAKER_01Sure. It uh it was motivated by a couple things. One of them was creative, which was um time travel involves uh sometimes the alteration of reality. And what I wanted to do was uh look into the Phillies' past, figure out why they had such an obvious team nickname, mascot name, whatever you want to consider the Phillies. Um, and it turns out they were originally the Philadelphia Quakers. So I wanted to take that and I proposed to the publisher that we use the Philadelphia Quakers for the team and uh have an alternate reality where the Philadelphia Quakers have never, ever been to the World Series. The Phillies had been twice by 1975, they hadn't won a World Series, but uh I felt it made for uh a better book that this extremely moribund franchise gets this transcendent player uh dropped in their midst, uh, like well, okay, like Roy Hobbes in The Natural. And he um turns the team around not only by his uh singular talent, but also by his singular attitude, where he just will not accept any sort of form of defeat. He essentially wills a team which had really given up in its 92 years of history with ever winning a world championship. Uh, Bobby is the difference maker. I thought it was a more compelling story uh using the Quakers, and again, a slightly alternate history to the Phillies, who believe me, were never a successful franchise, maybe until about the mid-70s when the book takes place. The second reason um unfortunately has a legal component to it. I won't drill down too deeply into it, but uh I had written uh a couple of early drafts using the real players from the 75 team and had done a good deal of legal research into what's the viability of that? I mean, does that set the publisher and yours truly up for lawsuits? The short answer is possibly. And while I was perfectly willing, and this goes to my 35 years as a line producer, perfectly willing to take the chance on possibly having litigation, which might possibly go to court and might possibly not turn out in my favor. I was gonna stay with the Phillies and the actual roster, but the publisher um did not think that was the wisest of move. And also, we kind of agreed that the alternate reality made for a better book. And you know what? I gotta agree. Sometimes these happy accidents, whether they're caused by litigation or not, are things that you have to be open to. And I'm glad I was, especially when I started rewriting the 50 pages that I sent to you a couple of weeks ago. I promise I will send you the next draft of the 50 just so you can sort of see where the story is going. It's not vastly different. The uh synopsis that you read is essentially intact. There are just a few more things about the now Philadelphia Quakers that I think are going to be of interest to not only baseball fans, but also fans of sports books and fans of um the natural in general. There's uh there's a mystical quality to Philadelphia Quakers, and I and I did want to exploit that as well.
SPEAKER_00So your protagonist is named Robert Bobby Young, and he has a brother named George. Does that sound like anybody you know?
SPEAKER_01Well, my my brother Bobby was a phenomenal athlete. He just he's just what he's one of these people who could pick up a sport and just play it exceptionally well. Baseball being one of them, my brother was also an extremely good ice hockey player, and he didn't start playing ice hockey till he was 14. Um, he was also a 200-plus average bowler, and he picked up bowling when he was like 11 or 12 and only bowled through his early teenage years. Um, but my brother, by his own admission, did not get a very good coaching at the high school level and also was a bit of a head case. But he was an incredible athlete, and I uh initially had based a character on him, and then I thought, you know what? It's him. Uh I have to have him in the book. And uh I did. I wrote the entire first draft with him as the protagonist, and at some point um I inserted myself because I appear at the very beginning of the book, and at the very end of the book, um, and at the very end, it is a question of whether Bobby is going to make it back to 2020 or if he even wants to. Um, but yeah, the two of us are real characters in the book. Uh again, I'm only at the beginning and at the end. Uh, my brother is, of course, the lead character throughout the entire novel.
SPEAKER_00Let's get into the natural. For those of you who haven't seen the movie or read the novel, it's all about Roy Hobbs, a young baseball vunderkind whose prodigious talent gets him a tryout for the Chicago Cubs. Once in Chicago, however, he is beset by horrific tragedy at the hands of an alluring but fanatical woman. Returning to the game 16 years later and still possessing an amazing talent, Roy helps lift the hapless New York Knights to league championship victory. Yet throwing roadblocks in his path are a quartet of schemers who seek to either tear down, exploit, or bask in his glory, all for their personal gain. George, uh, where did your appreciation for the story come from? The book or the movie? Um, what did you encounter first?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, it was the book. Uh Malamud's uh book is uh a singular piece of literature that I think is well crafted and does not play into the, as the movie does, the Hollywood ending. Um it shows the moral and um well physical complexity of of your basic human being in Roy Hobbes uh and also in some of the other uh secondary characters that Roy interacts with throughout throughout the book, but he is a deeply flawed individual and uh in it, despite his considerable uh athletic talent, manages to, from the very beginning. Uh, I think you remember at the beginning of the book, as opposed to the movie, when he uh engages in the pitching duel with the whammer, who I'm assuming is Babe Ruth, um, he injures the very scout uh who has found him, plucked him off of a, I believe, a farm in Nebraska, and is taking him to a uh a big league ball club to pitch for them. He's uh he's a player with a phenomenal arm. Initially, Roy Hobbes is a pitcher. And uh, but during this home run um pitching contest with the whammer, um Roy injures uh Simpson, the um the scout, and injures him to the point where the uh the poor gentleman passes away. So Roy is he's just a cursed character, and I think Malamud develops him so completely throughout the novel, and then Hollywood took it. And um I think you and I had discussed earlier about their inability to saddle uh Robert Redford, a veritable golden boy of Hollywood, especially in the 80s, um, with a role where he would uh not turn out to be the uh quote unquote hero.
SPEAKER_00So I just wanted to give the listener a little background on Burmaur and Malamud's inspiration for Roy Hobbes. George, were you uh aware of Eddie Makis, the first baseman? He was a Philly.
SPEAKER_01Was it Waitgis? Yeah, sorry, Waitgis, my mistake. Okay, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, he was uh Cubs first baseman, and a woman named Ruth Ann Steinhagen, uh Cubs super fan, as we would call them today, was so upset that Waitgus was traded from the Cubs to the Phillies that she lured him into a hotel room in Chicago and then shot him. Yeah, and he barely survived. Well, so that's where Malama got the inspiration, as well, it's from shoeless Joe Jackson and prodigies like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Redford for sure paid homage to Ted Williams with the number nine on his jersey. Now, I read the book in high school, but even before that, I read the first section of the book in a baseball literature anthology I had. Oh, wow. I used to read a lot about baseball, like Babe Ruth, baseball hero, and things like that in grade school and high school. And so when I saw the movie, the opening act with Roy striking out the whammer is nearly word for word and from the novel. That's that's true. So I didn't imagine much difference. And you can imagine my surprise when I read the book in earnest and Roy Hobbs and the book is nothing like Robert Redford. He is yeah. And you know, I've gone back and forth on this, but I prefer the movie. I love the movie. I just watched it last night and I love it. I think it's a beautiful movie about baseball. And you know, Robert Redford's taciturn performance, I accept it. He's playing uh Gary Cooper type, and he's the epic hero, and fine. It's that it's how it's a choice, and I I like it. I think it works in the movie as as executed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, yeah, uh it is a it's a movie that if you talk about the craft, and you know, you and I were both heavily involved in that part of the industry for or that particular industry for a while, um, it's extremely well executed. Uh it's one of those movies, I I think I have a list of about 12 of them, where I can honestly look at the movie and go, did they, did they waste a scene? I mean, maybe some stuff ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I don't know, but you watch that film and you go, I I don't think there's a bad scene, a bad piece of dialogue, a bad bit of art direction in the entire film. It's also brilliantly paced. And I'm thinking, okay, you've got baseball, but it's a backdrop. And to be able to do that, to insinuate it to the point where you're not really worried about who's watching it as being a pure baseball fan. You're worried about whether or not they're gonna their attention's gonna be held by this whole I call it the front story. It just is. I mean, it's Redford, it's Memo, it's Iris. It's it's essentially a love triangle that's got these insidious characters behind it trying to crater this guy every chance they get. I mean, you really do pull for him because where's he been for 15 years? I mean, he's he's been licking his wounds for, I mean, that's a long time to get over a bullet wound if you survive. Um, but you do pull for him, and I think that baseball as a backdrop is a wonderful vehicle if you know how to pace it, because if you don't, um it can it can put you to sleep. Baseball is a very slow-paced game, and there's none of that in uh the natural, the movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um and with regards to Robert Redford and the craft of filmmaking, uh, the movie's really well cast. I mean, I think maybe I could do it without Glenn Close, but that's it. Everyone else is perfect.
SPEAKER_01And what and why and I'm sorry, why is that?
SPEAKER_00I'm just curious. She's a little mousey, all right. Kind of a holdover from her creepy, touchy, feely doormat character in the big chill. You know, in the novel of the naturals, Iris is a complete stranger to Roy. She's described as a big woman and a grandmother, which of course isn't gonna fly in a Hollywood movie. No, I don't know. I suppose Glenn Close is suitably angelic, Madonna and all, but as opposed to Kim Basinger's Vixen. Yeah, and that that's what I was saying. This time around, Kim Basinger's performance really jumped out as spectacular. Yeah, right. I honestly don't think she's ever been as lustrous and desirable in a movie as she is in the natural. And yeah, and it's also a really good bit of acting on her part as well. I think I took that for granted before because she's such a stunning on-screen presence and fits so well with Robert Redford with those two as a power couple. But she's basically playing this twisted, self-centered gun mall.
SPEAKER_01That's a good description.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and to her credit, she comes off as sympathetic when she absolutely isn't, you know. And I absolutely love Darren McGavin in the movie is the bookie, Gus Sands, Richard Farnsworth, Michael Madsen, Mike Starr. Mike Starr is in it. You know, he's done a million movies, usually playing the big dumb thug, like in Dumb and Dumber. And, you know, it was nice to see him young and relatively thin and playing just a period guy because he certainly had that classic period look and voice. Anyway, the film is is beautifully shot by Caleb De Chanel. And so it holds up really remarkably well for its age. That scene at the beach is gorgeous. I mean, really, even by today's standards, anyway, uh, enough of my yakking. Um, George, what do you think stuck with you from the film as you embark on your own baseball opus?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's that magic of uh I pointed this out in a couple things I I've posted recently um on uh social media. It's the it's the magic of a game that doesn't have uh a time limit. And um I uh abandoned baseball uh after the 1994 strike. I've just come back to it within the last several seasons because I had seen it go from this um almost it happens every spring kind of feeling about baseball that you know your club starts out zero and zero, and you know uh anything is possible. Um, and I wanted to, I'm hoping I brought that to the book where I kept uh attempting to put some of that magic, uh that chemistry, that that quality that you can't get from hiring, you know, six foot five inch, 325-pound linemen to just, you know, knock somebody over. Baseball to me is a um is a sport of of finesse and grace. Um and it had been when I was uh when I was a kid. And then like I said, after the 94 season, it kind of lost something for me. And I have to say, um, coming back to it older um has given me pause because I don't see the sort of characters in baseball. Uh every uh, as I pointed out in one of my articles, uh everybody swings the same, every pitcher has the same motion, every team more or less has the same culture. Um you don't get those lovable buffoons like Jay Johnstone on the 75 Phillies. Um now, um writing about it, I just kept going back to okay, what was baseball like when I was a kid when I started watching games with my dad when I was six, you know, in 1963. 64 was a painful year because the Phillies lost the six and a half game lead with 11 games left in the season and didn't go to the World Series that year. But it didn't matter because the next year was 1965, and you get to start all over again. So I think this is this is a book about, like Roy Hobbes, this is a book about a new start. And Malamud had created okay, it's a new start, but you still have the same cursed individual. Hollywood took it and it gave Roy Hobbes maybe the happy resurrection or rebirth that a lot of us would have wanted in the book. Now, quite frankly, again, being an English lit major, I love the fact that Malima didn't take the easy way out. I really do. I think it is a brave bit of writing on his part to stay with the man is cursed, he makes bad decisions, and he has a violent temper. And all that's going to come into play because he's human. Um the movie almost presents Roy, and again, I took more of this than I did from the Malamut book for uh the character of my brother. He is almost um, I don't want to say godlike, it gets thrown around a little bit too much. If if you're gonna refer to the Romans or the Greeks, yeah. Um my brother uh had a significant amount of athletic talent. And I tried to imbue that into the story to the point where maybe he's just he's like Wayne Gretzky, he's just that much better than everybody else for some reason. Um and I think Roy Hobbes in the movie was too. Now, in the book, yeah, of course he was, but he also had that tragic flaw that is eventually going to do him in. Um, I don't know if that's answering your question about writing about it, but it was it was it was an effort to continue to bring in let's stay away from like the ugly side of baseball, which is there, uh, and let's continue to feed the positive upbeat, magical. If a guy's five foot seven and weighs 155 pounds, um he can play baseball and play it at a very high level. Like uh there was a guy that played for Kansas City for a long time, um Fred Pot Fred Pottech, who was just an exceptional shortstop. And uh there was a player named Jimmy Wynne, they used to call him the Toy Cannon because I think he was all a five foot eight and used to hit home runs at the Houston Astrodome, which is not an easy thing to do. But you know, that to me was the sport. It's like, oh, the you know, I could play baseball. You know, I'm five foot ten and a half and I weigh 165 pounds. I'm the same size Larry Boa was when he played for the Phillies, and the guy was an all-star shortstop.
SPEAKER_00So that's a good yeah, well, that's a good thing that the natural takes place in 1939 because I'm sitting there thinking, could Robert Redford actually take a clock tower out on an entire set of stadium lights? All five. Yeah, I mean, you look at him, and he's certainly no Jose Canzeco or Mark McGuire. And I think those guys would have a lot of trouble taking down a clock tower and a stadium light. With the single home run.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's the thing, right? He's got this Herculean talent that's uh just uh otherworldly. I you know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that mythic otherworldly quality spoke of is really a game changer for sports movies. But you know, in the same way Star Wars and Blade Runner change science fiction, the natural brought in an element of heroic grandeur that we hadn't really seen before in films like say Pride of the Yankees or Bang the Drum Slowly. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh I'm trying to think of the other movies that were uh maybe sort of uh biographical. Like I'll tell you what's a very good sports movie is the Jackie Robinson story, because it has Jackie Robinson in it. I mean, it's just it, but it is a good biopic. I mean, it just is. Um, there's a very funny baseball movie called uh, well, it happens every spring with Ray Miland, which is it is a very funny movie. It holds up very well. Sports movies. Um, if you want to have if you want to watch something that's cathartic before the natural, I'd say your best bet might be the longest yard with Burt Reynolds. Right.
SPEAKER_00And it's a it's a football movie, but yeah, but in no way does the longest yard have the appeal of the natural. It you know, it's still a pretty gritty, down home 70s movie. The natural has that glowing lyrical beauty to it. And you look at Barry Levinson, look at his previous film, Diner. I I'd have never guessed that he had the natural in him. Even afterwards, I don't think he's ever topped it. Well, possibly Rain Man in terms of filmmaking and acting, but in terms of visual poetry, the naturals is one home run, no pun intended. Which it it's leads me to a big reason why the film is so memorable, and that's Randy Newman's tremendous score. You you talk about a trendsetter. After the natural and Randy Newman's clearly Aaron Copeland inspired score, the sound and feel of sports movies changed for at least a good 20 years, and I still think even in the age of Hans Zimmer's electronic scores, composers haven't completely let go of that sound. You look at from 85 to at least 2010, from Hoosier's to Field of Dreams to Rudy, it seemed every sports movie for years was aping in uh Randy Newman's style. But to use Aaron Copeland, the opening to use the Aaron Copeland sound, who you know defined American symphonic music, essentially the emotional language of our country for for decades, was really a stroke of genius. It gives the film a very mythic and yet distinctly American feel.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00You know, I certainly didn't think of Aaron Copeland when I read the anthology or the natural and the anthology um book I had, but you know, after I saw the movie, um for uh years later, um I think Randy Newman's score led me to Aaron Copeland. And as I look at it now, it just works so well.
SPEAKER_01It does. It's boy, it it works and it gives the movie that uh I I know you used the word mythical, but I also think it gives the movie an epic feel to it. It just does. And yeah, you're right. You would never it's like if you were looking at a script and the first thing that popped in your head wouldn't be, oh, why don't we get Randy Newman and he can, you know, do something derivative of of Copeland, you know, fan fanfare for the common man. Uh no, that's not gonna work. Well, it works.
SPEAKER_00And again, like with Barry Levinson, I don't think he's ever topped it. I don't think Randy Newman has ever topped the natural. I mean, he's done a number of high-profile scores, notably the Toy Story movies, but in terms of hummability and emotional power, uh you know, I don't think Toy Story is as memorable as the natural or any of the other scores he's done, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Uh, not surprising, given the uh transcendent, or even if you want to call it, uh the seminal nature of the movie. It changed the way that we looked at movies. I mean, not just sports movies, uh again, the the play in the field, which could be very contrived in in previous baseball movies, even the um, if memory serves, the Jackie Robinson story relied a lot on archival footage. So you did have actual gameplay. Um, but trying to duplicate that, I mean, I know it's it's it's a movie from the uh baseball play from the 30s, but still, uh I thought what they pulled off there in terms of gameplay was was exceptional. Um and you had baseball movies after that that had to come up to that standard, like okay, Bulldorum had had very good gameplay. Um so did Major League. And those are two movies that fell into the if and again, if memory serves, the the 80s decade where you had the competition of the natural. So all of a sudden everybody's got to take their quote unquote game up a notch.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I I agree. And you know, that's those are the three the the the look of the film, the sound of the film, and the acting direction, it all just leads to why I think I like the movie better. It's just a it's an uplifting experience and it's an inspiring experience, and I think that's why you know you root for it, and you know, over overall it's the same, the same plot, as I said, and it's still about a guy who's making terrible decisions, especially with regards to women. It's just it's it's undoing, and it's you know, it a film kind of rises above what a dumbass Redford is, or Roy Hobbes. I mean, Wilfrid Brimley flat out tells him not to get involved with Kim Basinger or Memo Paris, and what does he do? He completely ignores him and goes into a bad luck streak.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Well, they well, yeah, you know, it was telegraphed, but yes, you're right. The last person you should be getting involved with is the uh is the gorgeous blonde whose boyfriend just died crashing into a fence. Oh man. Well, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You remember in the book, she can't stand him. She hates him in the book. Yeah, she hates him.
SPEAKER_01She does. She hates him all the way up to the end. And she but I I don't even think she tells him she hates him until the very end, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and as I remember, he's constantly pushing himself on her, right? I think it's even kind of grotesque sexually, right? He he really pushes himself in bed with her.
SPEAKER_01It's uncomfortable. All the scenes between them, as opposed to the movie. You know, the movie, the scene, like you mentioned, down by the water, is is somewhat romantic in its own way. And yet in the book, there's really nothing comparable. He's just no, he's just a troglodite who's trying to bed this beautiful woman. I mean, wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and she really holds a torch for Bump in the book. That's right. She's really devastated by his death, which of course is a more interesting character choice.
SPEAKER_01If I remember, doesn't she she accused she basically accuses Roy Hobbs of killing Bump Bailey at some point?
SPEAKER_00I I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01I uh I thought I I read a note. I I I read up on the book um prior to this, and I thought there was a scene, and I sort of remembered reading it. It was pretty was pretty um, I don't want to call it graphic, pretty stark, because she basically comes out and accuses him of of of murdering Bump Bailey by just by being Roy Hobbs.
SPEAKER_00I don't remember that detail. Uh I do remember that Roy um doesn't really want to sleep with Iris, or he sleeps with her out of pity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I just I remember the line, something to the effect of Roy enjoyed the pleasures of Iris' body, but he he really had his mind on memo the whole time. And the thing about the book is it's it's really depressing. Aside from his natural power, the whole thing's kind of a downer. It reminds me a lot of uh um uh Do Android Zoom of Electric Sheep as opposed to Blade Runner. I mean, most people think of Blade Runner as this big downer of a movie, but read read the book. I mean, it's it's trippy, drug-induced 70s sci-fi as opposed to the movie, which is ultimately an uplifting experience. And I see the natural the same way. It it, you know, it's it's it's a better experience.
SPEAKER_01Than right, well, than than reading, slogging through uh a book about a cursed individual. Yes, I I agree. Now, yeah, I mean you have to understand that being a lit major, I was I was exposed to all kinds of stuff. Uh, Malamud and Saul Bello, when I was reading Jewish authors, were were were two of them. And I was just drawn in immediately by his ability to craft um chapter after chapter that uh I don't want to say it was page turners, but you just had, even at that age, I think I was maybe 21, um, and I might have still even been in college, uh, reading that book and going, okay, now I know what great writing is. You know, I mean, uh I'd had a whole year of William Shakespeare, so I kind of knew what great writing was, but I'm thinking popular writing. And Bernard Malamud to me was kind of at the forefront. Malamud and Kurt Vonnegut, and I I I don't, there they couldn't be two more different writers. And yet both of those those authors had a capability to entrance the reader. And I'll tell you, from from Malamud, given the subject matter, that's doing something. If you can get somebody to to to make their way through that book and and not want to put it down out of like disgust, it's it's a tribute. And I I think that that is a rare talent.
SPEAKER_00Did you ever read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud? No. Yeah, it's uh apparently controversial, but he won the Pulitzer Prize for it.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right. Well, put that on the list. I mean, uh, it's been a while since I've read Malamud. Um, but boy, I'll tell you, that stuck with me like for when the movie came out. I was living in New York. This is during my dance career, and um, I went, you know, and stood in line at the theater. It was actually fairly popular there, as you can probably imagine, because the New York Knights, who I think, here, let me speculate, I think were the Brooklyn Dodgers because they were such a moribund franchise in the 30s. So they needed somebody like Roy Hobbes. Now, 10, 15 years later, they get Jackie Robinson and it turns them around. But that franchise was dead in the water. Ebbett was a ghost town in the 30s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, do you remember that the Brooklyn Dodgers in the newspaper were always depicted as a bum? They were always um, there was sort of this the embodiment of the Dodgers was this crazy bum that they carted away in a straitjacket when he finally had aspirations of getting out of the cellar. So I can only imagine there was keen interest in the story in New York between Bernard Malamode and the Burland Dodgers.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it was very popular in New York, but I I went just because I had been, and I'll tell you, I mean, I was very happy when I walked out of that movie because I thought, okay, Roy Hobbes, all these years later, finally has it's the requiem for Roy Hobbes. He's he's finally managed to do something where it doesn't crater because of his his tragic flaw. And and maybe the movie provides that. I I see nothing wrong with that. I think it's actually kind of cathartic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, I think I was talking about my the film with my sister, and she mentioned that if uh they had filmed the book, Roy Hobbs would be played by Michael Madsen.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you mentioned that. I think that's you're right on, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I I think that would be a really good and valid choice, and it probably would have been a really interesting movie if they had filmed the book as written. But I think Robert Redford at that point in his career, he just wasn't gonna do that. I mean, he did Down the Home Racer, and he's a bit of a jerk in that movie. Um, but I think at 1984, I think that he there was something about him and his the performance in the characters he was playing, he he wasn't gonna do that. He he just had to play the hero, and he had to be the guy with the feathered hair and sideburns, even though it wasn't completely period. It's just you know.
SPEAKER_01No, not in the 30s. Come on. He had his uh three days of the condor look in that movie, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And I just think uh he was gonna play Gary Cooper. That's the choice he made, and and that's the choice I accept, as I told you. Um But you know, that the funny thing is he's well, what I noticed this time around is he's so impressive, he's so um amazing, and he's so perfect that when he does start sleeping around with memo and going into a slump, it's almost too much of a contrast. You know, he's just striking out. He's it's not he's not hitting ground rule doubles or barely eking by with bunts and base hits and the occasional strikeout. He's just flat out whiffing. And of course, it's a movie, and you just have to show those contrasts to get the idea in the audience's brain that he's not doing well. But he's really sucking hard for a guy who can hit 500 to 600-foot home runs every time.
SPEAKER_01Oh, oh yeah. The um uh the capability is supposed like I said, you know, Gretzky. I mean, he's just that much better than everybody else. If Gretzky went into a slump, it wouldn't be he wouldn't be going uh 0 for 20 with you know eight 18 strikeouts against you know guys who couldn't even throw an 80 mile an hour fastball.
SPEAKER_00Right. He should be able to get a hit now and then, but again, I get it. It's a movie. And as a movie, George, where does the natural sit on your shelf? How in your estimation, how how important or how fabulous a film is it in your life? When and have you seen it in a while?
SPEAKER_01Oh, within the within the last year. I mean, it's one of those things, it's like one of the go-to movies on my um psychological list, I guess is uh maybe a good way to put it. It's um if I see it come up in a rotation on a streaming service, you know, I'm a sucker. I'll I'll I'll put it on. I know I watched it within the last year. It's kind of on that list with Midnight Run and um oh uh probably Young Frankenstein. You know, uh it's just it's just there. If somebody, you know, if somebody put the proverbial gun to my head and asked me to list a top 10, you know, movie list of for my life, I the natural would be on it. I know it. I don't know, I don't know where, but I'll tell you, it's a top tener. I mean, I I I I could start watching that movie halfway through and I I'd finish it, honest to God.
SPEAKER_00And moving to your book, if it were a movie, who who would you see cast in your in your film if you had uh creative control?
SPEAKER_01You know, it's funny. There's um there's a producer named John Katzman, my my my agent actually who doesn't do fiction, he only does nonfiction, he was kind enough to send um the first 50 pages, the same thing you got, plus the synopsis to John Katzman, who's a Hollywood producer. And Katzman said that he liked the premise, but you know, you're gonna have to find the right star to attach to it. Well, I got I gotta I contacted any of my you know recent contacts in LA and asked them about athletic stars who were somewhere between what what what do you think you could get away with? 18?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you need people who can actually act. So I assume that would be in the 25 range. Right, exactly. Of course, the challenge is you know, we as Americans uh have have lost our what it is to be men, and not to mention tough, and have any sort of character.
SPEAKER_01There's there's I have a good friend who says, you know, like you just can't react with testosterone anymore.
SPEAKER_00So um You're gonna have to cast from Australia. You're probably gonna have to get Sam Worthington to play him. He's see if he can play cricket at least, mate, so he can actually look like he can swing a bat.
SPEAKER_01That's actually not a bad idea.
SPEAKER_00I I I would have he gets a lot of crap, but he's actually not that bad at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I'm not I'm not gonna be hiring Timothy, what is it, Shalomet or whatever his name is? Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_00Did you see him as Henry V on Netflix?
SPEAKER_01Oh no, I think I saw him in rainy rainy day in New York. That was enough.
SPEAKER_00I yeah, I don't want to knock him. He's a good actor, but uh you know, you look at him in the armor on the horse with the sword. Bigger than he is that broadsword is carrying you, kid. That's right. Knowing Hollywood, he'll read your script and demand to play the part.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Then I'm then I'm stuck with him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay, so winding down, uh, what's on the horizon? Do you have any more baseball time travel books in you?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, I might do a follow-up eventually, but I have I've got three other books. The nonfiction book, which is about my 35 years in the film industry. Uh, as I mentioned, I have an agent for it. We just haven't found a publisher. Um I have a uh I have a novel called The Google Earth Murders, which um is about a Jack the Ripper um copycat who's uh killing not prostitutes but millennials in southern Manhattan. It takes place in the modern day, but he is duplicating the exact murders that took place in 1888 Whitechapel. And I still have my dra uh the book Dracula, which is about the real estate developer uh who buys Dracula's Castle and tries to turn it into a theme park.
SPEAKER_00Um but I dare say your books sound like they have a very cinematic bent to them.
SPEAKER_01You know, 35 years in the film industry, as one of my students, but I'm you know, I told you I went back to grad school. One of my fellow students said, all of your we when we workshop our books, all your books have this cinematic quality to them. And I'm like, I don't think I can get away from that. You know, you know, you spend 35 years on a film set, and it's like, okay, this is this is all planned like a movie in my head.
SPEAKER_00So are you going to get back into producing and get into the producer's chair on your own stuff?
SPEAKER_01We'll see. I mean, I'll keep pushing the books because that's my first order of business. And uh yeah, I mean, I'll option stuff if it comes up, but you know what? It's it is a slow, lumbering, difficult process, and I gotta tell you, I am enjoying every minute of it since leaving the film industry. So I guess that says something.
SPEAKER_00Well, if that isn't a perfect phrase to end on, I don't know what is. So that's all the time we have for today. My thanks to you, Georgiang. It was a fantastic interview. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate the opportunity. The fleetcher was all mine, George. Thank you, everyone. Please like and subscribe and comment and add your two cents if you feel compelled, and we will see you next time. There is a fabulous film to discuss and review. Bye, everybody. Thank you for listening to Fabulous Film and Friends. Copyright 2021, a Beller Films production.