Ron Shelton on the Struggle to Get 'Bull Durham' Made

The stories behind one of the greatest baseball movies ever made.

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On this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny is joined by Ron Shelton, the writer/director of Bull Durham, to talk about his new book on the making of the film, The Church of Baseball. In addition to discussing the fights over casting, the weirdly lackluster response from test audiences, and the movie’s impact on the minor league game writ large, we also chatted about some of Mr. Shelton’s other films like White Men Can’t Jump and Dark Blue.

Make sure to pick up his book; while you’re doing that, the excellent Blu-ray release of Bull Durham is 50 percent off as part of Barnes and Noble’s 50 percent off sale on all Criterion discs. (In the podcast, I also mentioned the Arrow Video release of Dark Blue, but you should only pick it up in the United States if you have a region-free Blu-ray player; luckily it’s streaming on Prime Video right now for free.)

If you love Bull Durham and/or enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with a friend!