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Eight Men Out
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Eight Men Out is an American dramatic sports film, released in 1988, based on 8 Men Out, published in 1963, by Eliot Asinof. It was written and directed by John Sayles.
It is a dramatization of Major League Baseball's 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series. Much of the movie was filmed at the old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Plot
The Chicago White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey, is portrayed as a skinflint with little inclination to reward his team for a spectacular season.
When a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein gets wind of the players' discontent, it offers a select group of stars — including star pitcher Eddie Cicotte — more money to play badly than they would have earned to try to win the series against the Cincinnati Reds.
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Encyclopedia
Eight Men Out is an American dramatic sports film, released in 1988, based on 8 Men Out, published in 1963, by Eliot Asinof. It was written and directed by John Sayles.
It is a dramatization of Major League Baseball's 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series. Much of the movie was filmed at the old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Plot
The Chicago White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey, is portrayed as a skinflint with little inclination to reward his team for a spectacular season.
When a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein gets wind of the players' discontent, it offers a select group of stars — including star pitcher Eddie Cicotte — more money to play badly than they would have earned to try to win the series against the Cincinnati Reds. The eight end up being banned from professional baseball for life.
Background
Former Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo served as the personal coach for John Cusack, who played Buck Weaver. Santo taught Cusack the basic footwork and moves of the position. In addition, former Chicago White Sox outfielder Ken Berry served as a baseball coach for the cast.
In preparing for the role of Shoeless Joe Jackson, D.B. Sweeney, a former Tulane University outfielder, spent a season training with the Class-A Kenosha Twins of the Midwest League. A natural right-handed hitter, Sweeney learned to bat lefty in the six months prior to filming.
This film contains one of the hardest plays for live-action baseball broadcasters to execute. Shoeless Joe Jackson, played by Sweeney, drove a triple into the right-field corner while the camera operator was able to keep the batter-runner and the ball in the camera frame for the duration of play. The camera was positioned on home-plate side of the third-base dugout.
Several people involved in this film would go on to be involved with Ken Burns' 1994 film miniseries Baseball. Cusack, Lloyd and Sweeney did several voice-overs, reading recorded reminiscences of various personalities connected with the game. Sayles and Terkel were interviewed on the subject of the 1919 World Series. Sayles also contributed to the section on Roberto Clemente, and Terkel, a historian and a former labor leader, spoke about the movement toward labor freedom in baseball. Terkel also "reprised his role" by reading Hugh Fullerton's columns during the section on the Black Sox.
Errata
Throughout the film, the characters mispronounce the surname of Eddie Cicotte as SEE-cot rather than the correct sigh-COT-ee. The reason this error came about is that his grand nephew, Al Cicotte, changed the pronunciation following the scandal.
Cast
Critical reception
When the film was first released the film industry staff at Variety magazine wrote "Perhaps the saddest chapter in the annals of professional American sports is recounted in absorbing fashion in Eight Men Out...The most compelling figures here are pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), a man nearing the end of his career who feels the twin needs to insure a financial future for his family and take revenge on his boss, and Buck Weaver (John Cusack), an innocent enthusiast who took no cash for the fix but, like the others, was forever banned from baseball."
Film critic Roger Ebert was underwhelmed, writing, "Eight Men Out is an oddly unfocused movie made of earth tones, sidelong glances and el[l]iptic conversations. It tells the story of how the stars of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team took payoffs from gamblers to throw the World Series, but if you are not already familiar with that story you're unlikely to understand it after seeing this film."
Critic Janet Maslin spoke well of the actors, writing, "Notable in the large and excellent cast of Eight Men Out are D. B. Sweeney, who gives Shoeless Joe Jackson the slow, voluptuous Southern naivete of the young Elvis; Michael Lerner, who plays the formidable gangster Arnold Rothstein with the quietest aplomb; Gordon Clapp as the team's firecracker of a catcher; John Mahoney as the worried manager who senses much more about his players' plans than he would like to, and Michael Rooker as the quintessential bad apple. Charlie Sheen is also good as the team's most suggestible player, the good-natured fellow who isn't sure whether it's worse to be corrupt or be a fool. The story's delightfully colorful villains are played by Christopher Lloyd and Richard Edson (as the halfway-comic duo who make the first assault on the players), Michael Mantell as the chief gangster's extremely undependable right-hand man, and Kevin Tighe as the Bostonian smoothie who coolly declares: 'You know what you feed a dray horse in the morning if you want a day's work out of him? Just enough so he knows he's hungry.' For Mr. Sayles, whose idealism has never been more affecting or apparent than it is in this story of boyish enthusiam gone bad in an all too grown-up world, Eight Men Out represents a home run."
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 34 reviews."
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