Stealing Home
Encyclopedia
Stealing Home is a 1988 movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, starring Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon is an American actor who has been starring in American television programs and films since the mid-1970s, after a career as a collegiate football player with the UCLA Bruins. Since 2003, Harmon has starred as Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the CBS series NCIS.-Early life:Harmon was born Thomas...

, Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

, Jonathan Silverman
Jonathan Silverman
-Personal life:Silverman was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Devora and Hillel Emanuel Silverman, a rabbi. He is the grandson of famous Conservative Rabbi Morris Silverman. David Schwimmer was his best friend in high school. He is married to actress Jennifer Finnigan who he briefly co...

, and Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis
Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...

. The film is directed by Steven Kampmann
Steven Kampmann
Steven Kampmann is an American actor, writer, and director. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his role as Kirk Devane on the first two seasons of Newhart....

 and William Porter
William Porter
William Franklin Porter II was an American athlete, winner of 110 metre hurdles at the 1948 Summer Olympics....

.

Plot summary

Now in his 30s, doing poorly financially and socially, Billy Wyatt (Harmon) was once a very talented high school baseball player and minor-league prospect. He receives a telephone call from his mother revealing that his former child-sitter -- and later, in his teens, his first love -- Katie Chandler (Foster), has committed suicide.

This immediately elicits wonderful and painful memories of the times Billy spent with her, as well as of his own childhood, especially with his father Sam Wyatt (John Shea
John Shea
John Victor Shea III is an American actor and director who has starred on stage, television and in film. He is best known for his role as Lex Luthor in the 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and also starred in the short lived 1990s TV series WIOU as Hank Zaret...

) with whom he had a very affectionate relationship, and with best friend Alan Appleby (Silverman), with whom he had a great friendship full of adventure, challenge and more.

The memories become the story, going back to Billy's pre-teen time with Katie as his child-sitter (Katie was in her late teens at the time), and with his father; then to his teens, both before and after his father died in a car accident. Billy and Katie shared a brief time of love together before she moved out of the country to be with a man she loved. Katie was immensely helpful to Billy after his father died, prior to leaving the country, which was the last time he saw her.

Billy in the present, now in his thirties, struggles to know what to do with Katie's ashes. He searches his memories for answers, and finds Alan Appleby after many years of having lost touch. They embark on new adventures now as adults and the answer finally comes to Billy as he remembers something Katie spoke of long ago from her own early childhood: A horse in Atlantic City, being forced to run full speed down the boardwalk and off the edge into the water. Remembering that she wished (on that day) that she could fly to a faraway land to find happiness, Billy spread her ashes into the air off the edge of that same pier. Afterward, he rekindles old relationships and returns to a life of baseball by joining a minor league baseball team.

Cast

  • Mark Harmon
    Mark Harmon
    Mark Harmon is an American actor who has been starring in American television programs and films since the mid-1970s, after a career as a collegiate football player with the UCLA Bruins. Since 2003, Harmon has starred as Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the CBS series NCIS.-Early life:Harmon was born Thomas...

     as Billy Wyatt
  • Jodie Foster
    Jodie Foster
    Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

     as Katie Chandler
  • Harold Ramis
    Harold Ramis
    Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...

     as Alan Appleby
  • Blair Brown
    Blair Brown
    Bonnie Blair Brown is an American theater, film, and television actress. She has had a number of high profile roles, including a Tony Award-winning turn in the play Copenhagen on Broadway, as well as a run as the title character in the television comedy-drama The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,...

     as Ginny Wyatt
  • Jonathan Silverman
    Jonathan Silverman
    -Personal life:Silverman was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Devora and Hillel Emanuel Silverman, a rabbi. He is the grandson of famous Conservative Rabbi Morris Silverman. David Schwimmer was his best friend in high school. He is married to actress Jennifer Finnigan who he briefly co...

     as Teenage Alan Appleby
  • William McNamara
    William McNamara
    William West McNamara is an American actor.-Early life:Born in Dallas, Texas, McNamara is the son of a professional race car driver for the Ford Motor Company and an interior designer. He attended Columbia University and studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute...

     as Teenage Billy Wyatt
  • Richard Jenkins
    Richard Jenkins
    Richard Dale Jenkins is an American stage, film, and television actor. After beginning his career in theatre, Jenkins made his film debut in 1974, and appeared in supporting roles in numerous film productions in the 1980s and the 1990s. His breakthrough came in the 2000s for playing the deceased...

     as Hank Chandler
  • John Shea
    John Shea
    John Victor Shea III is an American actor and director who has starred on stage, television and in film. He is best known for his role as Lex Luthor in the 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and also starred in the short lived 1990s TV series WIOU as Hank Zaret...

     as Sam Wyatt
  • Christine Jones
    Christine Jones (actress)
    Christine Jones is an American actress.Jones is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Janice Frame on the NBC soap opera Another World from 1978–1980 and again in 1989, but had also appeared as Amy Gifford on the series in 1977...

     as Grace Chandler
  • Ted Ross
    Ted Ross
    Ted Ross was an American actor who was probably best known for his role as the Lion in The Wiz, an all-African American reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz. He won a Tony Award for the original 1975 Broadway production, and went on to recreate the role in the 1978 film version which also starred...

     as Bud Scott
  • Helen Hunt
    Helen Hunt
    Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets...

     as Hope Wyatt

Locations

The film plot is set in the Philadelphia area and the New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 shore. The filming occurred in many locations:
  • The house that Billy grows up in is located in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, where exterior scenes were shot;
  • The interiors of Billy's childhood home were filmed in a house located in Springfield, Pennsylvania
    Springfield Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania
    Springfield Township, or simply Springfield, is a township and a Census Designated Place in Delaware County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The population was 23,677 at the 2000 census...

    ;
  • The scenes in Bob's Diner were filmed at Ridge Avenue in Roxborough;
  • Alan Appleby's sporting goods store was located on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania;
  • Carlton Academy is actually Chestnut Hill Academy
    Chestnut Hill Academy
    Chestnut Hill Academy, commonly referred to as CHA, is a Pre-K to 12 all-male independent college preparatory school located in northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

    ;
  • The opening scene and closing scene were shot at Fiscalini Field
    Fiscalini Field
    Fiscalini Field is a stadium in San Bernardino, California, USA. Over the years, the stadium was the spring training homes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Browns and was the home field for the San Bernardino Stars and the San Bernardino Pioneers...

     in San Bernardino, CA. The team he was shown playing for in the movie was the name of the actual team that played there at the time, The San Bernardino Spirit
    Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino
    The Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino are a minor league baseball team in San Bernardino, California, United States. They are the Class A – Advanced affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and play in the California League...

    .

Reception

In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

 wrote, "The era is simply established as a dreamily idyllic past, thanks to sand dunes at twilight, waves that crash in the distance, shiny red convertibles without seat belts and a musical score that may make you want to weep, for all the wrong reasons". Rita Kempley, in her review for the Washington Post described the film as a "pale comedy-drama by mediocrities Steven Kampmann and Will Aldis. Admittedly a pastiche of their memories, the movie bespeaks the dust of '60s yearbooks and greeting card sentiment. Of course, that stuff can be touching (Summer of '42
Summer of '42
Summer of '42 is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher. It tells the story of how Raucher, in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation on Nantucket Island, off the coast of New England, embarked on a one-sided romance with a woman, Dorothy,...

) or quirky (Gregory's Girl
Gregory's Girl
Gregory's Girl is a 1981 Scottish coming-of-age romantic comedy film written and directed by Bill Forsyth.The film is set in and around a state secondary school in the Abronhill district of Cumbernauld. It features Gordon John Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, and Clare Grogan, among others...

), but here only allergy sufferers will leave with soggy Kleenex". In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

wrote, "I detested Stealing Home so much, from beginning to end, that I left the screening wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad".

When asked recently about the film, Mark Harmon said, "That was about a bunch of actors loving a script, going there and burning it on both ends for five weeks just to get it done. That was a fun one to make. I hear a lot about that role. People really found that movie on video".
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