Eight Men Out

DVD Features:

Audio:

Product Description:

Unlike other nostalgic baseball films (THE NATURAL, FIELD OF DREAMS), director John Sayles's EIGHT MEN OUT explores one of the darkest moments in the history of the sport--1919's infamous Black Sox scandal, when eight players on the heavily favored Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the World Series. Based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 book of the same name, the film investigates why the players--including the great Shoeless Joe Jackson, who many believe belongs in the Hall of Fame--would purposely lose the most important game of their lives. Set in the same time period as Sayles's MATEWAN, EIGHT MEN OUT shows how money and exploitative labor conditions destroy the purity of the game. Even though the film has no star parts and ends on a bleak note, EIGHT MEN OUT was the second Sayles film to receive financing from a major studio. Studs Terkel appears as the famous journalist Hugh Fullerton, who exposes the scandal, while Asinof and Sayles also have small roles.

Plot Synopsis:

Anxious to burn the team's owner--whose skinflint tactics insult their talent--eight players on the Chicago White Sox conspire with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series.

Plot Keywords:

Drama | Drama (General) | Sports | True Story

Exerpts:

"Say it ain't so, Joe!" -- A little boy to Shoeless Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) after the Black Sox scandal is exposed

"I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid." -- Hap Felsch (Charlie Sheen) to sportswriters

Production Notes:

• Theatrical Release: September 2, 1988
• Director John Sayles wrote the script (his first ever) in 1977, as an audition piece for a film agency in Hollywood. He could not make the film then because the rights to the story had been in litigation for about 20 years. Three years later, Midge Sanford-Sarah Pillsbury Productions acquired the rights to Asinof's book and made a deal with Sayles to make the film.
• Sayles selected actors with experience playing baseball. Ken Berry, a former center fielder in the major leagues, helped get the actors in shape.
• Sayles usually had only 200 extras and some cardboard cutouts to fill in the stadium for the baseball scenes. A movable smokestack and well-placed coaches covered the stadium lights in the background.

Cast and Crew: