The Natural (Director’s Cut DVD)

Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 4, 2007

“The Natural” is now a special two-DVD set, with new footage added to the film and more than two hours of documentary and interviews about baseball and the making of this now-classic motion picture.

“Sony wanted to release it on DVD with updates on the technical side, better sound, better quality of the picture,” said “The Natural’s” director Barry Levinson, who in ‘89 won an Academy Award for his direction of “Rain Man.” “This opened the door for some changes, creatively, that I had been thinking about — but had never accomplished — and then they added this wonderful package of extras.”

Back In 1983, production began on “The Natural,” based on Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel about Roy Hobbs, a 35-year-old rookie with a mysterious past. Hobbs hits the baseball scene in the 1930s only to have his past catch up with him. Doesn’t sound thrilling, except for two things: the director was Barry Levinson, and the star, Robert Redford.

Redford had won an Oscar for his directorial chores on “Ordinary People” just two years before, while Levinson had just directed “Diner.” You remember “Diner,” that’s the one kids put on the top of the heap, and it’s now a cult film.

Redford, who was 47 at the time, had played shortstop for Van Nuys High School in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-’50s, along with team mate and future Hall of Famer Don Drysdale. (Redford received a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado before turning to acting.)

Casting for “The Natural” included Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Darren McGavin, Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth. Add to it brilliant cinematography by Caleb Deschanel and a memorable film score by Randy Newman, “The Natural” became a big hit when it was released in 1984 — opening the door for other successful baseball films including “Bull Durham,” “Major League,” “Field of Dreams” and “Eight Men Out” to follow.

Levinson said he had never been happy with the first act of the film. The director and his editing team were under the gun for its release date of May 11, 1984, and even though they had shot the footage, they weren’t given enough time to edit it properly.

“I had been talking about for years that we had never got to do the opening the way I had always wanted it,” recalled Levinson. “Like an archeological dig, Sony’s Chris Holmes started finding these lost pieces of film, and we started to reconstruct it back to what the original opening act would have been.”

“I think it just helps the movie,” said the director, whose other hits include “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Wag The Dog” and “Tin Men.” “I think it gives a little more shading to the Roy Hobbs character and knowing, in the sense, that when he goes home to get the bat [Wonderboy] to head to the Major Leagues, to get his second chance, you see how he was plagued by all the demons and his reevaluation of his past.”

The real highlight is the second DVD with 10 documentary featurettes consisting of a four-part documentary, “Extra Innings”; the three-part “making of” documentary, “When Lightning Strikes”; new interviews with Levinson, Redford, Close and other participants in the film; “A Natural Gunned Down: The Stalking of Eddie Waitkus” — a true story of a ballplayer stalked by a fan; “Clubhouse Conversations,” in which many people involved in the game — including columnist George Will, broadcaster Bob Costas and current and former players Jason Giambi, Don Mattingly and Ryne Sandberg — give their thoughts about the game; and “The Heart of the Natural,” in which Hall of Fame inductee Cal Ripken Jr. breaks down the film and relates the parallels of the movie to his own career.

“There are a lot of little things that they added that are great,” said Levinson. “If you like baseball, there are a lot of elements that you can pull up that are worthwhile.”

So if you’re a fan of the film or just a fan of the game of baseball, this DVD set is both informative and especially entertaining.

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