Script To Screen: “Bull Durham”

One of the funnier scenes from the 1988 movie Bull Durham, written by Ron Shelton.

IMDb plot summary: A fan who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.

EXT. DURHAM STADIUM -- LATER -- NIGHT GAME IN PROGRESS -- Nuke on the mound. NUKE WINDS AND DELIVERS -- Very high. Ball three. INSIDE THE DUGOUT -- Skip and Larry spitting tobacco. SKIP
Nuke's overthrowing tonight, he don't
look loose. Anything bothering him? LARRY
He said his chakras were jammed and
he was breathing out of the wrong
nostril. SKIP
(spitting tobacco)
Okay... BACK TO THE MOUND NUKE WINDS AND DELIVERS AGAIN -- Very high. Ball
four. CRASH IS QUICKLY to the mound. CRASH
What's wrong? NUKE
I'm nervous -- my old man's here. NUKE MOTIONS -- They both look. -- P.O.V. NUKE'S FATHER SITTING in a special box
seat. The man is 45, and is operating a home video
camera taking pictures of his son. CRASH
Hey, he's just your father, man --
he's as full of shit as anybody. TOMMY AND DEKE JOIN THEM at the mound. DEKE
What the hell's going on? TOMMY
You breathing through the wrong
fucking nostril again? DEKE
Hey, you guys hear Jimmy and Millie
are engaged?! Wait'll I tell him
she's gone down on half the Carolina
League -- CRASH
(threatening)
Anybody says anything bad about
Millie, I'll break his neck. NUKE
Hey, guys, I got a game to pitch. JOSE THE FIRST BASEMAN JOINS THEM ALL at the mound. JOSE
Don't throw anything to me -- my
girlfriend put a curse on my glove. NUKE
I'll take the curse off the son of a
bitch! JOSE
Then you got to cut the head off a
live rooster. NUKE
Shit. MICKEY JOINS THE CROWD from third base. MICKEY
Don't worry, man, this umpire's a
God damn racist. P.O.V. THE UMPIRE -- He's black. THE DUGOUT -- SKIP AND LARRY watch the growing
meeting. SKIP
What the hell's going on out there? LARRY
It's a damn convention. SKIP
Check it out. THE MOUND -- Larry joins the convention. LARRY
What the hell's going on out here? CRASH
Nuke's scared cause his nostrils are
jammed and his old man's here, we
need a live rooster to take the curse
off Jose's glove, and nobody knows
what to get Jimmy and Millie for
their wedding present -- there's a
whole lotta shit we're trying to
deal with -- LARRY
Oh. I thought there was a problem.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Basically the same with two key changes. First, Nuke’s problem isn’t with his nostrils, it’s with his eyelids. That’s funnier, of course. Nostrils can get jammed (stuffy nose). Eyelids? Not so much.

The other change is Larry’s last line. “Oh. I though there was a problem,” is pretty flat. So my guess is the actor Robert Wuhl improvised some lines (he started out as a stand-up comic) and ended up with this: “Okay, well, uh… candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let’s get two! Go get ‘em.” His side really drives home the inanity of grown men in the middle of a professional baseball game discussing wedding gifts.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.