Cinema is an art form of collaboration.
Whereas Michelangelo toiled for years in isolation painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, when a cast and crew get together to shoot a picture, it’s tossing the ball around where the magic often happens.
Case in point (and not just for ball tossing) is The Sandlot, the beloved 1993 coming-of-age/madcap Babe Ruth memorabilia retrieval film that was a modest success (some might say a base hit!) upon initial release but thereafter became a timeless favorite on VHS and cable. (A touchdown, right? We sometimes get our sports metaphors confused.) As Patrick Renna, the befreckled thespian who played Hamilton “Ham” Porter explained to Entertainment Weekly, the spirit of improvisation helped make the movie the classic it became.
“[Director David Mickey Evans] came to me and said, ‘You’re saying ‘You play ball like a girl. You’re saying all these lines,'” he explained. “So I had to learn my lines and go out there and film.”
He continued: “A lot of improv was me behind the plate, cussing out the other team. ‘Is that your sister out there on left field?’ [Evans] must have had a list because it wasn’t in the script, and he had a bullhorn, and he just called to action and rolled camera. ‘All right, Ham, is that your sister out there in left field naked? She’s naked. Go!’ And then I’d be like, ‘What?’ And I’d start laughing. That whole scene was one take and just firing insults.”
Believe it or not, the most memorable line in the movie was birthed in a similar, let’s-just-try-it manner.
Renna remembered “the ‘You’re killing me, Smalls!’ line was written a little different, and that came out through filming. I think it just rolled off the tongue a little more.”
Rick Kern/Getty
Patrick Renna, Tom Guiry, and Chauncey Leopardi at a ‘Sandlot’ reunion screening in Dripping Springs, Tex., in 2019
Marty York, the actor who played Alan “Yeah-Yeah” McClennan, recently appeared on Byron Scott’s Fast Break podcast and confirmed this, adding that originally the line was something like “Smalls, you’re killing me,” and when “Pat said it backward, he made it this iconic line that people still say today.”
Indeed, when Tom Guiry, who played The Sandlot‘s Scotty Smalls, had some legal trouble back in 2013, many news outlets, including respectable ones, found themselves unable to resist running with a “you’re killing us, Smalls” headline.
As York explained, “Once [Renna] said it the first time, the director said to say it that way every time. The way he said it was funny, you know?”
20th Century Studios/everett
‘The Sandlot’ gang, plus James Earl Jones
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If you are feeling nostalgic for the way the 1990s were nostalgic for the 1960s, take a look at the classic trailer of this terrific film.
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