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Timothy Busfield took a trip down memory lane on the Hey Dude… The 90s Called! podcast
Recalling the making of Field of Dreams, the actor shared the many challenges that the cast and crew of the beloved baseball movie faced
Busfield reflected on finally seeing how the movie came together after a tough shoot
Timothy Busfield is reflecting on the unique conditions around filming Field of Dreams.
Appearing on the Hey Dude… The 90s Called! podcast, hosted by Christine Taylor and David Lasher, the actor, 68, recalled the opportunity to work on the 1989 classic, a film that had Hollywood buzzing before a single scene was shot.
“Everybody wanted to be in it. Everybody had auditioned for that movie,” he said, noting that it was like the script had “fairy dust on every page.”
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Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffman, Timothy Busfield in “Field of Dreams”
While Busfield played Mark, the brother-in-law of Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, in the film, he revealed he was torn between two projects before accepting the role.
At the time, Busfield was starring on Thirtysomething and had “an offer” to be in another movie about baseball — 1988’s Stealing Home with Mark Harmon — when he heard about Field of Dreams.
“And then I had auditioned for Field of Dreams, but I had to wait for them to go to Chicago, and they hadn’t decided,” he continued. “I passed on the offer, and I said I’d rather wait on the script. It was just that good.”
Getting the role felt like a big win for the actor, though he admits shooting the movie was a bit more complicated.
“We shot it and it was a horribly hard shoot. It was the drought of 1988, and there was no corn but our corn, because Brian Frankish, the line producer, insured the corn,” he explained. “When it didn’t grow, they had to irrigate it. The insurance company had to bring in just trucks and trucks of water, and we had the only corn [in the area].”
Busfield explained that while driving over an hour to the set each day from “a golf resort outside of Galena, Ill.,” with costars Costner, James Earl Jones, and Gaby Hoffman, “the whole drive was just corn that was bent, bent, bent. Then you would come around the corner and, like they do in the movie with the lights and everything, and the corn would be 7 feet high.”
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Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams”
“Every day it seemed like it was 100 degrees. Every day was just so hot, and the bugs were insane. You couldn’t eat,” he recalled.
“The grass, we had to paint green. And because of the corn, we had to shoot all the cover sets first. And that meant all of us, they just brought us and kept us there,” he continued.
“Everything they shot was in bits and pieces. They shot away from the corn, so they would shoot part of a scene facing the house, and then come back a week and a half, two weeks, three weeks later and shoot the other person’s coverage going towards the corn. So everything was like a puzzle.”
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Kevin Costner holding Gaby Hoffmann in a scene from the film “Field of Dreams”
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The three also discussed how impactful Phil Robinson’s script, combined with James Horner’s score, was in driving the emotions of the film.
“There’s a point in the movie late and where — it’s the moment that gets most men, I think — is where Kevin’s dad, Dwyer Brown, comes back and he says, ‘Hey, Dad, you want to have a catch?’ “
At that same moment, Busfield said it’s like they are climbing a “musical ladder” until they finally hit a “crescendo.”
“It’s kind of like a dog whistle for men’s emotions, I think,” he added, noting that it makes even “grown men” fall apart.
To this day, Busfield still feels “so lucky” to have been part of such a “perfect” film.
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