The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham

A Conversation: Director Ron Shelton and Actor Robert Wuhl

In this special event for both baseball fans and aspiring filmmakers, Ron Shelton tells you how he made his classic baseball film. Learn the improbable--often miraculous--story of how movies get made!

His memoir, The Church of Baseball, is director Ron Shelton's affectionate ode to baseball and to moviemaking.

His breakthrough feature film, Bull Durham, "maybe the best baseball movie ever" (David Thomson) is a favorite with fans of the game. His script was nominated for an Academy Award. In conversation with actor Robert Wuhl (the assistant team manager Larry Hockett in some of the film's most memorable scenes) Shelton will share how he got this film made, a hit movie that led to a career that included many other memorable sports moves including, White Men Can't Jump, Cobb, Tin Cup, and the documentary Jordan Rides the Bus. Baseball fans and aspiring filmmakers will not want to miss this event!

"Ron Shelton hears America singing, schmoozing, and swearing. His writing-directing debut, Bull Durham (1988) transported fans into the offbeat mystique and comic muck of baseball...Shelton's new memoir, The Church of Baseball, does for filmmaking what Bull Durham did for the national pastime: it demystifies the craft, pillories the business, and celebrates the calling with wit and passion..Shelton's prose is as natural as his dialogue, and he conjures characters with casual mastery...The book takes us inside his screenwriting process as his characters emerge with distinct voices and signature first lines..In The Church of Baseball, as in Bull Durham, Shelton riffs on life in the American grain, and scales the heights of the homegrown surreal. Like Mark Twain, he reveals an unsentimental education that reads like a robust and impudent yarn." Michael Sragow, Air Mail.

"A filmmakers memoir about the making of one of the best sports movies of all time. Shelton's book is not simply a jaunty recollection of his directing debut, with all its attendant breakthroughs and headaches. The author, who displays sheer, unadulterated love for this subject, also delivers a savvy, unusually informative tutorial on how to take a motion picture from the concept stage, to script development, casting, production, and post production." Kirkus Reviews; Starred Review. 

Copies of The Church of Baseball will be for sale at this event, and a book signing will follow the program. Your purchase of books support the Friends of the Burbank Public Library.

Only The Church of Baseball will be signed at this event. Please do not bring other books or memorabilia to be signed. 

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