Trivia / Field of Dreams

• Ability over Appearance: Phil Alden Robinson had originally envisioned "Shoeless" Joe Jackson as being played by an actor in his 40s, someone who would be older than Kevin Costner, and who could thereby act as a father surrogate. Ray Liotta did not fit that criteria, but Robinson thought he would be a better fit for the part, because Liotta had the "sense of danger" and ambiguity, which Robinson wanted in the character. Liotta was also a right-handed hitter, unlike Joe Jackson (who threw righty, but batted from the left side), but Robinson figured if baseball fans were gonna nitpick about that, they were going to have bigger problems with the fantastical parts of the movie anyway.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The film's Signature Line "If you build it, he will come." is too often misquoted as "If you build it, they will come".
• California Doubling: Aside from a few scenes shot in Boston, most of the film was shot in eastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois.
  • The city of Dubuque stood in for most of the Boston scenes, excluding those scenes at Fenway Park and those of Ray traveling into Boston. The gas station where Ray finally gets Terry's address was at 3rd and Locust Streets in Dubuque ^note (the station was torn down years ago and the location is now a parking lot). Terry's neighborhood was mainly located around 17th Street and Central Avenue in Dubuque.
    • Traffic was shown heading north on Central Avenue in the film, however in real life Central Avenue was and still is a one-way street, with all traffic heading southbound.
  • Both Galena, Illinois and Dyersville stood in for Chisholm, Minnesota and both are very different in appearance from the actual Chisholm, which is located in northern Minnesota.
  • Most of the road trip scenes were filmed in rural Dubuque County, Iowa and Jo Daviess County, Illinois. US highways 61, 151, 52, and 20 along with some local and state roads stood in for the highways Kinsella and Mann traveled over on their road trip.
• Creator Backlash: Ray Liotta tried to learn how to bat left-handed like Joe Jackson, but couldn't get the hang of it. He later regretted not being able to give a historically accurate portrayal.
• Defictionalization: The field built for the movie is still there as a local tourist attraction, including a real field next to the original movie set field that hosted a rather special Major League Baseball game.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes were removed from the final cut, including Ray getting his hearing checked, Ray buying baseball equipment, Ray getting lost on the way to Fenway with Terrence, and Ray and Terrence watching batting practice.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Although his character delivers the movie's signature speech praising baseball, in real-life, James Earl Jones is rather indifferent about baseball.
• Throw It In!:
  • In the scene of Ray throwing pitches to Joe Jackson, Liotta hit a ball straight back at Costner and he jumped out of the way. The hit ball also smashed over the bag of balls next to his feet. The timing was too perfect.
  • The fog that appears later in that scene was completely natural as well. They shot all scenes of the field at "magic hour", so the fog was something to be expected.
• Uncredited Role: The identity of the actor who provides "The Voice" has never been revealed. In the credits, The Voice is credited as being played by "Himself". Other than an actor who appeared in the film doubling as The Voice, the most frequently mooted candidate for the role is Amy Madigan's husband, Ed Harris, as the author of the original novel claimed that was what he had been told.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Christopher Lambert, Gary Oldman, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell, Patrick Swayze and Bruce Willis were considered for Ray Kinsella. Had Harris been chosen, he would have acted opposite his wife, Amy Madigan. Harris is popularly believed to have been cast to play the uncredited role of The Voice.
  • Kim Basinger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Jodie Foster, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Demi Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Rene Russo, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Emma Thompson and Sigourney Weaver were considered for Annie Kinsella.
  • Phil Alden Robinson wanted to cast James Stewart as "Moonlight" Graham, but Stewart had not acted on-screen for almost a decade at that point. One scene shows Karin watching Harvey on television.^note Stewart's last role was ultimately voice-acting in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.
  • The original script had six instances of the word "fuck", most of which came from Mann's first scene, which alone would be enough to get the movie an R rating. The final product is PG with just one mouthed but unvoiced instance of the F-word.
  • Ray Liotta worked with coaches for a month so he could bat left-handed like Shoeless Joe, but he couldn't get it to a point where it looked just as good as his natural right-handed batting and Phil Alden Robinson decided to just have him bat righty.
  • As mentioned on the main page, the book had J. D. Salinger be the author that Ray kidnaps, and the producers changed it after Salinger threatened to sue. But that was only partially the reason why the character of Terrence Mann was created: even without the lawsuit threats, the producers felt that the the target audience for the movie (mostly baseball fans) wouldn't know who Salinger was or why Ray had to go out and kidnap him and that fans of Salinger probably wouldn't care about a sports movie, and decided that creating a fictional author would work better for the story. (Considering that after Salinger's death original author W.P. Kinsella noted many of his readers assumed that Salinger was a fictional character to begin with, you can say it was a pretty good call).

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