SWINGS AND MISSES: My Baseball Movie Bomb

It was my fourth feature. It was also the first time I had an actual investor on one of my movies instead of getting donations from family and friends (which we still did for half the budget through Kickstarter). Ken Burns’ epic baseball documentary had given me a newfound love and respect for the game and it’s from there that DUEL AT THE MOUND was born. However, I was unable to translate my inspiration and admiration from the game to the screen.

I learned an important lesson about authenticity. First off, know your subject or surround yourself with people who do. Beyond my momentary infatuation with the game, I didn’t understand it enough to see where the scenes went wrong, nor did I surround myself with anyone who did (as I would years later with the Western genre). Second, I didn’t cast the right people. Some, yes but others were chosen for their acting ability rather without consideration for how good they looked playing the game! This is a fine line I’d learn to walk in the future and these days I’d always lean towards casting the person who knows how to do the action than the talented performer (hence why I’m adamant about choosing actual barrel racers for our upcoming barrel racing movie TURN AND BURN). Because of these mistakes, the movie didn’t get much love from baseball fans and if you can’t please the fans of your subject, you’re in trouble.

We shot DUEL AT THE MOUND in 9 days (9 innings, get it?) with a budget of 10,000 dollars right after I completed making 52 short films in 52 weeks during 2013. It premiered with little enthusiasm, dropped online and has made no money to this day. I got my first investor and lost my first investor. It was also a weird time for no-budget film distribution: Amazon Video Direct wasn’t quite in full gear yet and services like Tubi didn’t exist. You either got a distribution deal or dropped your movie on YouTube. It was also a weird time in my career. I wanted bigger projects, more money and resources, and can you believe that 9 days with 10k did feel “big” to me at the time? Soon enough, I’d increase that budget 200x with another big swing. It was also a miss but that is another wild story.