{"id":32583,"date":"2018-12-07T13:14:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T18:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/?p=32583"},"modified":"2018-12-07T13:14:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T18:14:45","slug":"field-of-dreams-changed-dwier-browns-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/07\/field-of-dreams-changed-dwier-browns-life\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cField of Dreams\u201d Changed Dwier Brown\u2019s Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Dwier Brown during rehearsals for the famous scene in \u201cField of Dreams\u201d when Kevin Costner, at right, asks him if he wants to have a catch. Director Phil Alden Robinson is at left.<\/p><\/div>\n

As\u00a0iconic moments go, it\u2019s hard to beat the scene from\u00a0Field of Dreams<\/em>\u00a0when Kevin Costner turns to Dwier Brown and, with the late James Horner\u2019s Oscar-nominated score supplying the appropriately\u00a0tearful mood, asks, \u201cHey Dad, you wanna have a catch?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t understand the profundity of it,\u201d recalls Brown, who served as the keynote speaker this past September at a minor league promotional baseball seminar in Des Moines, Iowa. \u201cI hadn\u2019t at that point realized how important that scene was in terms of father and son relationships.\u00a0I was delightfully na\u00efve about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly three decades later,\u00a0Brown gets it. And then some.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s 2014 book,\u00a0If You Build It<\/em>, which he wrote to commemorate the 25th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of\u00a0Field of Dreams<\/em>,\u00a0which\u00a0celebrates its 30th anniversary next year.\u00a0chronicles the countless times over the years fans have stopped him at airports, movie theaters, campgrounds\u00a0or at supermarkets and grocery stores to let him know how that movie moment changed their lives. The 264-page memoir is available through Amazon or via the actor\u2019s own website, at\u00a0www.dwierbrown.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite having acted in only a few movies and handful of television shows, most notably\u00a0The Thorn Birds<\/em>, Brown was plucked from relative obscurity to play Costner\u2019s dead father, \u201cJohn Kinsella.\u201d Famously urged by a mysterious voice that tells him, \u201cIf you build it, he will come,\u201d Costner plows under his cornfield to create the baseball diamond that he believes the voice wants him to build; he does that so the eight members of the infamous Chicago Black Sox team that threw the 1919 World Series, most notably, \u201cShoeless Joe\u201d Jackson, who were permanently banned from the game as a result, could be given another chance to play the national pastime.<\/p>\n

The fantasy drama was selected in 2017 by the Library of Congress for preservation on the United States\u2019 National Film Registry.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be in a movie as popular as this one was\u00a0<\/em>a reference point for me,\u201d says Brown, who got the opportunity to work with Oscar-winning director William Friedkin — of\u00a0The French Connection<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Exorcist\u00a0<\/em>fame \u2013 on his next film after\u00a0Field of Dreams<\/em>. \u201cIt had a currency all its own for me professionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is also interesting to note is how personally important the role was for Brown, whose own father passed away just before filming began at the famous Dyersville location that served as the fictitious Kinsella house and farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very worried that, because of my own grief, I wouldn\u2019t be able to speak the words in the scene,\u201d reminisces Brown, who now is a parent himself. He has a 25-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause his death was so unexpected,\u201d explains Brown, \u201cI don\u2019t really remember associating it with the movie. The strange thing that happened to me then was that I didn\u2019t feel anything at the time, because you\u2019re too busy doing all the funeral stuff to distract you from the gravity of your loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly couldn\u2019t get over the feeling that he was watching me on the field,\u201d continues Brown. \u201cI told myself \u2018I might as well just stay in this state of mind as long as I can, if that\u2019s what helps me with the grieving process.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Brown, because his late father was a stoic man, father-son\u00a0conversations filled with emotion were in short supply while he was growing up. Consequently, Brown says he can completely identify with Costner’s character, who observes in the movie\u00a0that he knew his dad when “he was worn\u00a0down by life.”<\/p>\n

But there’s one moment\u00a0in\u00a0If You Build It\u00a0<\/em>where Brown recounts how he\u00a0and his father finally healed their riff. Nearly three-quarters of the way into the memoir, Brown poignantly describes a car trip to a nearby creek where his father and he went\u00a0skinny dipping.<\/p>\n

Literally stripped bare of\u00a0his undergarments,\u00a0the elder Brown’s inhibitions were also stripped away too.<\/p>\n

“My brother still doesn’t believe it occurred,” laughs Brown. “We had that incredible moment, and it meant so much to me.”<\/p>\n

Brown returns to Iowa for Father’s Day weekend in June. He’ll celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary in Dyersville on Saturday, June 15 and go to Cedar Rapids on Sunday, June 16 to\u00a0make an appearance at the Cedar Rapids Kernels game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As\u00a0iconic moments go, it\u2019s hard to beat the scene from\u00a0Field of Dreams\u00a0when Kevin Costner turns to Dwier Brown and, with the late James Horner\u2019s Oscar-nominated score supplying the appropriately\u00a0tearful mood, asks, \u201cHey Dad, you wanna have a catch?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t understand the profundity of it,\u201d recalls Brown, who served as the keynote speaker this past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}