How do you deal with entering your own seventh inning stretch of life-aka middle age? According to Cinematographer Carson LundS directorial debut “Ephesus“It’s best to leave it all on the baseball field.
“Eephus”, which debuted in the 2024 directors fortnight At Cannes centers on a last game at a small Massachusetts baseball field before its demolition in the 1990s. Recreational league of players who cling to their passions and friendships, despite the impending end of an era.
Legendary documentary Frederick The sage plays a radio message i filmand real-life Boston Red Sox pitcher “Spaceman” Lee has a cameo. “Uncut Gems” actors Keith William Richards and Wayne Diamond Star, as well as Cliff Blake, Ray Hryb, Stephen Radochia, David Pridemore, Pete Minkarah and David Torres Jr. Lund Cowrote the script with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher.
Lund shared in one press statement That he created “Eephus” in the “grand cinematic tradition of ‘hangout’ movies that celebrate the humanistic and experiential dimensions of the sport of baseball rather than the game itself.” He cited features such as Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and Howard Hawks’ “Hatari!” as tone influence.
In addition to writing and directing “Eephus,” Lund also recently served as director of photography on “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Score,” Tyler Taormina’s Christmas drama which also debuted at Cannes. Taormina is also producing “Eephus”, together with Lund, Basta and David Entin.
Both projects were produced through Omnes Films, a Los Angeles-based filmmaking collective that describes itself as committed to making “passionate, ambitious works made by friends that favor atmosphere over plot and study the many forms of cultural decay in the 21st century.”
The movie was one Critic at Indiewirewith the review citing how the feature evolves with “the rhythm of a baseball game” itself.
“Exposition comes out in short two-sentence exchanges between pitches and longer asides between innings, allowing the audience to experience the game with the same cadence that the players do,” the review reads. “Almost too big to even be considered an ensemble film, ‘Eephus’ plays out as a huge tableau in the way this recreational league has shaped generations of men. Lund introduces us to two dozen players of various ages and ethnicities spread across the two teams, but none of the individual characters are particularly memorable on their own terms. That’s not an indictment of anyone’s writing or acting, but a reality required by the film’s larger point: these men are only showing us the parts of themselves that they bring to the field, and years of playing baseball together have shaped their little Plato into a coherent social organism with its own language, jokes and rules of both the spoken and unspoken varieties. (…) That is why the loss of this specific baseball league on this specific field feels so deeply tragic to everyone. More than just giving up a favorite hobby, each man says goodbye to a version of himself that exists only in context. ”
“Eephus” will premiere at Film at Lincoln Center and IFC Center in New York on March 7 and limited Los Angeles theaters on March 14, with a national rollout to follow from Music Box. Check out the trailer below.
