I feel like I’ve been hearing about this movie forever. Maybe it just had a long development. I have no idea. Sometimes that’s a bad omen for a movie, but I feel like a movie about the famous Bill “Spaceman” Lee is immune to bad omens. Or that, on some cosmic level, even if the movie is less-than-great, it’ll still be good for what it is. The trailer for it came out last week. I guess I missed it then, so here it is now.
What it is, from what can be determined from the trailer and some random articles I’ve read about it, is a film that focuses on the end of Lee’s major league career -- you can see him toss his Expos jersey away here -- and his time doing weird barnstorming things in the 80s and on through today. Less so on his time as a Red Sox pitcher in the 70s, which look like they’ll be handled with flashbacks and archive footage. Probably for the best. This isn’t exactly a huge-budgeted affair and when you half-ass baseball scenes they end up looking terrible. It’s way more likely to do better when it’s going smaller and weirder. Which is probably how Bill Lee likes it.
This doesn’t necessarily look like a “buy tickets in advance” kind of flick, but I’m sure it’s worth a look and will bring some smiles.
