Trouble With The Curve

''Trouble with the Curve'' is a 2012 American sports drama film directed by Robert Lorenz and starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, and John Goodman. The film revolves around an aging baseball scout whose daughter joins him on a scouting trip. Filming began in March 2012, and the film was released on September 21, 2012. Many consider it an under-rated work among Eastwood’s filmography.

This was Eastwood's first acting project since 2008's ''Gran Torino'' and his first acting role in a film he did not direct since his cameo in 1995's '' Casper''. A year after its release, the film became the subject of a plagiarism lawsuit by a producer alleging that his former partner had taken an unfinished script after a dispute and conspired with his agent and Warner Bros. to present it as the work of a relative unknown.

Plot

Aging Atlanta Braves baseball scout Gus Lobel believes his latest scouting assignment may be his last unless he can prove his value to the organization. He's viewed as unadaptable to changes within the game, especially advanced statistical analysis. His boss and friend, Pete Klein, does not want to let him go, but must contend with ambitious junior executive Phillip Sanderson, who is trying to position himself to fill the post of general manager, and feels Gus is an obstacle to his ambition.

Ahead of the upcoming MLB Draft, Gus is assigned to review a top prospect, egotistical North Carolina high schooler Bo Gentry. Pete suspects Gus is hiding health problems, so he asks Gus's daughter Mickey — a workaholic lawyer pursuing partnership in her firm — to accompany him. Although the two have a strained relationship, Mickey agrees and quickly realizes Gus's sight is failing, so she actively helps to make up for his shortcoming. Along the way, Gus reconnects with a former player he once scouted, Johnny "The Flame" Flanagan, now a scout for the Boston Red Sox, who wants to try out as a major-league play-by-play announcer.

After initially bonding over a shared love of baseball, Mickey and Johnny become romantically attracted to one another, and begin spending time together.

While on the road, Mickey confronts Gus about why he always left her behind with relatives while he was on the road. Gus reveals that on one scouting trip when she was six she was lured away from him by a pedophile, an incident of which Mickey has no memory. While Gus prevented anything from happening to her, he felt that always being on the road meant he couldn't protect her properly. She tells him that leaving her behind was in fact worse, blaming that decision for issues in her personal life.

Other scouts find Gentry's hitting impressive, but Gus and Mickey spot that he is unable to hit a curveball and before they return to Atlanta they advise both Johnny and the Braves management to pass on him in the draft. Johnny accepts their advice, but Phillip disagrees, showing his statistical analysis as proof they should draft Gentry. He doubles down by staking his career on the decision, leading Braves general manager Vince to draft Gentry as the club's first pick. The next day Johnny angrily confronts Gus and Mickey, believing they only told him not to recommend Gentry in order to allow the Braves to draft him instead. Gus and Mickey argue at their motel and Gus leaves, taking a bus back to Atlanta.

Preparing to leave, Mickey observes a young man, Rigoberto Sanchez, throwing pitches with his younger brother and realizes his talent from the sound of the ball hitting the glove. After seeing his curveball, she calls Pete and asks that Rigoberto be allowed to attend a tryout in Atlanta. Gus has returned to Turner Field, where media are attending Gentry's first batting practice with the organization. As Vince and Phillip criticize Gus for his evaluation of Gentry, Mickey brings Rigoberto to the field, where he is mocked by Phillip and Gentry. Mickey insists they allow him to pitch, and after Gentry fails to hit any of his fastballs, Mickey has Rigoberto throw his curveball. Gentry, even though he knows what pitch is coming, cannot connect with the ball. Gus explains why he was against signing him: "It's called 'trouble with the curve'".

The executives realize they were wrong about both Gentry and Gus and are now intent on signing Rigoberto, with Gus suggesting that Mickey represent him. When Phillip continues to make snide remarks about the situation, Vince fires him, and also offers Gus a contract extension. Mickey receives an offer of a partnership in her firm, which she declines, and, when she and Gus leave the building, finds Johnny outside waiting for her. As the two share a kiss, Gus lights a cigar and walks away, muttering, "Looks like I'll be taking the bus."

Cast

Production

Filming

Filming began in Georgia in March 2012.

Locations included:
* Georgia Tech
* Atlanta: Virginia–Highland neighborhood including George's restaurant.
* Turner Field, former home of the Atlanta Braves.
* Macon, Georgia, Luther Williams Field, former home of the Macon Braves
* Dawsonville: Amicalola Lodge
* Young Harris: Young Harris College baseball fields
* Athens: College Ave & Clayton streets
* Dunwoody High School: Baseball Fields
* Jasper, Georgia
* Swannanoa, North Carolina
* Marion, North Carolina

Release

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 51% based on 204 reviews, with a rating average of 5.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though predictable and somewhat dramatically underwhelming, ''Trouble with the Curve'' benefits from Clint Eastwood's grizzled charisma and his easy chemistry with a charming Amy Adams." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 58 out of 100 based on reviews from 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Box office

In its opening weekend, ''Trouble with the Curve'' ranked third in the box office, grossing $12.2 million. In its first week in theaters, it ranked second with $16,195,962. It remained in the top ten over the next two weeks with $31,218,109. However, the results at the box office were subsequently low. In twelve weeks, ''Trouble with the Curve'' grossed $35,763,137 in the United States, where it was distributed to 3,212 theaters. At the worldwide box office, the film grossed $48,963,137 which is the second lowest take for a film featuring Clint Eastwood as an actor, just ahead of '' Blood Work'' ($31,794,718 in worldwide box office). In January 2013, the film was nominated for Best Intergenerational Story at the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards, but lost to ''Silver Linings Playbook''.

Home media

''Trouble with the Curve'' was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 18, 2012.

Plagiarism lawsuit

A year after the film's release, another producer, Ryan Brooks, filed a lawsuit in federal district court against Warner, the producers, two talent agencies, screenwriter Brown and Don Handfield, an actor and former partner of Brooks. He alleged copyright infringement and conspiracy, claiming the produced screenplay of the film bore striking similarities to ''Omaha'', an unproduced screenplay he had commissioned from Handfield that had as its main character an older college baseball coach working through a difficult relationship with his grown daughter, as well as other plot elements.

Brooks, a former minor league baseball player himself, claimed that Handfield took the unfinished ''Omaha'' script with him after the two had a falling out over a rewrite. Handfield then, Brooks claims, conspired with Charles Ferraro, his agent at United Talent, to present it—with minor alterations such as changing the setting from college baseball to the major leagues—as the work of Brown, a fellow client of Ferraro with only two minor credits to his name who had primarily worked as a musician. Brooks' suit claimed that Brown's interviews to promote the film seemed rehearsed and frustrating to interviewers trying to understand how he created the film, and questioned how an unknown writer in his fifties managed to land the well-connected Ferraro as an agent.

All the named defendants who spoke to the media about the claims, including Brown, denied and derided them. Warner responded with a letter to Brooks' lawyer threatening serious legal actions in response if he did not withdraw the "reckless and false" complaint within a week. Attached to it was a draft of the ''Trouble with the Curve'' script, credited to Brown, that had purportedly been optioned by another production company in 1998. Brooks' lawyer questioned its authenticity to ''The New York Times'' suggesting that it bore signs of fabrication, such as the anachronistic use of wireless laptops, and that there was no record of it having been registered with the Writers Guild of America, a common practice for screenwriters establishing authorship of their work before getting a production company interested.

Lawyers for the studio responded with a motion for summary judgment in their favor and presented evidence that they claimed proved Brown had written the first drafts of the script as early as 1996, including an affidavit from a computer forensics expert authenticating the timestamps on a floppy disk containing those early drafts. Brooks' lawyers called all of the evidence of earlier creation forged or tampered with, in addition to calling attention to anachronistic passages in those purported earlier drafts. In February 2014 Dale S. Fischer, the judge hearing the case, granted the motion, saying that Brooks had overstated the similarities between the two scripts and that, even if he hadn't, "the idea of a father-daughter baseball story is not protectable as a matter of copyright law."

Two months later Fischer dismissed the remaining claims under federal law, but said claims under state law could still be filed in state court. Brooks appealed his decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in October refiled the case in Los Angeles County Superior Court. This time he alleged only breach of contract and did not name either Warner or Eastwood as defendants, as he had in the original claim. He demanded $5 million in damages. Brooks voluntarily dismissed the case in August 2016.

See also

* List of baseball films

References

External links

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{{Atlanta Braves

2012 films
2010s sports drama films
2010s romance films
American baseball films
American sports drama films
Atlanta Braves
Films about old age
Films scored by Marco Beltrami
Films set in Atlanta
Films set in Georgia (U.S. state)
Films set in North Carolina
Films shot in Atlanta
Films shot in Georgia (U.S. state)
Malpaso Productions films
Films directed by Robert Lorenz
Films involved in plagiarism controversies
Films produced by Clint Eastwood
Films produced by Robert Lorenz
2012 directorial debut films
2012 drama films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
Films about Major League Baseball
English-language sports drama films
English-language romance films
Warner Bros. films