When is a Baseball movie, more than a movie about Baseball?
As told by director Carson Lund in his debut film EEPHUS, it’s a chance to explore themes of escape, of camaraderie, and of a deep sense of time passing.
Named after a rarely deployed curve ball, the “Eephus Pitch,” EEPHUS is set in suburban New Hampshire, where that stubbornly independent New England mindset informs the players as they face change, and gentrification. The film uses a mix of comedy and drama, for both the baseball connoisseur, and for anyone who’s ever lamented their community slipping away.
EEPHUS is a baseball story that uses a non-traditional narrative, and one that leaves you with the feeling of a lazy afternoon, tuned to the rhythms of America’s eternal pastime.
Opening in theaters, having premiered at Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, please join us as we sit down with director Carson Lund on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, starting now.
Two recreational baseball teams, the River Dogs and Adler’s Paint, have been meeting on their New England field on Sunday afternoons for longer than anyone can remember. These middle-aged sportsmen can’t run as fast as they used to or connect as reliably with a pitch, but their vigorous appetite for socializing, squabbling, and busting chops remains undiminished. After the know-nothing county board opts to raze the baseball diamond to make way for a school, the teams meet for one final game at their beloved Soldier’s Field, with girlfriends, kids, and local hooligans as intermittent spectators. As day turns to night and innings bleed together, the players face the uncertainty of a new era. Lovingly laid in a vanished Massachusetts of the mid-1990s, Carson Lund’s poignant feature debut plays like a lazy afternoon, perfectly attuned to the rhythms of America’s eternal pastime. Named for a rarely-deployed curveball, Eephus is both a ribald comedy for the baseball connoisseur and a movie for anyone who’s ever lamented their community slipping away.