Few movies have the nostalgic value thatThe Sandlothas. The 1993 sports comedy is a feel-good adventure that hasn’t lost the capacity to make you laugh and reminisce about your own childhood. Squints getting to kiss Wendy Peffercorn, the lights of the carnival tuned to Ray Charles' “America the Beautiful,” and finding a very valuable baseball autographed by legends.The Sandlotis a good family film because it makes everyone in the familyfeelgood. However,according to star Patrick Renna, it appears that things weren’t so PG-13-like behind the camera.
Renna, who plays Ham (the boy who loves to do cannonballs) in the film, spoke to People magazine aboutThe Sandlotas he promotes his debut children’s book,A Little Slugger’s Guide to the Unwritten Rules of Baseball and Life. Although we can imagine that gathering a group of young teens for a movie shoot, and keeping everything in order, must be difficult, Renna says that things got out of control on a daily basis:
“We all lived in the same apartment complex because we only filmed for about eight to ten hours a day. After that, we had 14 hours to fill. We weren’t just sleeping during that time — we were raising hell in the building, swimming in the pool, running around, watching movies, shopping together, and playing video games. I think Nintendo had just come out around that time, and we all had it in our dressing rooms. It was such an exciting time.”
20th Century Fox
How The Sandlot Became a Modern Classic 30 Years Later
We’re certain everyone remembers the first time they saw The Sandlot. Let’s think how that small film became the classic it is today.
In the movie, Scotty Smalls moves with his mother and stepfather to a new neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. It’s the summer of ‘62, and Smalls is forced to find new friends to hang out with. He arrives at the local sandlot, where he fails to get on the team initially. However, Smalls is eventually accepted, and it becomes the best summer of his life. That is until he picks the wrong baseball from his stepfather’s collection, and it ends up in a backyard where a canine beast lives.
Renna also talked to people about how director David Mickey Evans was able to deal with the group of young actors. Apparently, the gang usually got in a bit of trouble, but Evans was able to control them:
“The director — he should win a Nobel Peace Prize for dealing with all of us. He wrote, directed, and narrated the movie and somehow made it through three months of chaos with us that summer.
“We had this treehouse. There were old Playboy magazines in it because, you know, it was the ’90s, and that’s just what we found. One of us disappeared, and they found him looking at the Playboy in the treehouse. We were 13-year-old boys — so they had to be careful about what they left around.”
‘The Sandlot’s Charm Was Partly Because of the Chemistry Between the Cast
AfterThe Sandlot,Renna, as well as some of the others, went on to build a career in film and television. Nevertheless, none of their following movies or shows were as impactful asThe Sandlot. That’s likely the reason why they hold it close to their hearts and use every opportunity they can to reunite. Per Renna’s comments about frequently meeting the team:
“We’re like brothers. It was kind of like our junior high or high school. We’ll always remember each other, we’ll always be important to each other, and we’ll always fight in a good way. They found the character in all of us in real life. Sure, we were good actors, but we didn’t have to act too much. I definitely was Ham, and Chauncey was Squints, and Tom was Smalls, Mike was Benny, he was the leader, he was the coolest, he was the best baseball player, true to life. So they kind of just found all of that, and we got along real good.”
Source:People
The Sandlot
