Film Producer Saw Plenty in Opener
Mike Loftus, The Patriot Ledger, 5/28/2004

BROCKTON - No wonder film producer Julie Campbell is anxious for the completion of the screenplay she commissioned for an Ed Nottle biopic.

Before a single pitch was thrown last night, enough scenes played out on the field at Campanelli Stadium that seemed to demand inclusion in a film about the life of a baseball icon who has committed himself to the independent professional game.

There was Nottle, passing out 2003 Northeast League championship rings to everyone from returning players to former players to batboys and batgirls and clubhouse attendants. There was the helicopter landing in center field to drop off kangaroo-costumed mascot K-0, who jogged to the infield carrying the 2003 championship trophy. There was actor/minority owner Bill Murray whom Campbell would love to cast in her film - on the field, in the dugout, in the suites, in the locker room. There was the raising of a championship banner, the high school band playing the national anthem, a paperboy throwing out the season's ceremonial first pitch.

There was also an opening night-record crowd of 5,134 - in a stadium with 4,750 seats - taking it all in.

"Great crowd," Nottle said after his Rox opened their third season and defense of their first title with a come-from-behind, 4-1 victory over the Quebec Capitales. "God bless these people. Unbelievable."

Though the game was hardly an afterthought, it did come at the end of a long and busy day for Nottle and the Rox organization.

For the second time since Campbell, who lives in Hull, announced last July that she'd paid Nottle for the rights to his story, Brockton's manager held court at the adjacent Shaw's Center with the film-making team (Cambpell, Associate Producer Myra Berman, director Peter Masterson and screenwriter Eugene Corr) in a briefing emceed by Northeast League commissioner Miles Wolff - who also happens to own the Capitales.

The independent film "is being written right now," said Campbell, who expects to see Corr's first draft this fall. Revisions, casting, site locations (she and Masterson hope to shoot the film in Brockton) and the like will follow, with "a spring (2006) release, at baseball time - if everything works out."

Those associated with the film insist everything will, indeed, work out.

"All of us agree we're going to do this," said Masterson, who's part of a film and theatre family that includes his sister, actress Mary Stuart Masterson, and who waited four years to see a film of his own ("West of Here") become a finished product. "I've invested a lot of time in this.

"That's what it's about if you're an independent film director - falling in love with a project, and ... taking time you could be making money to try to get it going."

"There is pressure," Campbell admitted. "I didn't want to come back here and say 'It's still in the works; we're still trying.' Every producer faces that - it's like the boy who cried wolf."

With the screenplay financed and Corr (who hung out in Nottle's office after the game) at work on it, Campbell said she's even more certain that "people will see this on the big screen. That's not wishful thinking. I know that."

The 30-minute pre-game production was a little easier to script than the film, but Nottle was more than satisfied with the entertainment value.

"The organization did such a tremendous job, from the introductions, and the rings, and the banner ..." the manager said. "It is a special night. I'm glad a lot of people turned out for it. That's a hell of a start - fifty-one hundred people."

Nottle didn't forget those who weren't in the crowd. Principal owner Van Schley, who was attending a graduation, was missed, and Nottle said he "was thinking of the (players) who aren't here, and what they brought to the table last year." Only nine Rox in uniform last night played for last year's championship team.

The game, played in a crisp two hours, 15 minutes on an increasingly cool night, brought a near-perfect end to opening day.

"I thought it was super," Nottle said.

Copyright 2004 The Patriot Ledger

Transmitted Friday, May 28, 2004