John Mulaney went on a tangent during the 2024 Oscars to summarize 1989’s Field of Dreams, which ultimately impressed the film’s leading man Kevin Costner.
“Not a bad summary, @johnmulaney,” Costner, 69, wrote via Instagram Story on Tuesday, March 12, reposting a clip from the broadcast. “Congrats to all the nominees and winners at @theacademy Awards Sunday night.”
He concluded, “So many great performances to celebrate this year.”
Mulaney, 41, was one of the presenters at the Sunday, March 10, awards ceremony, where he was tasked with handing out the trophy for Best Sound.
“For years, movies didn’t have sound, and then they figured it out. Some people say that the silent era was the golden era of film — these people are difficult and insane,” the comedian said. “Without sound, we wouldn’t have been able to hear such classic lines as ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat,’ ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ and ‘He was in the Amazon with my mother when she was researching spiders just before she died.’”
After making subtle references to Jaws, When Harry Met Sally and Madame Web, Mulaney went on to gush about Field of Dreams’ own auditory achievements.
“Or what about that moment in Field of Dreams where we hear ‘If you build it, he will come,’ and then Costner does it, he builds a baseball field,” Mulaney continued. “Or I guess he doesn’t build it — he mows down corn, and then there is a field and he’s like, ‘I’m going to watch ghosts play baseball,’ and the bank is like, ‘You wanna pay your mortgage?’ And he’s like, ‘Nah, I’m gonna watch ghosts play baseball.’”
Mulaney didn’t stop there, sharing a full summary of the Oscar-nominated picture.
“And then he finds James Earl Jones, who wrote The Boat Rocker, which I thought was a real book deep into my 20s, and he’s like, ‘People will come, Ray,’ — he’s the only one with a financial plan,” Mulaney noted. “But what’s weird is Timothy Busfield pushes little Gaby Hoffmann off the bleachers and she falls down and she’s unconscious. He comes up and he pats her on the back a couple of times and he’s like, ‘Hot dog, stuck in the throat,’ and then he can’t go back in the game. ‘Cause I guess there’s a rule in ghost baseball that if you leave the field at any point to become an elderly ghost and do the Heimlich maneuver, you can’t return to the field.”
While Mulaney further wished that Field of Dreams should have won the trophy, he speculated that the Academy would “probably go with one of this year’s” nominees. The Zone of Interest ultimately took home the award.
Costner starred as farmer Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, whose character built a baseball field in his cornfield that attracted the ghosts of several baseball legends. The film received three Oscar nominations in 1990, including Best Picture.
