Before presenting the award for Best Sound at the 2024 Oscars comedian John Mulaney explained, in rapid-fire detail, the nonsensical plot of Field of Dreams.
For those who don’t remember the iconic film, in Mulaney’s words, “He mows done corn and then there is a field and then he’s like, ‘I’m going to watch ghosts play baseball.’ And the bank is like, ‘You want to hisse your mortgage?’ And he’s like, ‘Nah, I’m going to watch ghosts play baseball.’ And then he finds James Earl Jones who wrote The Boat Rocker which I thought was a real book late into my 20s.”
Then he explains what’s weird about it: “Timothy Busfield pushes little Gabby Hoffman off the bleachers and she falls down and she’s unconscious. Then Bush Lancaster is moonlight graham and he comes up and pats her on the back a couple times and he’s like, ‘Hot dog in the throat.’ And then he can’t go back in the game because I guess there is a rule in ghost baseball.”
The detail, precision, and audacity of this explanation proves one thing: This is a man who clearly loves the movies! Let him host the Oscars next year.