Why the poor box office?

the movie was very cerebral and set in the 1910's, without trying to adapt to 1980's youth culture or look nostalgic (Young Guns, for example). Plus, the marketing for the movie was terrible. Charlie Sheen had only a bit here and there the entire movie

Well I just finally saw this movie for the first time and thought the direction was not that good and it needed a better script and photography. Also, the fact that overall it just wasn't that good a movie didn't help.

I have a film studies textbook that discusses why Eight Men Out did so badly while Field of Dreams (came out around the same time and also about the White Sox scandal) did so well. Basically it said that people like feel-good fantasy and not gritty realism (bummers, the word that the book uses). The book is A Short History of the Movies, by the way.

I think one of the problem is the sheer number of characters, not only do we have the baseballers, but the manager, the two journalists, several hoods and so on.

Eight Men Out is one of the best sports films of all time, even if it has its flaws. The script could be tidied up, the annoying scenes with the children could be got rid of. On the flipside, the acting is nearly always excellent. It doesn't have the cliche feelgood ending of most sports films though.

While baseball is a major sport in North America, Cuba, the Philippines and Japan, it's not much played elsewhere, so I expect a baseball film would have poor pulling power in most of the world. I am not a baseball fan myself, but I appreciate this as a good film, and that's surely a tribute to it. If it had been marketed to me purely on that basis, I would have gone and seen it.

It's also topical. Not only has there been serious questions about the last football world cup, but it seems a bit of jiggery pockery has been going on in the England-Pakistan cricket matches. There is also a major rugby scandal in Europe right now. But being American, most of you will have heard nothing about that. I understand that with the cricket (yawn), but the ignorance about soccer and rugby is inexcusable. LOL!

"Quiz Show" is a good film. However, I myself had the opportunity to go and see it at the cinema, but was put off by the blurb and trailers at the time.

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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

When this movie came out in 1988, I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever as I HATE baseball. I happened upon it tonight on HDNet without knowing what it was, noticed a couple of the actors were familiar to me, and started watching.

This is a great movie! Now I will actually have to go and read up on the scandal. Still don't know who played in or won the World Series this year.

Since you asked, here's why I think:

• Too many characters, making it a bit hard to follow. I agree with others editing suggestions.

• John Cusak and Charlie Sheen, while their acting here was fine, are associated with more fun, even goofy roles, not in a heavy drama. This threw some people for a loop.

• Potentially tense situations were portrayed instead as cerebral and complex. While likely more true to reality, this decreased the drama for most moviegoers.

• Opening scenes lack the normal goal associated with story telling. We mostly know what's going to happen, so the story doesn't start out very compelling, more historical.

• The courtroom resolution isn't something anyone really wants to think about as a resolution for the story. I think moviegoers, and baseball fans, would rather have had some of these guys walk off the field at the end of the movie, even after losing everything.

• As others suggested, the story is downbeat, which turned some viewers off who likely would rather have the film concentrate on just a few characters who resolve inner and outer conflicts and some sort of silver lining (sort of like David Strathairn as Eddie Cicotte here). This of course wasn't completely true to history, but then again, it's the movies...

I love John Sayles, and this film, don't get me wrong. Just pointing out some of the reasons you suggested.

Agree with you on Quiz Show. That really is a superb film, nominated for Best Picture, and definitely deserved it.

It's amazing Charlie Sheen was a huge star by the time this movie came out, but even that didn't help. This was supposed to be D.B. Sweeney's starmaking movie after the failure of the previous movie with Sheen, No Man's Land, but his role as Shoeless Joe was only a bit here and there like Charlie Sheen and he never became famous. John Cusack and a bunch of Sayles regulars had the large roles, so this movie was technically full of unknowns at the time.

The movie was just flat out boring for most people and as for baseball, people want silly stuff like Bull Durham or Major League.

Small independent film, all the actors worked for scale because they wanted to be in it. Obviously Charlie Sheen could have got a big salary for his part, because he was already a star by that time.

Baseball fans (including me) loved it. I was always fascinated by the scandal. And the movie shows why the players did it. Unfortunately, the general public movie goers didn't care about the story.