Movie Under The Stars: The Sandlot

Movie Under The Stars Series Opener: The Sandlot

The Capitol Preservation Board is excited about the beginning of the Movie Under the Stars film series this Thursday, July 1, 2010. The 2010 movie series will feature nine movies Thursday evenings through August 26, 2010. The movies will be shown at dusk on the State Capitol's south-western lawn and is free to the publlic.

We are thankful for the presenting sponsor Rio Tinto and our other sponsor's; Utah Care Foundation, Utah Film Commission, Salt Lake Film Center and Harmons Grocery. There will be pre-movie musical performances and events each week prior to the featured film.

We are featuring a home-grown utah-made film as our opener: The Sandlot

The Utah Film Locations include:The Farr Park Pool - Ogden, Midvale, Ogden, Rose Park, Salt Lake City, and State Street in American Fork

The Sandlot is a 1993 American comedy-drama sports film about a group of young baseball players during the summer of 1963. The story is narrated by Scotty Smalls, the shy new kid on the block who wants to join the rowdy pickup baseball team that plays every day in the neighborhood sandlot. But he doesn't know how to catch a baseball, and his stepfather is too busy to teach him. He tries out for the sandlot gang anyway, and though he isn't very good, it turns out he's lucky: there happen to be only eight of them, and nine makes a team. The summer passes blissfully as Scotty learns to play ball under the wing of Benny Rodriguez, the oldest and best player, as well as Ham, Squints, Repeat, and the rest of the kid-eccentrics. The skies darken, however, when Benny literally knocks the stuffing out of the team's only baseball, a sign of impending doom, or worse, bad luck. Wanting to set things right, Scotty returns home and "borrows" his stepfather's ball, which he promptly uses to hit his first home run, knocking the ball clear out of the sandlot into mean old Mr. Mertle junkyard, home to Mertle's legendary guard dog The Beast. Scotty admits that he took the ball without asking, and he naively explains that his stepfather will want it back since it had a woman's name written on it: some lady named Babe Ruth Horror-stricken, the sandlot gang mobilizes to fetch the autographed ball from the clutches of The Beast. . .