If You Build It

EPISODE 19: The untold story of the "Field of Dreams" that Hollywood forgot.

I don’t know how much you guys know about Field of Dreams.

At the Oscars in 1990, apparently, Field of Dreams got nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score. I didn’t know any of that before doing today’s episode. Field of Dreams, to me, was just one of those very famous movies I assumed I’d already seen.

But I had not. What I’d actually seen, I only recently realized, were various Field of Dreams parodies and references in the TV shows and cartoons I did watch.

So, no: nostalgia is not at all required to enjoy today’s episode.

But nostalgia, generally, is what today’s episode is all about.

Because in 2021, in a big, splashy announcement, NBCUniversal hired Mike Schur — esteemed showrunner/comedy writer/baseball nerd — to build his passion project. The culmination of his life in Hollywood, and in sports: a reboot of Field of Dreams.

But as an entire television series.

They cast the actors. They wrote the scripts — including what Mike calls the best script he’s ever written. (Context: Mike has written for Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place…)

They even went out and built a beautiful, MLB-size baseball field — Mike Schur’s literal Field of Dreams — out of an actual cornfield! In actual Iowa! Where they were about to shoot the entire thing!

Until the entire series got cancelled, as abruptly as this sentence, last year.

But today: we bring you the untold story of what happened.

And what the show would’ve been.

And why.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

(Cowards.)