Fathers, Sons and the Great American Sport of Baseball: Bucky F*cking Dent

In the grand tradition of American storytelling, there are certain consistent themes to be expected: life, death, and a sport of some kind. The South has football, the North has hockey, the whole world has soccer, but there is perhaps no sport more romanticized and mythologized in the American cultural consciousness than baseball. There are many films centered upon life, death, and baseball — Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, The Natural — but no film has approached any of these topics with such sincerity and sweetness as Bucky F*cking Dent, which made its Texas premiere at Austin Film Festival last Friday. 

 Bucky F*cking Dent is set in 1978 and follows Ted (Logan Marshall-Green), a ballpark peanut salesman with ambitions of being a writer, whom we meet after his manuscript is rejected by yet another publisher. Ted is feeling aimless and stuck, but upon learning that his father has fallen fatally-ill, he focuses all of his attention on coming home to New Jersey and caring for his dad, Marty (David Duchovny.) After being estranged for many years, Ted and Marty awkwardly attempt to regain some form of a connection, which is made possible in part by Marty’s barber shop crew of friends (Evan Handler, Santo Fazio, Jason Beghe) and his grief counselor, Mariana (Stephanie Beatriz.) 

 The relationship between Marty and Ted has been strained for some time now, for reasons mostly unspecified, but the disconnection between them is palpable, as is their desire to create a bond that never existed before. There are a million little things that build into an uncomfortable resentment between the two but Marty, facing death’s door, just wants to forget the past and enjoy the time he has left with his son. Ted, with his fuzzy mutton chops and joint in hand, differs from his father — but not overly so. Throughout the course of their months together, Ted learns that his father was once a writer too, and that he also struggled with love and commitment. Marty gets to know his son all over again, perhaps for the first time, over a shared joint and a shared love for the game of baseball.

 While there is a family drama at the core of Bucky F*cking Dent, the greatest conflict stems from baseball — more specifically the Boston Red Sox’s eighty-six year long championship drought. Marty has been alive long enough to see his favorite team lose time and time again, and begins to even blame himself for this consistent Bad News Bears-luck. The summer of 1978 was significant for the Sox and their rivals, the Yankees, and as each team swung closer and closer to the championship, things weren’t looking too good for Boston. 

 Each time the Sox lose, Marty just sulks and goes back to bed, so Ted and the barber shop crew hatch a plan to fake a winning streak for their beloved team. They doctor newspapers with fake winning headlines, bribe the Yankee-loyal paper boy to curse over fake losses, and even create fake thunderstorms outside Marty’s window to indicate rainouts and games never completed. This phony winning streak gives Marty a new lease on life, and while Mariana is only cautiously participating in the ruse, she sees a new side to Ted — adding more sparks to their already-growing chemistry. The romance that blooms among this salt-of-the-earth crowd is just one of its unexpected charms. 

 Countless films document the complex relationships between fathers and sons, baseball teams and their loyal devotees, but few have been as authentically funny and crass and lovely as Bucky F*cking Dent. If you’re like this critic, and have little connection to baseball or masculine-centric family dramedies, you may struggle to find yourself in this story at first. But as this film showcases the many losses and triumphs of parenthood and playing ball, it’s hard not to root for this duo and their favorite team. It’s impossible not to think of your own parents, the sacrifices they’ve made, and the ways you wish you could make it up to them. 

 The entire cast of Bucky F*cking Dent is phenomenal, but there is a certain dedication that David Duchovny — who also wrote, directed, produced, and composed a song for this film — brings to his role. For those of us more-accustomed to his sly charisma as Fox Mulder on The X Files, it could be slightly shocking to see Duchovny play an aging curmudgeon of a father figure, but he approaches this character with grace, and an unexpectedly-biting sense of humor. Marty and Ted’s personal and relational struggles feel genuine and recognizable, as does their love and evolving-appreciation for each other. This is the first film Duchovny has directed in nearly twenty years, and the level of care that went into making it is tangible and true.

 Bucky F*cking Dent is oozing with an earnestness that does not come across as sappy, but sweetly cynical. While dealing with the topic of death, the film successfully navigates the gut wrenching realities of mortality without feeling heavy handed — and always with a sense of humor. David Duchovny and Logan Marshall-Green quip their way through conversations both painful and goofy, sincere and scurrilous, and afford their father-son dynamic layers upon layers of lived-in legitimacy. It is a multi-dimensional, moving, home run of a film that is sure to put a smile on your face — whether or not you’re a sports fan.