I just want to give a shout out to everyone who has given me good wishes in my Hodgkin's journey. I'm once again in remission, and more than a year out of my last chemo. I've watched this scene from BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY again, and I want report to all of you that Robert De Niro's portrayal of the disease is accurate. Hodgkin's wastes you away, robs you of your strength. The treatment for Hodgkin's can be excruciatingly painful but the disease itself is not. You simply waste away. But again, it has become one of the most curable types of cancer, and I'm proud to say that I'm a survivor. So thank you again to all who have reached out to me with their good wishes. Your messages have helped me in my time of need.
I have this disease. Hodgkin's. Advances in chemo mean that it's far from a death sentence now. When I'm finally in remission, I'm going to watch "Bang the Drum Slowly" again. Can't bear it now.
I'm in remission, Bill. Got the news two weeks ago. 2 1/2 years & two separate chemo regimens. Thanks for your good wishes. From here on in I rag nobody.
@@goback3spaces I hope you are still doing well. I first saw this movie when I was 10 (many, many years ago) and understand what you've gone through. So glad for the new advancements in treatment.
@@pdmarie63 Hey, Paula ... I'm still in remission and am doing okay. Curiously enough, pharmaceutical research saved my life. Thanks for asking, and God bless.
Just started reading a biography of DeNiro and it mentions how much research he did to play this role. Fantastic film,criminally underrated. Al Pacino wanted to be a ballplayer and wanted this role.
@@mike196212 Yup, I learned it just last night. Apparently, the method acting that we know is vastly different from the ones in the early years of Hollywood. De Niro was one of the pioneers of the "act like your character outside the camera" method.
Not just one of my favorite baseball films but one of my favorite films. Everything about the film is understated, including the beautiful soundtrack. So heartfelt.
Stephen Lawrence wrote this beautiful soundtrack. He passed away recently. He wrote over 300 songs for Sesame Street. He validated me as a composer. Rest easy my friend.
What a nice ending, "Send me a scorecard", with the catcher having trouble lifting his bag and the two stewardesses waiting at the top for his ascension. Moriarty was as good as DeNiro I thought.
Absolutely. He underplayed the role which was exactly what was wanted. A bunch of dramatics would have ruined it. Pay the audience some credit for intelligence and feelings. Riveting performance, imo.
Best Baseball movie ever..top 3 movies ever for me.. saw it in 1973.. I watch it once a year at least just to remind myself that from now on I rag on nobody..
"From here on in I rag nobody." They did a poll of the greatest endings of ANY American novels ever and this was in the top 100. The book is very well worth a read.
I was a 12 year old die hard Yankee fan when I saw this with my parents. I was never one to show emotion, but I couldn't hold it together. In 2009, I began a battle with the slightly different non-Hodgkin's. This has been motivational over the past decade especially.
I was 10 when I saw this movie and balled my eyes out. Eleven years later my oldest brother would die from Hodgkin's at 24 yrs old. So sad..And I am so glad for the advances in treatment. Like @goback3spaces who commented above, I am certain he'd be in remission too.
Many of us wish this wonderful score were available on CD or as a download. There's such inherent nobility in the music, pitch perfect all the way through... and not a dollop of treacle or overselling the emotion.
I watched Bang The Drum Slowly only a few days ago, and your music struck a cord and has stuck with me. This scene & song in particular had me sobbing like a baby. It's beautiful. Really captures the whole emotion and feel of the movie perfectly.
I've posted on this thread before, but this song is one of the sweetest pieces of music I've ever heard, evocative without being maudlin. I love how it starts with the piano, harp and woodwinds ... and the horns come in later. Perfect.
If that ending scene doesn't get to you nothing will. The other ending scene that gets me as good as this one is in Billy Jack when they're taking him away and all of the kids are holding up their fists. Yeah that one is a tearjerker as well😢
Mr. Lawrence, your music was the soundtrack to my life, starting with "Sesame Street" and "Free to Be You and Me". I own 3 copies of the soundtrack to "Bang the Drum Slowly" and yes, I still listen to it as I have 4 turntables. It is not only my favorite soundtrack, it is one of my favorite albums, period. Thank you for this and for all the beautiful music you have created over the years. You are an amazing talent.
This is my favorite baseball movie, and baseball is my favorite sport. I think Roger Ebert called it not a movie about baseball, but a movie about life. And so your music brings that out, and compliments, really blends with the theme of this movie. Well done and thank you!
I still have the soundtrack LP for Bang The Drum Slowly & have always loved your score for this film. I'm really looking forward to your Alice, Sweet Alice soundtrack LP that Waxworks Records will be putting out in 2021.
*Stephen Lawrence -- Liebermeister!* *Thank you so much for the music you wrote for this movie. Wow! Wow!* Sitting here, thinking, racking my brain ... I'm afraid I've given up trying to come up with a word that describes how beautiful, how moving your music is in this movie. (And I don't give up easily when it comes to describing something.) ... It's just a wonderful, wonderful marriage of film and music. ... I'm sure everyone associated with making the movie agrees with me and is in your debt for making the movie what it is. I love your adding in the notes that the producer jokingly said to you that he wouldn't pay you unless the hospital and airport scenes made him cry. I think it can safely be said that he got his money's worth. And a lot, lot more. ... It reminds me of the story about Babe Ruth which, I don't know, may be apocryphal, but it's where he promises a dying child that he would hit a homer run for him. Except in your case, you, in fact, did hit a home run, it ISN'T an apocryphal story -- you did it! As you may know, the philosopher Arthur Schopenaur "ranked" the art forms -- music, painting, sculpting, dance, writing, etc. And he not only ranked music as #1, he put music in a category all by itself -- so superior did he believe music to be to the rest of the arts. ... As he put it, "God whispers in the ear of the musician, and the musician plays." ... Now, mind you, I'm an agnostic, but when I hear a piece of music that moves me, that makes me happy to be alive, such as your music in "Bang the Drum Slowly," I think to myself, "You know, St. Thomas offered 5 reasons for the existence of God -- but he forgot to include music! Just that one word is all that he needed to make his list complete: 6. MUSIC We'd all know what he meant. Thanks again, Chris
"Probably everybody be nice to you if they knew you were dying," he said. "Everybody knows everybody is dying," I said. " That is why people are nice. You all die soon enough, so why not be nice to each other." -Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly
When this movie came out in 1973 it coincided with the leukemia diagnosis for Danny Thompson, shortstop for the Twins. Thompson played a few more years and died a few months after his last game.
That certainly wouldn't describe him in this movie. He plays a Southern hayseed catcher, very convincingly. I agree he's been on autopilot of sorts over the last decade or so. But not so for his early and mid-career work.
