The Bad News Bears
| The Bad News Bears | |
|---|---|
|
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| Directed by | Michael Ritchie |
| Produced by | Stanley R. Jaffe |
| Written by | Bill Lancaster |
| Starring |
Walter Matthau Tatum O'Neal Chris Barnes Vic Morrow Jackie Earle Haley Joyce Van Patten Quinn Smith |
| Music by | Jerry Fielding |
| Cinematography | John A. Alonzo |
| Edited by | Richard A. Harris |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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April 7, 1976 |
|
Running time
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102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Spanish |
| Budget | $9 million |
| Box office | $42,349,782 |
The Bad News Bears is a 1976 American sports comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie. It stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. The film was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, a short-lived 1979–80 CBS television series, and a 2005 remake.
The original screenplay was written by Bill Lancaster. Notable was the score by Jerry Fielding, which is an adaptation of the principal themes of Bizet's opera Carmen.
Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), a former minor-league baseball player and an alcoholic who cleans swimming pools, is paid to manage the team by a city councilman named Bob Whitewood (Ben Piazza), an attorney who filed a lawsuit against a competitive Southern California Little League, which excluded the least athletically skilled children (including his son Toby) from playing. To settle the lawsuit, the league agrees to add an additional team—the Bears—which is composed of the worst players.
Buttermaker becomes coach of the unlikely team. It includes (among others) a near-sighted pitcher named Rudy Stein (David Pollock), an overweight catcher named Mike Engleberg (Gary Lee Cavagnaro), a foul-mouthed shortstop named Tanner (Chris Barnes) with a Napoleon complex, an outfielder, Ahmad Abdul Rahim (Erin Blunt) who dreams of emulating his idol Hank Aaron, two non-English-speaking Mexican immigrants, a withdrawn (and bullied) boy named Timmy Lupus, and a motley collection of other "talent". Shunned by the more competitive teams (and competitive parents), the Bears are outsiders, sponsored by Chico's Bail Bonds. In their opening game the top-notch Yankees, who are coached by aggressive, competitive Roy Turner (Vic Morrow), they do not even record an out, giving up 26 runs before Buttermaker the game while the Yankees start ridiculing the Bears.
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