This year's Academy Awards was Hollywood at its best and most aspirational: It was classy, you couldn't argue the "Oppenheimer" sweep and Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken" performance killed. But our favorite 2024 Oscars moment? John Mulaney's unhinged "Field of Dreams" rant.
The Emmy-winning comedian took the stage at the Dolby Theatre to present the award for Best Sound (which went to "The Zone of Interest"). Instead of announcing each nominee in stately terms, Mulaney decided to recite the plot of "Field of Dreams," the Oscar-nominated 1989 baseball drama starring Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer who turns his cornfield into a baseball diamond.
"What about that moment in 'Field of Dreams' where we hear, 'If you build it, he will come'?" Mulaney began in an apparent nod to sound mixing and editing in film. "And then Costner does it! He builds a baseball field."
John Mulaney explaining the entire plot to Field of Dreams instead of presenting his category at the Oscars lol. king pic.twitter.com/5q98HfH5ur
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) March 11, 2024
He continued with a recap of the plot, fast-talking through every wacky beat of the film. "He mows down corn and then there is a field and then he's like, 'I'm going to watch ghosts play baseball.' And the bank is like, 'You wanna pay your mortgage?' And he's like, 'Nah, I'm going to watch ghosts play baseball.' And then he finds James Earl Jones, who wrote 'The Boat Rocker,' which I thought was a real book deep into my 20s."
Moving on to the last fantastical stretch of the movie, Mulaney offered this delirious recounting:
"Timothy Busfield pushes little Gaby Hoffman off the bleachers and she falls down and she's unconscious. Then Burt Lancaster is Moonlight Graham and he comes up and pats her on the back a couple times and he's like, 'Hot dog stuck in a throat.' And then he can't go back in the game because I guess there's a rule in ghost baseball that if you leave the field at any point to become an elderly ghost and do the Heimlich maneuver, you can't return to the field!"
"I love 'Field of Dreams'," Mulaney closed out his unconventional presenting gig. "That should win Best Picture."
Okay, but can we get Mulaney to recap Costner's "Horizon" saga like this?
