Interview: ‘Eephus’ writer/director Carson Lund on achieving authenticity and his baseball movie character MVP
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Carson Lund is a film director, cinematographer, and editor best known for his 2025 directorial debut Eephus, one of our favorite films of 2025 and favorite baseball movies.
For Baseball Movie Month, we spoke with Carson about why rec league baseball felt cinematic, making dialogue and characters feel authentic, his Frederick Wiseman starter pack, and more!
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
1. What’s the Carson Lund origin story?
I was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, where I lived my whole life before going to college in Boston. My hometown’s an hour north of Boston, so Boston was kind of my home city. I grew up a huge baseball fan. It was kind of my main passion and hobby in my life. I spent every waking moment devoted to it until at some point, mid-high school, I started getting more interested in filmmaking and music and art in general. I found I got quite tired of playing baseball and being in that sort of competitive environment. So I was somewhat between the jock world and the kind of art kid world in terms of cliques in high school. People didn’t know what to make of me, I guess. At some point I just left baseball entirely until moving out to Los Angeles where I kind of got back into it. I play in a rec league now, and that was a big inspiration for Eephus. I’m basically a baseball nerd turned cinephile. I worked for a long time at my hometown library where we had just a fantastic DVD collection when I was in high school, and that was kind of my film education in a way. I then went to film school, but I really credit all the films I watched from that library as my first introduction to world cinema that shaped my sensibility.
2. As the idea for the film came to fruition, what about rec league baseball struck you as being cinematic?
It didn’t right away. I think over time I realized that, first of all, there was just something about the tone of playing baseball as an older person without aspirations of making it a professional vocation. When I started playing Rec League, it was just a bunch of people my age and older who love playing the game but are not in it to ascend the ladder. So everyone’s just really doing it out of passion. They’re there because they want to be there, not because their parents are trying to force them into being a great player or whatever. So spending time with that group and feeling like it was everyone’s reprieve from a grueling work week, I felt like there was something really special about that. And it created a very specific bond that many other areas of life don’t really fill. You go out and do something you love with a bunch of people that you barely know, but you start to get to know only through the game. You see them once a week and you don’t see them outside of that context. I think there’s something very peculiar about that. It’s friendship forged exclusively from the thing you do that you love. And so that was just a kind of social group I felt would be worth dramatizing on screen.
Having played baseball for so long, the aspects of it I’m drawn to have a lot to do with its sense of time and its almost dreamlike quality—the way you depart reality and are just focused only on the game and the game by its very nature could go on forever. There’s something about that I found very, very therapeutic. It’s a way of slowing down time, even as it is a sport and you are often running and trying to beat the other team. The atmosphere of the game is what really intrigues me. And I thought that hadn’t been captured on a cinematic level in all of the baseball films I’d seen, because I think to depict the quotidian aspects of the game and its slowness is sort of anathema to the way studio execs have thought about the baseball film historically. So that was something I thought would be very, very germane to the medium—the atmosphere and the time-stretching nature of it.
3. Speaking of the writing, this thing is packed with memorable lines. Were you keeping a document of lines as they came to you, or did they come to you as you were writing the script?
It’s a real mix. I did write this film with two other co-writers, my good friends Michael Basta and Nate Fisher, who really brought a lot to the script as well. I brought that specific first-hand experience of playing the game for a very long time and having interactions with teammates that informed a lot of the characters. Yes, there were times where I would take down notes. I would sometimes even record on my phone when sitting in the dugout, which I suppose is a breach of trust in some way, but it was only to sort of help inform the rhythms of the script. I wouldn’t tell people I was recording. But I would take note of certain things along the way and sometimes have memories of former teammates and interactions I’d had playing the game in the past. But that was all coupled with Mike and Nate’s ideas as well. And once we sort of built a structure for the game—how the game would flow, what the score would be, what the lineups were, who the people were—we all felt like we knew them so well and we could kind of think in their voices. And if I brought maybe one or two lines I really liked, they would help me build out the rest of the scene.
I would always make sure that everything felt authentically in the spirit of a baseball game, making sure it had that internal logic. Which is not to say Mike and Nate don’t have the baseball IQ, but they haven’t played themselves as much. So often we would be sitting in a room brainstorming and coming up with lines, and I would feel like “That’s a really funny line, and it may be true to the character, but it’s not true to this moment in the game.” So it was a lot of that kind of back and forth. But Nate’s a really funny guy. He’s a great writer and comedian. Mike is one of my best friends, and we share a sense of humor. So just got in a room and built an outline and then ideas just started coming to us. I think it helps that we were writing this during the pandemic largely and feeling like we were wistful about those sorts of experiences—being with a big group of people and joking around. So I think a lot of that was fueling the writing.
4. The cast feels so lived-in and authentic. How much of what we see is them dialing into a character versus them just being their natural selves?
I would say it’s a mix because the cast is made up of a whole mix of different people, some of them with varying degrees of acting experience. Some of them had been acting for decades. For some this was their first role, and I cast them because I felt they had this quality that the character had. So I really casted them to be themselves in a sense, with a different name and different attributes, but to still bring themselves into it. I knew I was going to need to get past the potential limitations of performance, to let them lean into who they are as a person. And then there were other times where I cast someone to really play someone very different. Theodore Bouloukos, for example—who plays Chuck, the left fielder for the Adler’s Paint—hadn’t played baseball in a very long time. He does a lot of theater acting in New York and works in indie films, and he spent a lot of time working on his New England accent for this role. So there were things like that where people felt like they were entering a world that was not their own, but they were excited by the challenge.
What was really important to me was that people immediately connected with the idea of being on a baseball field for a month in October to shoot this film. And I think it was also crucial that they had some relationship to the game. Even if they hadn’t played in a long time, that they felt connected to it, or maybe it was part of their past or part of their childhood, and that they would be tapping into that well of feelings. I think acting always has to come from a place of realism and experience, and all of the actors in this film were drawing on their own experiences.
5. At what point did the film’s title fall into place?
It was probably halfway through the writing. We weren’t in a rush to find a title, but we just figured it would come to us. Nate plays the character Merritt, who gives this monologue about the eephus pitch, He wrote that monologue almost entirely by himself. I knew we needed something towards the middle of the game where we go back to these two benchwarmers on Adler’s Paint and spend a whole inning with them as they watch the game. I felt like that would be a great opportunity to show another side of that team dynamic, to see what’s going on in that dugout. Nate just pitched this monologue, no pun intended, about pitching and about this specific pitch. He was very inspired by one of his favorite pitchers, Zack Greinke, who still throws the eephus from time to time in the major leagues and is a real character. So he was sort of modeling it after Zack and some of his press conferences he would give and the cadence of his speech. So we landed on that and we liked what he had written.
Then it hit us that maybe the pitch itself would be a very sensible title for the film, because it is also a movie that is trying to reorient your sense of time, catch you off-guard and kind of hang there in the air. So once we wrote that, we knew exactly what the title should be, and it never changed from that point on. There were some moments where some programmers suggested we make the title more accessible or marketable, but we stuck to our guns. I think actually it is a very marketable title in a way. Sometimes people don’t know how to say it, but it has a nice shape to it and has a funny ring to it. I think it immediately tells you it’s a comedy as well.
6. On top of being a great fall rewatch, I’d say this film is destined for cult status, but I think it’s maybe already there. Who’s a memorable fan you met while promoting the film?
That’s a really good question. I hope it has attained cult status. It’s been such a wonderful tour with this film. At this point it’s kind of died down, but hopefully it kicks back up periodically when the baseball season re-emerges. I was on the road so much with this film that I met so many people. We took this film to a lot of small towns where there’s maybe only one little micro cinema. Or it’s the only cinema in a 40-mile radius, so it’s the place people would go to see this kind of film. I met a lot of people who told me, “This is the first film I’ve been to in a theater for a long time. I’m a huge baseball fan and I knew this film would speak to me.” Those are the kind of people that stick out the most. So it’s not necessarily anyone famous or anyone I admire on an artistic level. It’s just a lot of salt-of-the-earth Americans who really, really warmed up to this film and were able to appreciate a formal and aesthetic challenge in the sense that the film is not a traditional narrative film in a lot of ways. They were able to take that in and understand that on a deep level because they connected to the material. And that warms my heart. I wouldn’t call those people cinephiles, so that’s what means a lot to me more than anything. And then, of course, along the way we had great, great champions of the film that really boosted its signal, like people like Will Menaker of Chapo Trap House or Tim Heidecker, who we actually just made a film with. And I’m extremely grateful, but I think it’s the people along the way who came out to see it on a Sunday afternoon with a long Q&A and really engaged with it. I think indie cinema needs that kind of relationship with its audience to continue its existence, frankly. So that got me really excited.
7. Music Box Films put out this film. We’re a Chicago-based outlet, so the Music Box Theatre is our crown jewel. How did that partnership come to be?
It came out of Cannes, which was a dream premiere. We premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight in 2024—a baseball movie in France. Kind of wild. We had a sales company attached at the festival who were pitching it every day, and Music Box was one of those companies that showed some interest. I think the deal was made after the festival, actually, but they were a very strong contender early on. There were some other distribution companies that were not American that were interested, but we felt like we wanted to go with a company that’s right down the street from Wrigley Field. Chicago’s a big baseball city. We felt like they would understand how to partner with us on it, how to bring it to audiences and market it. So they were great in that sense. We spoke the same language. I think it was exactly the size of distributor the film needed. Not to mention the Music Box screenings we had were all electric. They had the house organist playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” before the screening. They had a locally brewed beer they called the Eephus. I was there to do a Q&A. It was just a fantastic time. People were showing up in vintage baseball jerseys. This movie really brought people out of the woodwork who maybe haven’t engaged with independent theatrical releases very often, and we for whatever reason just connected. So I’m very grateful for that.
8. This movie is a loving homage to the passage of time, the people we meet along the way, and the ways we choose to pass it together. When you’re not making films, how do you like to pass the time and with whom?
I have a really solid group of friends out here in L.A. that I spend a lot of time with. Some of them are close filmmaking collaborators. My life has been extremely busy since releasing Eephus, and now we’re trying to make the next one. I just finished shooting Michael Basta’s directorial debut, actually. It’s fun work, and there’s been a lot of momentum that we want to capitalize on. We don’t want to let it disappear. We have films we’re itching to make. But when I do have free time, we really like going camping and skiing in California. This state is just so gorgeous. There’s so much natural wonder and there’s a breathtaking sunset every single night. So I found a group of people that enjoy doing that as well and getting away from the grind and the phones and everything. It sounds very cliche, I suppose, but that’s the way I like to pass the time.
“This movie really brought people out of the woodwork who haven’t engaged with independent theatrical releases very often.”
9. What’s a good double feature with Eephus that isn’t a baseball movie?
Eagle Pennell, an independent filmmaker from Texas, worked in the ‘70s and made a handful of really great, really low-budget movies. There’s one called The Last Night at the Alamo, which is just a lovely movie about the closing of a bar and the people who haunt that place. It’s kind of a raucous, fun movie that ends in despair and melancholy. So it’s a great film, and I think his work is pretty underrated. Not even underrated, just under-recognized. So I would spotlight that film. All of his films are great and they all have this wonderful regional charm and authenticity that grounds them deeply in a specific milieu, which is something I care a lot about with films, especially now when so many movies are being made in sort of tax-haven states and kind of lose their sense of place along the way. Pennell’s a good example of someone who was just making films right there in his community.
10. The late great Frederick Wiseman memorably narrates this film. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, what in your view is the perfect Wiseman starter pack?
So many of the films he made in his late career are a bit of a time investment and emotional investment. So I think it’s always good to start with something like High School. It’s quick. You get a sense of exactly what his methodology is as a filmmaker and what he’s interested in. But I really think he’s a peculiar case because he’s made films about so many different topics, subcultures, institutions, and types of people that you can just look through his filmography and pick whatever subject you’re interested in. They’re very helpfully named as well: Welfare is about the welfare state, Law and Order is about police. If you want to go with something longer and more kind of novelistic and detailed, Belfast, Maine is a film I absolutely love. It’s about a town in Maine that I really am fond of. It shows the town at a turning point between its working-class background and newer tourist age. If you want something more contemporary, I think something like In Jackson Heights is extremely easy to get into. It’s about the neighborhood in New York City, which is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country. Just an extremely lively survey of what goes on in that neighborhood, full of life and beauty.
11. This month at Cinema Sugar we’re celebrating Baseball Movie Month. What baseball movie character is your personal MVP?
I get asked about baseball films quite a lot, and I often say the same thing, which is that, when prepping for Eephus, we tried to keep them out of our frame of reference because we wanted to approach it from a very fresh perspective. But there are some great films. I love Kevin Costner in Bull Durham as Crash Davis. Crash and Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon—that relationship is an iconic duo. Costner actually has good mechanics as a baseball player. I totally buy him as that character. He just has this great stoicism and kind of bemused, no-bullshit kind of demeanor that I think is very, very true of people I’ve played on teams with over the years. Especially those who have seen some glory and then faded and are now in Rec League. He’s a great, tragic baseball figure, but very grounded as well. He’s learning about how to live post-baseball, and I think there’s something very beautiful about him reckoning with his own obsolescence.
He’s also the one who says the line “Strikeouts are fascist,” which we have in our film as well. This is a fun anecdote: there’s been a lot of chatter online about how it’s a reference to Bull Durham, right? Well, what’s funny is actually Bill “Spaceman” Lee said that quote, which Ron Shelton then used in Bull Durham because he had met Bill. And Bill is the one who says it in our film. So we actually just went right back to the source of that saying.
12. Who’s an actor you’d love to work with, and would you like to take a moment to pitch them on working together?
Maybe this is a cop-out answer because he’s no longer with us, but I think Harry Dean Stanton would have been very right for my world. And actually he would have fit right in the film I’m about to make. So Harry, if you were still with us, I think you had this amazing Zen quality and grounded, realistic sense of character that completely matches my world and allows me to go a little bit surreal and dreamlike, because you always pull it back down to earth. And your face… What a face. There’s so much history and so much to look at in that face. Harry Dean Stanton is one of the all-time faces.
+1. What’s your question for us?
What do you think the mission of film journalism is in 2026? Obviously getting the word out about films, but is there some deeper mission that you think is kind of driving you?
Chad: It depends on the outlet you ask, right? For us, from the beginning we wanted a place that emphasized how movies connect us, how movies make our lives sweeter, and taking that sort of ethos and infusing it into all of our writing, whether it’s our own or guest contributors and interviews. Movies mean so much to everyone, from industry professionals to just regular folks in small towns like you were talking about. There’s certainly a place for the hard-hitting reviews and business side of things, but that’s not really our purview. We’re just guys who love movies and love talking about movies.