New movie proves that 'Spaceman' Lee is still way out there
If you're a Red Sox fan, there are few people you could spend a more entertaining hour with than former Sox pitcher Bill Lee.
Lee has always been one of the slyest and uncensored players in the business. When he was in Boston last year to promote his book, ``Have Glove, Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond," for instance, the man known as ``Spaceman" told the Globe that Yankee fans won't like the book because ``there are no pictures," and acknowledged that he regularly took steroids -- ``Oh, yeah, I took anything they'd give me. They shot me up with stuff all the time just to get me back out there. I looked like a Frank Perdue chicken half the time."
A new movie profiles the fiercely independent player, who was with the Sox from 1969 to 1978. Called ``Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey," it follows Lee to Cuba for a stint as a guest pitcher for an adult baseball league team from San Diego. It's supplemented with wonderful archival material and commentary from folks including former Sox teammates Luis Tiant and Fred Lynn and Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy.
``Lee's life is just one long quest to play baseball," says the film's producer Josh Dixon, who first heard of the colorful player in 2000 (Dixon claims to have subsequently become a Sox fan). ``When Lee was about age 36, he was essentially blackballed -- no one wanted to touch him -- because he had ruffled so many feathers. But he continued to play baseball all over Canada, in Russia, China, Japan, Central America, South America."
Lee, who's 59, still travels whenever somebody invites him to play. The movie meets up with him at his home in Craftsbury, Vt., where he's wandering his property with a shotgun. Most of the rest of the film takes place in Havana and Vinales, where Lee goes on a diet of ``black coffee, cigars, and straight rum," quotes Marshall McLuhan, and, after gimping around the bases with his bum knee, offers a little Cuban kid 14 acres in Vermont in exchange for his legs.
The film has its New England big-screen premiere on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Woods Hole Film Festival, which started yesterday and runs through next Saturday. ``Spaceman" also has been shown twice on NESN , and is scheduled to replay on Aug. 6 and 28. Dixon is planning a theatrical and DVD release of the film in September.
For information about the rest of the festival, call 508-495-3456 or go to www.woodsholefilmfestival.com . For information about ``Spaceman" the movie, go to www.spacemanincuba.com.
CONVERSATIONS WITH: The Museum of Fine Arts is hosting an interesting series around the 2005 documentary ``Sketches of Frank Gehry ": several of the screenings between today and Aug. 20 will have post-film discussions to dig into director Sydney Pollack's film and Gehry's monumental role in the world of architecture.
Today, William Mitchell , MIT professor of architecture and media arts and sciences, will lead the conversation after a noon screening of the film. Mitchell was involved in the MIT Stata Center project, which Gehry designed. The film's producer Ultan Guilfoyle will be the guest after the Aug. 13 show at 2:30 p.m., and Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1996, will offer comments after the Aug. 20 show at 2:15 p.m.
The series is co - presented with the Boston Jewish Film Festival, which coordinated the speakers. Information is at 617-369-3306 and www.mfa.org/film .
ONLINE RESOURCE FOR FILMMAKERS: TurnHere.com is a neat concept: It's a travel guide website that, instead of featuring text descriptions of places, provides free short films that describe different city neighborhoods and their atmosphere, restaurants, and way of life. The site's tagline: ``Short Films Cool Places."
For Boston, for instance, there are currently 15 short films online about neighborhoods from ``Allston Rock City" to ``Little Italy in the North End" to ``Dudley Square" in Roxbury, and films that focus on ``Boston Dive Bars" and ``South End Tails" (that is, the dogs who live there).
The website was founded in 2005 and is based in Emeryville, Calif. Anyone can watch the movies by going to www.turnhere.com and clicking on ``Boston , MA Metro" in the lower left corner. Filmmakers interested in developing and submitting movies (three minutes maximum) should read through the online guidelines. TurnHere is looking for shorts that are led by a ``compelling charismatic local tour guide" who gives a viewer ``an authentic experience."
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Boston Public Library starts a Kids Cinema program this week: Films will screen every Friday in August at 10:15 a.m. in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the main library in Copley Square . The program is ``for children ages 3 to 7 accompanied by an adult." Meanwhile, the North End branch of the library presents a program called ``The Golden Age of Movie Musicals" Wednesdays at 6 p.m. This week it's ``Guys and Dolls." Future films include ``The Pajama Game," ``Pal Joey," ``West Side Story," and ``Moulin Rouge." All the films are free; details about both programs and movies at all branches of the library are at 617-536-5400 and www.bpl.org/news/upcomingevents.htm.
Other screenings: A new 35mm print of ``Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to celebrate the film's 50th anniversary, tomorrow at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2500 and www.coolidge.org) , and a double-feature of Hayao Miyazaki's animated films ``Spirited Away" and ``Howl's Moving Castle" from Friday through Monday, Aug. 7, at the Brattle Theatre (617-876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org).
Also: The 2004 Russian film ``4" by Ilya Khrzhanovsky Friday at 7:45 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, with another four screenings through Aug. 13. The director reportedly refused to make edits to the film demanded by the Russian Ministry of Culture, and censors only allowed the film to be distributed in Russia after it played at the Venice, Rotterdam, and Tribeca film festivals (617-267-9300 and www.mfa.org/film).
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
