'Sugar' is a whole new ballgame

Q. Where did the idea of doing a film about a Dominican baseball player come from?

Fleck I was always a big baseball fan. But even though I always felt like I knew a fair amount about the history and mythology of the game, I did not know anything about these academies. Pretty much every Major League Baseball team has their own private academy in the Dominican Republic, which is driving this huge industry down there. Hundreds of players go on this journey every year, where they come to spring training and then they get placed in these minor league towns across the country. We became fascinated with how this works, and what happens to the guys that they don't hear about. This led us to asking questions; we live in New York and went up to the Bronx where there is a huge Dominican population. We started at the Roberto Clemente ballpark where the last scene of the movie takes place and we interviewed all these guys.

Boden We heard a lot of their stories and that's how we started to develop the character and the story of Miguel, taking little details from every story that interested us. It was such a thriving, energetic moment [in the Bronx], when they're all playing, their families and friends are there, there's loud merengue in the stands, everybody is speaking in Spanish, and they are selling mangoes on a stick. It's such a community that these guys have found. All their different journeys have led them here. We knew immediately we wanted Miguel's journey to take him to this place. Then we went to the Dominican Republic to find out, if that's where the journey ends, where does it begin and how do we get him there?

Q. Given that it's in Spanish, did you consider trying to tweak it to make it more marketable?

Fleck After making the crack-addicted teacher movie ["Half Nelson"], we felt this was like a Disney film.

Q. Where did you find the actor who played Miguel?

Fleck We would drive around the country in a van. Anna speaks very good Spanish and we had a guy who showed us baseball fields. We had a video camera and invited kids to come talk to us. We'd ask them to tell a joke, to tell us stories. We'd ask them questions about their lives. You can tell right away if this is going to be somebody who could hold your interest. But 450 people later we hadn't found the guy and we were beginning to wonder what we'd gotten ourselves into. But Algenis [Pérez Soto] was number 452. We knew he was pretty special.

Q. What was it about him?

Fleck It was his quiet confidence and that he seemed calm, and didn't seem to be performing or trying to impress us with anything.

Boden We just wanted to watch him do whatever he was doing. After that initial interview, we gave him a scene and he would read with us and we'd do some improv and walk around and get to know him. We became more and more confident that this was somebody who could carry a movie.

Q. What's been the reaction in the Dominican baseball community?

Boden It's been really awesome. It opened the [Dominican Republic film] festival and they played it at the national theater, which is a huge theater, totally packed. They brought little league players out to watch the film. And they also brought out players like David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez and Sammy Sosa and all these huge names in Dominican baseball. They had a red carpet and the little leaguers are lining the red carpet and holding out their hands and saying "Big Papi, Big Papi" and blowing confetti. Afterward, I got to talk to some of these players and it was extremely gratifying to have them say, all of them, "You got it right." And even though their stories end much differently than our story does for our particular character, they had the experience of coming to the United States for the first time and being a fish out of water and being apart from their family and missing it.

Q. What aspect of the traditional baseball movie did you try to stay away from?

Fleck Because we were following this guy's journey, we were really more interested in what he is going through during the games. The movie is not at all concerned about who wins or loses the game. I think that's unusual for most movies having to do with sports. [For us,] sports is a vessel to explore this guy's immigrant journey and things like isolation, loneliness, and ultimately finding community.

2009 Coolidge Award. From April 6 to May 7, Coolidge Corner Theatre will screen much of the Quay brothers' animated filmography. The Quays will be in Brookline May 6-7 to accept the 2009 Coolidge Award, participating in conversations with audiences and panel discussions. 617-734-2500 or www.coolidge.org

"Scenes From a Parish." A new documentary by Newton filmmaker James Rutenbeck screens at the Museum of Fine Arts April 8-17. The film, produced over four years at Saint Patrick Parish in Lawrence, is a story of a traditionally Irish-American Catholic parish coming to terms with the Latino city that surrounds it. 617-267-9300, www.mfa.org

Ramin Bahrani. The Harvard Film Archive presents the series The Films of Ramin Bahrani, or Life at Street Level April 11-12. Bahrani will attend both screenings to discuss his work. 617-495-4700, www.hcl.harvard.edu

Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com.