Kevin Costner, director Phil Alden Robinson at FIELD OF DREAMS Screening

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Phil Alden Robinson's Field of Dreams, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented a screening of the supernatural baseball drama on Wednesday, December 16, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Back in 1989, Field of Dreams, in which a farmer builds (a baseball field) so they'll come ("they" being the Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other seven banned Chicago White Sox players), was nominated for three Academy Awards: best picture, best original screenplay, and best original score (James Horner). Based on W.P. Kinsella's short novel, the film stars Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster, Ray Liotta, and James Earl Jones.

Field of Dreams was also part of a series of hits Kevin Costner had in the late 1980s and early 1990s, beginning with The Untouchables and No Way Out in 1987, which were followed by Bull Durham (1988), with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins; Dances with Wolves (1990), which earned Costner Academy Awards as the film's co-producer and director; Oliver Stone's paranoid thriller JFK (1991); Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991); and The Bodyguard (1992), in which he falls for Whitney Houston. (Madonna pretending to throw up after Costner says her show was "neat" in the 1991 documentary Truth or Dare caused quite a stir as well.)

But Madonna or no, Costner seemed unstoppable at the time. Even so, the films that followed (A Perfect World, Wyatt Earp, The War) were disappointments. And then came Waterworld (1995), which brought his stardom to a dramatic halt.

Pictured above prior to the Field of Dreams screening (left to right): Academy President Tom Sherak, cinematographer John Lindley, writer/director Robinson, Oscar-nominated producer Chuck Gordon, Costner, production designer Dennis Gassner and Oscar-nominated producer Lawrence Gordon. (Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.)

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