Wilson
Saturday. Sun and clear blue skies from the early hours. I woke earlier than I would have liked, went to the kitchen to make coffee, and found Little Ed transfixed at the window — captivated by a horde of young starlings squabbling over fat balls in the bird feeder. Needless to say, he did not get to go outside: breakfast was served in a bowl, not on the wing. Vanessa’s working in Folkestone this weekend, but the rest of us are at a loose end.
My daily photo features a different kind of fat ball (sorry) that I noticed in the garden, partially bathed in morning sunlight. A great study in contrast, with beautiful inky shadows — a job at which the Ricoh GRIII excels. It was only later, while editing the photo, that the Wilson brand mark reminded me of an interesting story, about one of cinema's more improbable supporting actors.
In Cast Away (2000), Robert Zemeckis's survival drama starring Tom Hanks as marooned FedEx systems analyst Chuck Noland, a battered Wilson volleyball ended up sharing more screen time with Hanks than any human co-star. The idea came from screenwriter William Broyles Jr., who, while researching the script, deliberately stranded himself for a week on an isolated beach in the Gulf of California to work out what solitude and scarcity actually felt like. A Wilson-branded ball washed up on the sand during his stay, and the seed of the character was planted.
In the film, Noland cuts his hand trying to start a fire and hurls the volleyball away in frustration, leaving a bloody handprint on its surface. He later scratches a rudimentary face into the smear, names the ball after its manufacturer, and adopts it as a surrogate companion for the four years he spends alone on the island. There is a nicely domestic footnote to the naming: when the idea was pitched to Hanks, he agreed partly as a small gesture to his wife, Rita Wilson, given how long the shoot would keep him away from home.
Structurally, Wilson also solved a very practical screenwriting problem — a lone castaway with nobody to talk to makes for a difficult two-hour film, and the ball gave Hanks a plausible reason to speak aloud. It is why the eventual scene of Wilson drifting away from the raft in a storm, and Noland's despairing cry, lands with such force. Wilson Sporting Goods leant into the phenomenon at the time of release, producing a limited-edition volleyball with a reproduction of the bloodied handprint face printed on one side, a version the company still offers today.
The ball's afterlife has been unexpectedly long. A persistent internet rumour that a screen-used Wilson sold for $18,500 to the former CEO of FedEx Office turns out to be untrue, but an original prop did go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions on 7 December 2024 for $162,500 — a striking valuation for what is, in the end, a slightly scuffed volleyball with a face drawn on it in fake blood. Not a bad legacy for a chance find on a Mexican beach.
