Twenty years ago this month, I sat in the stands at the old Durham Athletic Park as the cast and crew of "Bull Durham" completed filming there. An "extra," I thought I was playing the role of a fan, only to find later that, along with other Durhamites in attendance, I was playing a rube.

It wouldn't be the last time moviemakers depicted Durham to suit their own prejudices and those of their intended audiences.

Advance publicity promised a realistic display of the baseball that a record number of Bulls fans watched that season, hyping director and writer Ron Shelton as a former minor league player, and Durham native Thom Mount as producer. We extras were reassured seeing that baseball "stunts" were performed by professional ballplayers.

When "Bull Durham" premiered in June, 1988, reviewer Roger Ebert gushed, "There are quiet little scenes that have the ring of absolute accuracy." But there was more bull than Durham in the depiction of Durham Bulls fans, beginning with the quality of the baseball they paid to see.

Among the real Durham Bulls who played in the two seasons preceding filming were four (David Justice, Ron Gant, Jeff Blauser and Mark Lemke) who formed the nucleus of the 1991 Atlanta Braves team that reached the seventh game of the World Series. Yet fictional Bull "Nuke" Laloosh (played by Tim Robbins) was a neophyte pitcher assigned to Durham to learn the rudiments of the game. In his preposterous debut he struck out 18 batters and walked 18.

The rubes in the stands were presumably content to listen to a stadium announcer -- one of many locals who spoke in a parody of a Durham accent -- who would have had her microphone unplugged at a Little League game. Her condolence to a strikeout victim -- "Too bad, Butch, better luck next time" -- was more appropriate for Bulls fans who had hoped for a better movie.

Radio listeners endured an inarticulate play-by-play announcer who couldn't have been more unlike the future major leaguer at the microphone during the 1986 season, Gary Cohen, who has been broadcasting New York Mets games since 1989.

Nevertheless, writer-director Ron Shelton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and won Best Screenplay awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Although it is home to the Research Triangle Park, Duke University, N.C. Central University, and as many bright, interesting people as any like-sized city in the USA, only biased depictions of Durham earn lucrative endorsements.

For example, the 1997 crime drama "Kiss the Girls" was acclaimed although a scene in which Durham's white police chief shunned a forensic psychologist (played by black actor Morgan Freeman), who traveled to Durham from Washington, D.C., to investigate the kidnapping of his niece, "played like boilerplate" of stereotypical white racists, according to critic Ebert.

"The Staircase," which contained assertions that convicted murderer Michael Peterson could not get justice in Durham because he communicated with a male prostitute and his lead attorney was Jewish, was named one of the best films of 2005 by the International Documentary Association, which described Peterson as a man "accused of murdering his wife," refusing to accept the Durham jury's guilty verdict. On Nov. 9 the N.C. Supreme Court found "the evidence of defendant's guilt and possible motives is overwhelming" -- but don't expect an apology or a sequel.

Likewise, "Welcome to Durham, USA" garnered one of the Best Documentary awards at the 2006 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival despite its distorted presentation of Durham as, among other things, a city with no black role models.

It should be clear to the producers of HBO's upcoming docudrama about the Nifong-Duke lacrosse fiasco that impressing critics requires presenting an unflattering view of Durham (perhaps by setting Nifong's election after the defense team exposed the extent of his deception to the public).

Moviemakers' treatment of this city was symbolized by a scene in "Bull Durham." As a promotional stunt, a helicopter dropped cash onto the field and hovered as spectators jostled while chasing the money being blown about by its rotors. In reality, it's the moviemakers themselves who have trampled Durhamites while pursuing dollars.

(Durham resident John Schwade is a psychologistat a state prison.)