David Bergad is a sound editor who specializes in ADR (additional dialogue recording). He has worked on almost fifty films, including Adaptation, The Deep End, Rushmore, Forrest Gump, and most films produced by Saul Zaentz.

Peter Matthiessen's prescient 1965 novel finds its epic translation in this florid film, a project pursued by Saul Zaentz for almost twenty years and ultimately directed by Hector Babenco (Pixote, Kiss of the Spider Woman). The eponymous “fields” are an inaccessible stretch of the Amazon populated by the Niaruna Indians, a tribal people modeled after the Yanomami. The Niaruna are subject to rude intrusion by land speculators and missionaries, all wanting to civilize these “primitive” people. Two men enter the fecund fray only to confront their own beliefs about cultural difference, land preservation, and the role of faith in a modern context. One is Martin Quarrier (Aidan Quinn), an earnest young missionary with his wife (Kathy Bates) in tow; the other, Lewis Moon (Tom Berenger), an embittered half-breed mercenary who joins the cause of the indigenous people. At Play . . . was a test of faith for its characters and a test of endurance for its makers. Months were spent on a soggy rubber plantation, among other things, building a replica village for a people who were losing theirs.