DYERSVILLE - Bryce Taylor and Tyler Meyerhoff had staked out their piece of outfield turf at 10 a.m. Friday.

The boys -- Bryce, 15, from Muscatine, and Tyler, 12, from Waterloo -- claimed front row seats for a showing Friday night of "Field of Dreams," filmed here 18 years ago. It was the first time the movie had been shown at its locale.

"I mean, c'mon it's made in Iowa and a guy tells this dude to build a baseball field out of a corn field, and he does it," Bryce said. "It's just an amazing story."

"It's got just an overall good vibe to it," Tyler said.

What brought out nearly 5,000 people to the rural cornfield was the return of the movie's star, Kevin Costner, in his first time back in the Dubuque County community of 3,000.

Costner and his band performed 75 minutes of country-rock music before a twilight showing of the movie on a giant, 30-foot inflatable screen.

"This was the first time it felt right to come back," said a goateed Costner, wearing a Coast Guard cap and a Field of Dreams T-shirt. "Sometimes if you wait, the perfect moment in your life shows up."

The performance was the fifth of 10 across the country this month sponsored by Netflix, the video rental-by-mail Web site. Ten different movies have been shown at their filming locales, with an extra attraction at each site.

Singer Lisa Loeb is host for all of the movies, and joined Costner's band on stage for a song.

"Each place brings out movie lovers, and those who love the particular movies were showing," Loeb said after the concert.

Loeb said the movie was her favorite of the 10 being shown.

"The movie is so appealing to so many people," she said. "This is a movie about relationships and family -- it has a magical element, almost a ‘Twilight Zone element about it."

Loeb said she was impressed with Costner's singing.

"I figured whatever effort he was going into, he was going to do it well," she said.

The capacity crowd in the left and center field (another family owns the infield and right field) included fans from throughout the Midwest and across the world. Some of those fans included Quad-Citians such as John Sullivan, of Rock Island.

Sullivan, pastor of the Quad-City Church of Christ and a Black Hawk College math professor, said he liked the idea of "following your dream -- maybe not knowing what it is, but just following it anyway."

Fans settled back to watch the film under the Midwest skies, and cheered the loudest at one of the movie's most famous lines.

"Is this heaven?" Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) asks.

"No," Costner's Ray Kinsella replies. "It's Iowa."

Contact David Burke at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.