Non-Fiction Dialogue re: Moneyball the Motion Picture

So, yes, I'm spending two posts on the same subject, but the awesome Katey Rich at Cinema Blend had this to say while I was talking with Skye about the announcement and working on the other post:

I don't really get how you make a movie based on a non-fiction book that's about statistics, but I guess it can't hurt to get Brad Pitt on board. Variety says that the actor, who's apparently having a busy day today, will possibly star in an adaptation of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, about a baseball team manager who uses a complicated computer system to pick his players.

Maybe this is the kind of thing that sounds thrilling to the people who read box scores and know the RBI of every player on the Red Sox, but the rest of us may be left a little cold. I guess that's where Brad Pitt comes in-- just focus on his nice blue eyes, and let the numbers and figures wash over you. Anyone who's read the book want to enlighten me on why this movie is a good idea?

I felt it would be appropriate and usefull to use this space to write a response and take a more serious look at how a Moneyball movie would work.


Moneyball, the practice (named after the book), is about stats. The book touches on those stats, but it's not what it's about. The sabermetric revolution fueled the A's front office revolution, and thus sabermetricians are strongly drawn to the work, but there are no charts or graphs. There's no break down of how Win Shares are calculated or how to judge a replacement-level player. Hell, there isn't even much time spent on why batting average sucks and why on base percentage is the best invention ever.

Moneyball, the book, is a story. Brad Pitt is going to be playing someone whose early life came easy. Friends, girls and sports were all easy because he was so incredibly gifted. He was so talented the Mets thought higher of him than Darryl Strawberry (for those who aren't aware, Darryl Strawberry owned baseball, it's just that drugs owned him). But, despite all the talent, Billy Beane just couldn't make it in the pros. Completely un-conventionally, he, instead, became a genius front office man, and one who was constantly in the pursuit of players who are nothing like himself.

And that's what the movie would primarily be about: Beane's rise, fall and resurrection as something new. And he's an interesting character. He wants life to be scientific and composed and runs his team the same way, and at the same time he's an emotional wacko liable to do anything at any moment (like throwing a chair through a wall because of a bad draft pick).

On top of the life of Beane and the excellent, half-eccentric/half-composed character Pitt gets to play, you have the team he builds. His ideas for how to build a baseball team spat all over baseball tradition, something people either laughed at or outright reviled; both in and outside of the A's organization. You have the drama of the oft-cited (and over dramatized) scouts vs. stats argument. Mostly, you just have a team doing something that people either hate or don't understand and being successful at it even though everyone says they can't be. You have this team with a fraction of the payroll of the Yankees being better than the Yankees.

And from there, you go to the players. A bunch of misfits that every team thought sucked for some reason or another and wouldn't give a chance, and the A's saw something in them no one else did that made them awesome. It gives you an entire cast of characters; underdogs. Most notably Scott Hatteberg, told his patient approach was killing the team and selfish everywhere he went before he gets to the A's who think he's a godsend and he finally gets to feel like he belongs. Or Chad Bradford, a funny little guy with a weird delivery kept down by the White Sox before the A's unleash his potential as one of the most devestating pitchers in the bigs.

The whole story is full of that. Quirky, interesting, misfit characters who are all better than everyone else thought. Major League with real names and more drama.

You have the team losing its star, the defending MVP (villain?), and everyone calling them dead before they have an even better season without him. And that season comes with the help of a record winning streak after a struggling first half.

And that 20th-consecutive win gives you ultimate drama. In front of a huge crowd, the team blowing an 11-0 lead. Your prime characters are involved, as Bradford falls to pieces before Hatteberg (with someone else's bat) pinch hits and drives in the walk-off home run to win it.

I'm sure it would be "Disney'd" up. Maybe the A's win the World Series. Some people are made out to be better, worse or quirkier than reality for the sake of drama and entertainment, but most of the enjoyment is already there in how things really went down.

Essentially, you have a great baseball story with a compelling central character, quirky side stories, heroes, villains, underdogs and drama. And it's based in the reality of a revolutionary front office that changed sports.

Moneyball makes for a boring video lecture. Moneyball makes for a thrilling baseball movie.

"My shit doesn't work in Hollywood."

On a chilly December day in 2001, I woke up early, hopped in my car and drove to the local theater to see the long awaited adaptation of one of my favorite books: The Lord of the Rings. I remember getting out of the car and seeing a long line of people coming out of the theater, and a bus pulling up and dumping out a group of folks who immediately attached themselves to the end of that line. The atmosphere that day was nuts.

I can only imagine there will be the same uproar (if not more!) now that Variety is announcing the film adaptation of another favorite book of mine: Moneyball, by Michael Lewis.

Alright, truthfully, a Moneyball movie isn't exactly going to get E! in a tizzy or inspire an entire spin-off forum at the message boards of Cinema Blend, but for a segment of the population (myself and four felow bloggers included) seeing a film adaptation would be entertaining. In a geeky kind of way.

And to play the revolutionary waste of talent that is Billy Beane? Why, none other than the man you see pictured above: Brad Pitt (apparently chearing at a Yankees game, the very team that made the game so unfair, thus forcing Beane to find an art to win it). I can just picture Louis de Pointe du Lac suddenly standing up and hurling a chair through a wall now. Oh, it will be glorious. And as Skye points out, while a movie about Moneyball might not get a lot of buzz, Brad Pitt would, and it might get the masses to think a little bit harder about the failures of traditionalism.

Adapting the screenplay is Steve Zaillian, who you've probably never heard of but has, to his credit, the excellent Gangs of New York, which you liked a lot more than you think you did (I'm serious, go watch it again as proof). This is important to me because, if you couldn't guess from the last sentence, that's a major movie in the world of Grif.

For those of you who have never read Moneyball, you should get right on that. It's arguably the single most impactful sports book in history, and certainly in recent memory, as it engages readers in the story of Billy Beane's quest to exploit the insanity of baseball people to build a winning team cheap, largely relying on the devil's work also known as "statistics." It has changed the way many fans and front offices -- not just in baseball -- have looked at games. If you're not a fan of stats it's still a great insight in to how front offices operate. And even if you're not a sports fan, it's still a fantastic story of the lives of several misfit individuals and the brilliant business practices that changed them.


TL;DR: Detective David Mills quits after finding his wife's head in a box and ends up looking at really obvious things that other people think are evil in order to make the Yankees look stupid.

Sounds like a winner.