Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

[mfunk9786]

I saw this on Friday and was also rather underwhelmed, but I’d have to say that while we both came away disappointed by the film, I had essentially the opposite opinion of James Mills in his previous post. The problem with the film lies in its inauthenticity, something that Steven Soderbergh obviously saw a problem with and sought to solve by blending in documentary elements to the story. I never thought I’d say this about anything, but I think having Aaron Sorkin go over the script might have done Moneyball as much harm as having him write The Social Network did that project good. There were elements of the latter that were changed to create more drama and profundity in the character arcs, and the reason why that worked is because no one going into the film was paying attention when these events took place, and very few people at most were well versed in the real story behind the film. In Moneyball, significant details about the business of baseball and the ins and outs of the true events that inspired the film are changed in an attempt to create the same effect, but instead – if the viewer is more than a casual or passing baseball fan – it’s almost like science fiction. People were watching baseball a decade ago, and they were watching it close enough to know that what this film has become is completely bunk.

The story behind the Oakland As team represented on screen is interesting enough on its own not to warrant these puzzling changes – but Sorkin and Miller seem too afraid to make a film that doesn’t have a sweeping dramatic arc. In real life, the team was, despite the loss of Damon, Giambi, and Isringhausen; practically stacked with great players, none of which are even addressed in this film. Miguel Tejada was still at shortstop, they had a killer 1-3 in their pitching rotation (one of the best ever: Hudson, Mulder, and Zito) and were still expected to do quite well. Instead of making the film about expectations being too high and the As rising to meet those expectations, the storyline has been changed to make it seem as if the team was an awful bunch of rag-tag players who were doomed to be the worst team in baseball. Far from it. By focusing on their three key off-season acquisitions, the film wishes to trick casual baseball fans into thinking that three players make a successful team – they just don’t. That’s not the only baseball detail the film gets wrong – representing Hill’s character as an acquisition to the team that winter is a falsehood – he was with the team for four years before the film portrays. The philosophies shown on screen had already been in place for a while, and had gotten the team to the level of success they’d already attained. Another quick gripe: Trades and free agent acquisitions are never accurately represented. On one hand, they’re shown as in-person schmoozefests (Hatteberg would have needed a physical before having a contract left with him to mull over, and of course he had an agent; and GMs don’t fly to other teams’ headquarters to hash out trades for middling relief pitchers) and on the other hand, they’re shown as goofy little phone calls that are wrapped up within a matter of seconds (in real life, the Pena trade was a 3-team, 7-player deal). There is a stink of desperation all over the film’s attempts to simultaneously dramatize and humanize the processes of baseball back offices. And don’t get me started on the ending – it was foolish for Beane to pass up the Red Sox’s offer – he knows it, they know it, everyone knows it. Trying to make it about his family life is just about as fraught as anything in the film.

As for the film as a whole – Brad Pitt is terrific, despite the fact that with all the changes made to the script, the fact that he doesn’t watch the game and sits around the gym and glowers is, for some reason, still a centerpiece and gives Pitt little to nothing to do throughout the duration of several montages. Jonah Hill isn’t given enough opportunities to really dig into what is unfortunately an underwritten and underused role, but he’s good at what he does and I think it’s clear to just about everyone at this point that he’s an undervalued actor. Philip Semour Hoffman sleepwalks through a role in which he was miscast (the real Art Howe is a tried and true baseball guy, tall and wiry and by all accounts, well-liked). There were wise decisions made w/r/t the actors playing the players, particularly David Justice, but there’s not much to those parts. To be perfectly honest, the whole damn thing is just so underwhelming that aside from pointing out the film’s missteps and resigning myself to the fact that the two lead performances are very good, there’s not really much to talk about anymore. Bennett Miller directs with absolutely no flair and seems to have about as much enthusiasm for the final script as I do. It could have been so much more had Steven Soderbergh gotten to make the film he wanted to make, but it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser for non-baseball fans and casual baseball fans alike. But for a movie about the business of baseball, it should work the other way around.

[James Mills]

Actually from the sounds of it Soderbergh seemed to be trying to get rid of the arches entirely and make it a very clinical affair (though a fair argument to that is that type of story building was a better fit to Contagion anyway).

That's what I meant by "worse," as in it would go from strained and insincere to non-existent. I always have the same problem with Soderbergh in that his subtle, hands off approach to his films seem too plot driven for my character driven preferences (Contagion was no different for me because of this; I found it forgettable).

[James Mills]

Also, good review mfunk, though I'm not sure why you think your sentiments are of the opposite reasonings as my own. The only thing I see that's different from my opinion is Pitt's performance, but I entirely agree with you on its lack of historical accuracy or contextualization. This is what I meant by saying that the whole thing felt forced to be portrayed as a more significant season than it was, for the very reasons you mentioned. The idea wasn't randomly stumbled upon and put into effect this sporadically, nor was the acquisition of Hatteberg and Justice very significant at all: they both only posted OPS+s of about 100, and hell, Bradford was already on the team during the 2001 season! And you nailed the inaccuracies of the deal makings, I was thinking the same thing during the silly Cleveland scene, the Pena trade scene, and Hatteberg's house scene.

I think the idea to have made this more about the actual business affairs of baseball and less about a histrionic recounting of moneyball's rise to recognition is a very astute acknowledgement, and I agree that Soderbergh would have dealt with this type of subject matter more proficiently had it gone that way.

[Tom Hagen]

Hoffman wasn't so much miscast as he was entirely unneeded. You could have found somebody generic to work at scale to play the Art Howe part, that's how unimportant it was both in the movie and in the book. As it was, it was just distracting: "wow, they put silly eyebrows on Philip Semour Hoffman and he still doesn't look anything like that guy who used to manage the A's and the Mets, but was otherwise entirely forgettable, both in this story and in real life."

[mfunk9786]

James, the reason I said we have different opinions on this is because, while we agree that the film tries to wring too much sentimentality out of the subject matter, I feel like the film would have succeeded in the hands of Soderbergh. By giving it a very human-interest narrative rather than a thoughful [read: less commercial] science-of-baseball narrative, anything that was truly interesting about the way this team was run in the late '90s and early '00s is stripped out and we're left with sports movie pap without the substance that would have been there if it hadn't been stripped out in an effort to *goes in circles, explodes*

[Drucker]

Still haven't seen the movie, but interesting read from this week's Tuesday Morning QB Column on ESPN:

Are Greek Bonds Backing the Movie "Moneyball"? The movie "Moneyball" is winning rave reviews. Michael Lewis's 2003 book of the same name is also a great read, though handicapped in spots with the contemporary publishing-industry imperative of the nonfiction work that claims an amazing single insight that explains everything about a topic.

In the film, the handsome Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who is himself handsome -- maybe Beane could play Pitt in some future flick. The book and the movie both portray Beane as a super-ultra genius for applying the Bill James sabermetric approach to baseball decision-making, then using James-style data crunching to guide the low-rent, underdog A's to a division title in 2002.

Lewis' book stops in that year, which is handy for its thesis. Beane continues to run the Athletics using the moneyball approach: yet Oakland has not finished above .500 in five years, and currently is a dreary 72-88. Nor did the moneyball approach ever take the team into the World Series.

One possibility is that the whole moneyball idea is hype: that Beane had some beginner's luck, which Lewis, wanting to puff up a book proposal, converted into a claim of a sweeping insight about sports economics. Since Beane took over the A's, there are many MLB teams that have reached the World Series without asserting they possess any stunning conceptual breakthroughs about whom to sign.

It is also possible that Beane fell victim to "commoditization," which happens with increasing speed in a globalized environment. This would mean Beane did in fact have an important insight, but his idea has been copied by most if not all MLB franchises, turning the idea into a mere commodity that, possessed by everyone, confers no advantage.

Here's what your columnist wrote about commoditization in my 2009 book "Sonic Boom": "A generation ago, a company that came up with a novel product might have decades of a business to itself, because it would take that long for other companies to hear about the idea, gear up to copy it, then learn to produce facsimiles close enough in quality that buyers would be happy with them. With each passing year, this process accelerates. Free-flowing information makes it easier for businesses to find out what is being done successfully, and imitate success.

"When IBM pioneered the desktop PC, for years the company had that market nearly to itself; then competitors jumped in, offering similar machines. By 1996, when Dell began to sell its own brand of PCs direct to consumers via the Web, IBM's core idea had been commoditized, transformed from something unique that could only be made by one firm into a commodity made by many. In commodity markets, price governs most decisions -- if competing products are about the same, why not pick the cheapest? The commoditization of the PC led to IBM's departure from that business; IBM pioneered the idea but couldn't be the lowest-cost producer, so bowed out. As the world become more global, commoditization will happen faster and faster."

Commoditization is a reason the international economy grows more productive and simultaneously more turbulent -- when some business has a good idea, the rest of the world learns to imitate that idea with increasing alacrity. In Beane's case, once the book "Moneyball" was published in 2003, the rest of baseball had a road map -- available for $27.95 in a bookstore -- on how to apply sabermetrics to free agency decisions. The idea was commoditized, and the A's sunk back into mediocrity.

[Brian C]

...the story itself seemed forced for significance in comparison to the actual happenings of the era (Marlins won the championship with an even smaller payroll a few years before this, so the whole "we can do something no other team has ever done before!" is strained).

This claim is not factual. The 1997 Marlins did not have a smaller payroll than the 2002 A's, either in absolute terms (numbers from baseball-reference.com):

1997 Marlins: $48.7 million
2002 A's: $40.0 million

or, more importantly, in relative terms:

1997 Marlins: 8th highest payroll in MLB (of 28 teams)
2002 A's: 3rd lowest payroll in MLB (of 30 teams)

It is true that the 2003 Marlins had a marginally smaller payroll than the 2003 A's (by less than a million dollars), but that doesn't really serve the point you're making. That said, though, the 2002 Twins, who beat the A's in the playoffs that year, had a payroll that was only marginally higher than the A's (again, by less than a million dollars), without - as far as anyone can tell - approaching talent evaluation the same way that Beane did. That might be a better example of the point you're trying to make, although even those two scenarios aren't all that similar, for reasons the movie makes clear (i.e., the same reason they didn't make a movie about the 2001 A's).

I'll have more later when I have more time, because I thought it was kind of a great movie, and I really think that the points you and mfunk make about the factual inaccuracies are misguided (though not "wrong" like this one is).

[Drucker]

I didn't mean to "make a point" and I am interested in seeing it. Was just posting that columnist's piece as it was relevant to the discussion. That's all! I haven't seen the movie, but I do watch ESPN quite frequently and the term "Moneyball" has certainly been thrown around a lot the last ten years, and there are certainly more small market teams/low-payroll teams doing great things now than in the 90s (Tampa, Marlins, Detroit Tigers, Twins before this year...).

And also worth pointing out, if we're sticking to real baseball (and not the movie), seeing the Red Sox blow it and the Mets suck so bad this year with such huge payrolls (and some of the Yankees brightest stars being farm-system talent) is a nice thing to see.

[James Mills]

...the story itself seemed forced for significance in comparison to the actual happenings of the era (Marlins won the championship with an even smaller payroll a few years before this, so the whole "we can do something no other team has ever done before!" is strained).

This claim is not factual. The 1997 Marlins did not have a smaller payroll than the 2002 A's, either in absolute terms (numbers from baseball-reference.com):

1997 Marlins: $48.7 million
2002 A's: $40.0 million

or, more importantly, in relative terms:

1997 Marlins: 8th highest payroll in MLB (of 28 teams)
2002 A's: 3rd lowest payroll in MLB (of 30 teams)

It is true that the 2003 Marlins had a marginally smaller payroll than the 2003 A's (by less than a million dollars), but that doesn't really serve the point you're making. That said, though, the 2002 Twins, who beat the A's in the playoffs that year, had a payroll that was only marginally higher than the A's (again, by less than a million dollars), without - as far as anyone can tell - approaching talent evaluation the same way that Beane did. That might be a better example of the point you're trying to make, although even those two scenarios aren't all that similar, for reasons the movie makes clear (i.e., the same reason they didn't make a movie about the 2001 A's).

I'll have more later when I have more time, because I thought it was kind of a great movie, and I really think that the points you and mfunk make about the factual inaccuracies are misguided (though not "wrong" like this one is).

Good catch, my memory got mixed up in terms of the two years the Marlins won it (I had remembered the second championship being the one with a large payroll by their standards). Them winning a championship with a similar payroll in 2003 actually strengthens the argument to be made for Moneyball, as they had a somewhat similar system as Beane's in that their talent was mostly homegrown (Dontrelle, Miggy, Juan Pierre) with a few FA acquired veterans (Pudge).

[Brian C]

The story behind the Oakland As team represented on screen is interesting enough on its own not to warrant these puzzling changes – but Sorkin and Miller seem too afraid to make a film that doesn’t have a sweeping dramatic arc. In real life, the team was, despite the loss of Damon, Giambi, and Isringhausen; practically stacked with great players, none of which are even addressed in this film. Miguel Tejada was still at shortstop, they had a killer 1-3 in their pitching rotation (one of the best ever: Hudson, Mulder, and Zito) and were still expected to do quite well. Instead of making the film about expectations being too high and the As rising to meet those expectations, the storyline has been changed to make it seem as if the team was an awful bunch of rag-tag players who were doomed to be the worst team in baseball. Far from it. By focusing on their three key off-season acquisitions, the film wishes to trick casual baseball fans into thinking that three players make a successful team – they just don’t. That’s not the only baseball detail the film gets wrong – representing Hill’s character as an acquisition to the team that winter is a falsehood – he was with the team for four years before the film portrays. The philosophies shown on screen had already been in place for a while, and had gotten the team to the level of success they’d already attained. Another quick gripe: Trades and free agent acquisitions are never accurately represented. On one hand, they’re shown as in-person schmoozefests (Hatteberg would have needed a physical before having a contract left with him to mull over, and of course he had an agent; and GMs don’t fly to other teams’ headquarters to hash out trades for middling relief pitchers) and on the other hand, they’re shown as goofy little phone calls that are wrapped up within a matter of seconds (in real life, the Pena trade was a 3-team, 7-player deal). There is a stink of desperation all over the film’s attempts to simultaneously dramatize and humanize the processes of baseball back offices. And don’t get me started on the ending – it was foolish for Beane to pass up the Red Sox’s offer – he knows it, they know it, everyone knows it. Trying to make it about his family life is just about as fraught as anything in the film.

I don't really anything terribly puzzling about this - seems like typical dramatic license to me. The writers have to take a pretty complicated situation, and dumb it down enough for non-baseball fans while simplifying it to fit within a general two-hour time frame. It's a genuine challenge.

I think they made a pretty wise choice to focus on the need to deal with the absence of Jason Giambi, Damon, and Isringhausen. This covers the underlying dynamics (big market teams poaching their players, and the A's not having any money to fill the holes) and gives the opportunity for explanatory scenes involving the qualities that Beane and Brand are looking for in players, and so forth. Since Jeremy Giambi was such a key player during that time, I don't really see the harm in turning him into a new acquisition, just from the standpoint that it simplifies the narrative. Along the same lines, I understand the decision to de-emphasize Tejada and the starting rotation, since they were already there and not really part of the whole "moneyball" strategy anyway. They were good players who everyone recognized as good players (though in the case of Tejada, probably still overrated in the conventional way) and so not really relevant.

Which brings me to my main point, which is that the movie wasn't really about how awesome the 2002 A's were or what a god Billy Beane is, but rather about how unconventional ideas are so often greeted with hostility by the old guard invested in the status quo. And I think this story was told very well, even if it had to install a dramatic arc to get there. I'm not really sure why this is a problem in the first place - surely you knew it was a dramatization going in, and not a nuts-and-bolts documentary? - but I'm hardly going to complain if it doesn't show the minutaie of GM conversations or Miller decides that a conversation between Beane and Hatteberg is more interesting that a conversation between Beane and Hatteberg's agent.

The conversations Beane had with his scouts or Howe may not be true, but I absolutely believe that they're representative of the resistance he faced and the general attitude of the media towards what he was doing at the time. I don't know if his job was in danger like the movie showed, but I certainly remember him getting scorched well before the book came out and really focused a lot of hostility on him, and I think the movie did a good job of showing that dynamic. Pitt and Hill were terrific. And that late scene between Beane and Henry is terrific, as is the scene between Beane and Fuson (when he gives the "you don't know" speech), which is to me the key scene of the movie.

There are some minor flaws, sure. I didn't think the scenes with his daughter really fit in the movie, and they were a little hamfisted (the girl playing his daughter is very good, though). I think it probably should have contextualized the Jeremy Giambi trade a little better, since that move was definitely counter to Beane's philosophy in the film. And I really question whether it will have any appeal or even be coherent to non-baseball fans.

But overall, I think it was a very well-executed film about a subject that doesn't lend itself to a Hollywood adaptation.

[Andre Jurieu]

This discussion is making me wonder if anyone has actually read the book. While I understand that the central issue here appears to be that the movie doesn't reflect reality (and perhaps that it also doesn't appear to be as accurate as another version of the film, which doesn't actually exist, possibly could have been - and in the spirit of full-disclosure, I would have probably proposed to Soderbergh's conceptual version of this movie if it at all resembled what I thought it was going to be), I hope some people can appreciate that the movie is actually fairly respectful towards the content and concepts of the book on which it is based upon.

The description that ESPN's TMQB provides of Lewis's Moneyball, which Drucker thankfully posted, is accurate for the most part. TMQB is absolutely correct that Lewis's book is "handicapped in spots with the contemporary publishing-industry imperative of the nonfiction work that claims an amazing single insight that explains everything about a topic," when in fact the reality is quite a bit more complicated. I would agree that Beane has not been successful in recent years because his system (and the methods first championed by James) have been "commoditized" by other clubs. In many respects the A's are no longer able to maintain their competitive advantage because their system was so easily adopted by other clubs, but it's also because Beane & Co. haven't been able to stay ahead of the curve and find their next competitive advantage (perhaps in part to the fact that bigger clubs, like the Red Sox, are able to pour more of their resources into finding the next statistically-driven strategy).

The book is not at all concerned with the fact that the A's remained contenders (mostly due to their starting rotation) even without Giambi, Damon, and Isringhausen. In fact, it generally depicts the A's as being in dire straights after the events of the off-season. Instead, Lewis devotes an inordinate amount of paper to detailing Beane's efforts to replace the hitters that other "evil empires"-style clubs are poaching away from the A's. The book also dedicates a significant amount of time conveying how Beane started to implement his system/strategy by dismantling his scouting staff in order to ensure compliance with "moneyball," and also concentrates substantial time to how the "moneyball" system began to be implemented in the A's scouting department during the 2002 "Nick Swisher/Prince Fielder/BJ Upton/Zack Greinke/Cole Hamels/Matt Cain" draft. While the book depicts the A's as having made the 2002 draft their personal bitch, Lewis largely ignores the fact that the draft didn't actually replenish the A's system as easily as he makes it sound. Instead, the central thesis of the book is that baseball's traditional evaluation system is insanely flawed because they refuse to use practical evidence and valuable statistics, ignoring actual production and instead determine the worth of an individual using highly superficial methods of assessment. Obviously, simply based on history, there is merit to this thesis.

However, the central themes of the book, regarding the difficulty of attaining support and collaboration from the adherents and acolytes within an entrenched system who are content to hold firm to established concepts and conventional thinking (which Brain C has conveyed marvelously in his post), as well as the notion that the weaknesses of standard practices of evaluation are often only recognized by those that have always been undervalued, are outsiders that are banished to the fringe, or have been become burdened/crushed by the weight of flawed expectations, remain intact in Miller's film.

The film does have some flaws - I'm not a huge fan of how sentimental it gets towards the end - but I hope viewers won't dismiss its accomplishments simply because it isn't esoteric enough to match the obscurity of its subject-matter.

[mfunk9786]

I haven't read the book, and even if I had, the movie is a standalone piece of work. If the filmmakers decided to keep flaws in the book around for the movie, that's not really any of my concern - I'm still inclined to point out what I found to be flaws with the film. It came off to me as being watered-down. I don't need an extremely esoteric piece of work or anything, I just would have preferred not to have the reality of the story crammed into a Robert McKee screenwriting class-shaped jar.

[dad1153]

Saw "Moneyball" last weekend and liked it, but I'm baseball illiterate and couldn't tell an ERA percentage from the tax on a nacho. mfunk9786 is right that, the more you know about baseball, the more likely you are to be bothered by the script's narrative liberties. That said the considerable talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill are wasted (the former's a lot more than the latter's comic relief schtick) in this otherwise-excellent Brad Pitt vehicle that boils complex baseball stats/deals (stuff I don't know squat about) down to human terms and situations we can all relate to as often-hilarious everyday human/sports dramas. I read a few online articles about the real-life A's of '02 team after seeing the movie. The need for the movie's narrative to highlight Billy Beane's single-minded vision comes at the expense of the real-life behind-the-scenes group effort that made the '02 Oakland A's team memorable (thus my beef with how Hoffman's portrayal of manager Art Howe borders on ridiculous... its Philip's most obvious money-grab role since he played the bad guy on "Mission: Impossible 3"), but that's Zaillian/Sorkin screenwriting for you. Billy's apparent disregard for the sport he works for (which hides a deeper attachment for what baseball means to him than even he acknowledges) brings out the best out of Brad's acting chops, though he was better in "Tree of Life." Bennett Miller lets the narrative do the talking with few signature shots/visuals (loved seeing as much stock video footage as recreations of baseball games with actors/athletes), but the fact the movie holds together (despite my beef with the portrayal of Art Howe) speaks well for Miller's skills.

Early box office numbers indicate "Moneyball" is poised to be either #1 or #2 again this weekend (maybe the crazy Playoff endings last Wednesday boosted the subject's, and thus the movie's, visibility) so losing Soderbergh may have been the best thing to ever happen to the project. Who'd have thought it a couple of years back?

[Andre Jurieu]

I haven't read the book, and even if I had, the movie is a standalone piece of work. If the filmmakers decided to keep flaws in the book around for the movie, that's not really any of my concern - I'm still inclined to point out what I found to be flaws with the film. It came off to me as being watered-down. I don't need an extremely esoteric piece of work or anything, I just would have preferred not to have the reality of the story crammed into a Robert McKee screenwriting class-shaped jar.

Obviously a viewer can choose whatever perspective they want when approaching and evaluating a film. I'm certainly not stating that there is a single correct method of evaluating this, or any other film. If one chooses to view the movie is a standalone piece of work and is unconcerned with the issues associated with adapting an unconventional non-fiction bestseller, the movie may very well not receive a favorable judgement under that particular viewpoint. As I stated before, the conventional nature of the film also started to annoy me a little towards the end.

My point here is more that this project, in its current conception, is more concerned with providing a comprehensible adaption of the non-fiction source material rather than reflecting the reality of the events that occurred. Moneyball doesn't function as a detailed description of the successful seasons that the Oakland A's enjoyed in the early 2000s. Miller's primary intent with the movie is to make Lewis's material approachable while maintaining the integrity of Lewis's central contentions, thereby conveying the fundamental achievements of Beane & Co rather than the specific victories of the A's. Hence, Miller adopts most of Lewis's fixations about the "moneyball" concept, including Lewis's fascination with Beane's circumstances and struggles during the initial application of the theory, thereby illustrating the intangible obstacles and emotional resistance that many vanguards experience while attempting to convince others of the viability of their idea. Basically, since Moneyball is about the concept of recognizing talent in the perpetually undervalued, the book and movie have to streamline their focus to the areas of the story that strengthen their case, otherwise they start to make their central point convoluted and unmanageable.

I guess I'm just saying that the appreciation of any piece of work is substantially advanced by making an effort to recognize the intentions of the creators, and meeting them on some sort of middle-ground where the viewer makes some concessions regarding their expectations and yields slightly to what the creators are attempting to accomplish. Of course, we all have to determine how much we're willing to compromise, concede, allow before we realize that the appreciation of the project isn't actually worth the effort anymore (and you've been pretty clear that, in this case, you find the amount of required concessions remains too great to overcome). While I'm sure that our forum members already have an appreciation of this evaluation process, in the case of a book/film like Moneyball, I think we have to understand that the benefit of illustrating the overall concept may outweigh whatever issues we might have with the film not providing an accurate reflection of reality.

[domino harvey]

A frustrating film whose subject cries out for a cold hard treatment and instead gives us a math equation written inside a Hallmark card. It didn't have to be this way. As someone who knows little to nothing about modern baseball, I am seemingly the target audience studio interference was worried about, and guess what gang? The only time this film felt as interesting as its subject was the little five minute Final Trade Day scene where Pitt bounces around phones in his little office whilst maneuvering his sly trade. Why? Because it was confident in its subject to not pander, gloss over, or slow down for me, and I could respect and appreciate the passion confidence exudes. Why make a film about numbers and then push them to the sidelines? Never forget that one of the most exciting films ever made, All the President's Men, is also one of the most emotionally sterile and straight-forward of films as well, and this film could have used a lesson from the masters responsible. Why shoehorn in halfhearted emotional ploys and skip over the real story, which is the gradual confirmation of the Moneyball approach? I couldn't believe it when the actual thing of interest being sold by the film got confined to a freaking montage in the final thirty minutes. All the phony emotional interest provided by guitar-playing little girls in the world wouldn't compete with the actual intellectual and philosophical (The process threatens how American's game is run and operated? Then why aren't we focusing on those interesting and uncommon emotions rather than just the predictable end results?) interest generated by filming someone just reading excerpts of the actual process from the book, I suspect.

[Andre Jurieu]

As someone who knows little to nothing about modern baseball, I am seemingly the target audience studio interference was worried about...

Really? I find it difficult to believe that you actually think of yourself as even moderately representative of the target audience that the studio executives associated to this film were concerned with appeasing. I don't believe they were hoping to just rope in anyone and everyone who knows little to nothing about modern baseball with this movie, because it's just to broad of an audience to target effectively. I'm also guessing that there's some study on some studio executive's desk somewhere that states that the crossover between the audience that probably liked Young Adult and those that could possibly enjoy Moneyball is pretty small and not enough to spend effort appealing towards or assuaging.

Why make a film about numbers and then push them to the sidelines?... Why shoehorn in halfhearted emotional ploys and skip over the real story, which is the gradual confirmation of the Moneyball approach?... All the phony emotional interest ... wouldn't compete with the actual intellectual and philosophical (...why aren't we focusing on those interesting and uncommon emotions rather than just the predictable end results?) interest generated by filming someone just reading excerpts of the actual process from the book, I suspect.

I would never argue that the film doesn't cram in additional sentiment (like the guitar-playing daughter worried about the overall well-being of her divorced dad) and heavily placates to a more mainstream audience, but I'm beginning to wonder if very many of those people that are complaining about the phony emotional interest and unnecessary sentiment have actually read the book. The book itself dedicates very little of its pages towards the actual process. In fact, a sizable portion of the book spends time creating a mythical allure around Beane and his cohorts, as is common in many of the books Lewis has written over the past few years.

Many critics of the film keep referring to the book as if Lewis wrote a complicated tome that contained as much style as the phone book, which provided in-depth analysis of the complex formulas necessary to crack through the impregnable barriers imposed by baseball's established scouting philosophy, and could surely be used as a text book in universities across the land. This perception has probably become heavily augmented by the endless stories regarding the film's stalled and sputtering production that focus a great deal on how difficult it was to successfully adapt the book into a mainstream movie, as well as the fantasy of the film Soderbergh had originally planned. In fact, like Gladwell, the strength (and some would say, like Gladwell, the weakness) of the style Lewis repeatedly applies, throughout his work, is that he's really simplifying phenomenon that are actually quite complex while creating a very strong emotional bond between the reader and the perhaps otherwise dry substance. In some ways, the book Moneyball is sort of a Hollywood studio-movie version of the actual reality, so it seems kind of fitting that the movie-adaptation of the book is continuing the trend.

[domino harvey]

I don't know what the Young Adult swipe's supposed to mean, but please note that I didn't say I've read or even praised the book. I didn't ask for the film to be more like something I've never read. All I said was that the process sounds far more fascinating than the human interest nonsense, and I'd rather have seen a film that tracked and focused solely (or at least more exclusively) on that.

[Andre Jurieu]

I don't know what the Young Adult swipe's supposed to mean...

Well, basically it was meant as a prominent signifier of your taste and perspective on movies. I think it's somewhat relevant when you're making a claim that you're part of the target audience to which these filmmakers and executives are pandering towards. Realistically, whatever your knowledge of baseball, based on your various comments regarding movies and your ability to convey your taste and perspective on movies on this board over the past few years, I would say you're probably not the target audience for this type of movie, and I think making such a claim is slightly (for lack of a better term) disingenuous (and I'm going to apologize in advance for any offense that the term causes). For the record, I thought Young Adult was an interesting film.

Though the filmmakers are making concessions in terms of how much/little baseball knowledge, jargon, culture, etc. they include in the movie, the chances of this type of film appealing to your tastes was going to be slim because its target audience is the type of viewer who is willing to accept many of the tropes and characteristics indicative of traditional, Hollywood-produced, American filmmaking. This is pretty much as "studio-backed, Hollywood-star vehicle, mainstream appeal, best-seller adaptation, early-fall release, sports-movie" as these types of films ever get nowadays, and within that type of genre, with its know constrictions, it's fairly successful. I would argue that this isn't supposed to be Brad Pitt's attempt at channeling Redford in All the President's Men, but rather Pitt's attempt at channeling Redford's movie-star charisma in something like The Sting, or The Natural, or actually, even more likely, something far more conventional, like Sneakers.

The aspect that I find mildly fascinating and somewhat frustrating, is why have some viewers set up the expectation that this film was ever supposed to be dense, intricate, convoluted, and ultimately highly inaccessible to a casual audience. It seems as though many of the more critical voices were hoping for something that examined and detailed the more obsessive aspects that gave rise to fantasy baseball. Yet one of the other aspects of "moneyball", whether we're talking about the actual events, the book, the movie, or the phenomenon itself, is the strength and conviction it takes to overcome established and entrenched barriers, and that's one of the more impressive and successful components of the film. The actual phenomenon itself has a great deal to do with adjusting perspective to recognize the validity of the statistical analysis, but it's also about the inherent struggle required in the application of the theory. What Miller's film is mostly concerned with, and takes rather seriously, is the notion that those that are undervalued, overlooked, and marginalized are often able to use their outsider's perspective to critique and alter established thinking. It's actually almost the perfect material for an underdog sports-story because the concept of being undervalued is engrained in the fiber of the organization's bureaucracy instead of just the team and the players.

...but please note that I didn't say I've read or even praised the book. I didn't ask for the film to be more like something I've never read. All I said was that the process sounds far more fascinating than the human interest nonsense, and I'd rather have seen a film that tracked and focused solely (or at least more exclusively) on that.

Fair enough, but my frustration is that everyone seems to assume that the movie is supposed to be "about numbers" when some of the most compelling aspects of this story is in Beane's application of the theory and what is required to overcome the generic thinking that dominated baseball, even if it's greatly exaggerated by Lewis. Basically, it's exasperating that critical observers keep assuming the theory was a revelation and should be the focus that drives the narrative, thereby ignoring the very personal efforts that are required when attempting to implement a theory, alter a stagnant culture, and establish something novel as an organizational practice.

The "gradual confirmation of the moneyball approach" was best demonstrated in the success that the team experienced on the field, but the work in implementing the theory has a great deal to do with the battle that Beane and his cohorts were willing to wage while implementing the system and grinding it into the fiber of the organization. Now granted, the movie (and book) kind of makes all of this more palatable than the actual events, but to overlook what Beane accomplished just in the offices of a MLB organization is considerable, particularly his ability to identify talented analysts and egg-heads who did not fit into the established corporate culture. I guess my point is that a great deal of what makes this story so compelling is not just the discovery and confirmation of the theory, but also the protagonists' ability to fundamentally alter the culture that surrounds them, which is largely a human story rather than merely a dissertation of a statistical thesis.

Miller & Co. certainly had to make some creative choices in how they constructed their movie, but the reality of their predicament is that they had to adapt a best-seller with a problematic subject-matter, mostly due to its odd cross-over appeal with baseball enthusiasts, management-types, and general non-fiction readers. Then they also had to incorporate the tastes of Brad Pitt's aging fan-base. As with something like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, their challenge was to hold onto the established fans, while broadening the overall appeal of the film to draw in a larger audience. In order to accomplish that, the reality is that you have to figure out what's important to you in the bigger picture.

However, what further complicates the process of adaptation is that Lewis doesn't really dive into the actual intricacies of the theory. In fact, most of his book is devoted to detailing the quirky and fascinating personalities of the parties involved in the events (as are most of his books). Hence, if some filmmaker were to actually simply film "someone just reading excerpts of the actual process from the book", the film wouldn't really be able to sustain itself or hold the attention of very many viewers, because the theory isn't exactly insanely complicated to comprehend (you could watch the Silly Little Game episode from ESPN's 30 for 30 to see how lumbering and spiritless the subject matter can be), and thus doesn't really lend itself to generating much "intellectual and philosophical interest" when you discard the actual application.

Instead, the aspect that the filmmakers decided to concentrate on was the idea of identifying and contributing value despite a consistent dismissal from established experts, which is quite respectful of their source material's main concerns. They also had to balance this with the reality of the actual events, while still building drama and creating a compelling plot within the constraints of a mainstream movie. Considering a great deal of the application of the central theory has to be done during the off-season, over the phone, and in a draft-room that prevents a substantial direct interaction with those being drafted, they really couldn't reflect everything accurately, but they had to make some things realistic. Hence, the draft gets added to the preamble rather than in the middle of the season, Howe becomes a more contentious character to make the obstacles more apparent and to heighten the tension within the clubhouse, and they really just focus on the most significant game of the streak. While none of that is perfect and certainly some creative compromises had to be made, it also ensures that the basic concept behind the theory and book are respectfully conveyed to a broader audience, which is actually a decent win for a mainstream Hollywood adaptation of a non-fiction best-seller.

[mfunk9786]

I loved Young Adult, disliked Moneyball, love baseball, and often get a huge kick out of old school Hollywood filmmaking. Whatsayyou about me?

[Andre Jurieu]

I loved Young Adult, disliked Moneyball, love baseball, and often get a huge kick out of old school Hollywood filmmaking. Whatsayyou about me?

That's great. You're likely quite a unique viewer within the larger population, but considering the overlap in our interests, I'm probably share a similar opinion on a bunch of other films.

You also didn't really make a claim that you were the target audience that the film execs were clearly aiming to satisfy with all their troublesome meddling that seemingly demanded that greater sentiment be crammed into this project, thereby forever altering a cold-clinical piece of art to become a compromised and diluted piece of mainstream garbage (clearly, I've turned this into hyperbole).

Though I'm exaggerating for effect, a great deal of criticism of the film makes it sound like the entire project was akin to simply shooting fish in a barrel, which the filmmakers somehow managed to screw up by thinking the only engaging element of the highly scholarly premise was the human interactions associated to finding value in marginalized members within a population, rather than concentrating on the actual substance within the topic, which is a thorough examination of statistics and a detailed chronicle of the analysis that lent greater validity to sabermetrics. I find this assumption to be problematic, in large part because one of the notions that Lewis conveys quite well in his book is that these theories would likely have remained frozen and stagnant, for at least a little while longer, if it weren't for the personalities involved, which included the stats-obsessed analysts and the regret-fueled stubborn determination of Beane.

I honestly believe this is a good example of managing expectations and approaching films with a specific perspective. Some of that has to do with the continued fascination with Soderbergh's apparently more clinical and likely more atypical planned treatment of the subject, but it's also a project that doesn't exist, in large part because it couldn't sustain itself. Honestly, I would have loved to see what he had planned, but his captivation with the subject matter was beginning to expand into different directions. Meanwhile, the existing film continues to be plagued by complaints that it's not completely accurate and that it should concentrate more on the numbers. In my mind, these are valid opinions, but they are largely focused on what the film could have been rather than what the film is actually attempting to accomplish in its current form. I just think it's relatively difficult, if not entirely insurmountable, for a film to overcome those types of obstacles in perspective because the viewer is approaching the material with a largely antagonistic mentality. Perhaps that's not the case during this discussion, but the comments suggest that some viewers were hoping for an entirely different approach to the material, which probably couldn't be accomplished under the current circumstances, and have therefore dismissed a great deal of what the film does accomplish in its current form.