The Money-Pitt

Bay Area baseball fans got more than a little excited when they learned that Steven Soderburgh was developing a movie version of "Moneyball" starring Brad Pitt. We wondered, "who will play Art Howe?" "Would the A's uniforms be authentically green & yellow?" and other important matters. But, it's all come crashing down. The suits at the studio pulled the plug just five days before shooting was to begin: Money Worries Kill A-List Film At the Last Minute

Just days before shooting was to begin, Sony Pictures pulled the plug on"Moneyball,” a major film project starring Brad Pitt and being directed by Steven Soderbergh. The last-minute demise of a prestige picture is a rare spectacle in Hollywood — one that is painful, expensive and damaging to all involved. This one is estimated to have cost Sony $10 million in script development and costs like scouting locations.

But such disasters may become more common as an increasingly nervous film business comes to terms with a sharp decline in home video revenue and with the diminishing leverage of even the most popular A-list stars, like Mr. Pitt.

“They’re much more careful about doing a movie just because a star wants to do it,” said Eric Weissmann, a longtime entertainment lawyer who recalled the days when Warner Brothers made a film, “An Enemy of the People,” based on an Ibsen play, largely because Steve McQueen wanted to do it.

Representatives of Sony, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Soderbergh all declined to discuss “Moneyball.” But accounts from more than a dozen people involved with the film, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid damaging professional relationships, described a process in which the heady rush toward production was halted by a studio suddenly confronted by plans for something artier and more complex than bargained for.

The pro-Soderbergh spin is that those dumb beancounters got scared because he was making an "art" movie, not a commercial one. The studio says, "Hey, the guy showed up with a new script that was completely different from what we were expecting." No one seems to have considered a more fundamental question: could "Moneyball" the book been made into an interesting/entertaining "Moneyball" the movie? I think the answer is "No."

This is not to say that the "Moneyball" story isn't interesting. Small market baseball team takes on the big-money teams using innovative player evaluation techniques, rather than simply looking to sign the biggest a**hole power hitter on the market? Sounds like a great idea - for a book. But, the "Moneyball" A's never won a World Series, had few - if any - interesting personalities, did not fill McAfee stadium with fans, etc. There is simply no drama there. (Actually, the fact that the "Moneyball" A's never won a World Series is reason enough not to make this movie. I am pretty sure that it is an iron-clad rule of baseball movies that the team win the league championship at the end of the story). Contrast this with the LaRussa-era A's with their quirky/genius pitchers, juiced up Bash Brothers, tyrannical manager, and World Series win. Someone could make a great baseball movie with that material. But a movie about sabremetrics? Unless Soderbergh was planning to have Billy Beane get involved in some John Nash-style mad scenes, it's hard to see the entertainment you could find there.

Even if you could make a movie out of "Moneyball," I don't think Soderbergh is the right man for the job. His style tends to be a little dry, which would not work well with a baseball movie. Also, I know this is heresy, but his skills as a filmmaker have visibly declined over the last 5 years since his peerless "The Limey"/"Out of Sight"/ "Oceans 11"/"Traffic" run. And, not to be insulting, but he looks like he might have some "issues" regarding jocks dating back to junior high school. I wouldn't trust him to know how to make a decent baseball movie, as he shows little sign of having any feel for the game and the players.

(Not only that, Soderbergh and the studio demonstrate their baseball cluelessness by completely missing the biggest baseball story from the last 10 years: "blue collar" team with a passionate fan base, but which has a history of runner-up status, hires a boy-genius GM and Bill James, the actual inventor of sabremetrics, to put together a team of quasi-mythical characters that defeats the Empire, and wins the World Series. Pretty close to the "Moneyball" storyline, if you ask me, and I suspect a lot more people would want to see a movie about the Boston Red Sox, than the Oakland A's. Have your people call my people, Steve.)

Soderbergh was planning to spend $60 million on this movie, which is about $40 million more than this story deserves (query to "progressive" Soderbergh: how much of that money was going to go to an expensive unionized crew?). Old Hollywood "magic" was often accomplished on much lower budgets, adjusted for inflation. Soderbergh himself has made excellent movies on shoestrings. Now, he indulges himself with 4-hour biopics about jerk-communist Che Guevara and baseball movies about the dullest aspects of baseball. Perhaps this is a wake-up call to Soderbergh, and others like him, to try to rediscover the artistic virtues of thrift.