155. Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 'Moneyball' (2011)

Show Notes

Bennett Miller was the 3rd director attached to the adaptation of Michael Lewis' classic baseball non-fiction book 'Moneyball', after Steven Soderbergh was replaced by Sony, who got nervous over his plan for interspersing interviews with real-life characters from the book like Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry throughout the film. His rewrite of Steve Zaillian's script made the studio nervous when paired with the $50 million dollar budget.

Some of that technique remains in Miller's use of real baseball scouts and former players in the film, but it's blended seamlessly with the fantastic performances by Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill (who replaced Dmitri Martin in the role of Paul Brand/Paul DePodesta), Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Chris Pratt.

Pitt and Sony exec Amy Pascal and producer Mike DeLuca stuck with the project, reduced the budget, and luckily, the film got made.  On the face of it, it's an audacious undertaking: no less than an art-house take on baseball. Or is it a crowd-pleasing writer's film with a decidedly 70's bent?  Or is it a treatise on the limitations of collective conventional wisdom?  It's all these things and more. 

Some Articles About 'Moneyball':

Roundtable with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Bennett Miller:  https://youtu.be/r9g2Bk2GQYY?t=199

84th Academy Awards Nominees and Winners.