Something to Talk About: Ryan and Sebastian Discuss MONEYBALL

Just under a month ago, Corey Pierce asked me if I could remember a film where I didn’t agree with the critical consensus. For a guy who didn’t know me all that well, Corey had managed to pick up on a detail of my taste pretty quickly: I’m usually one who falls in with the general vibe.

As if on cue, along came MONEYBALL.

It was a film seemingly designed for me, about an element of baseball I find intriguing, and presented by talented people I admire. And for a lot of reasons, the film somehow managed to connect for me. Now, that on it’s own doesn’t worry me. What has left me perplexed though, was the massive amount of critical love the film received. As review after review came in, I began to wonder “Did they see something I didn’t?”

To try to get a better grip on things, I asked a lover of the film Sebastian Gutierrez – who’s not the world’s biggest baseball fan – to discuss the film with me and help me understand what moviegoers like him are getting from it.

RM: So what about MONEY BALL drew you in?

SG: I think the thing it did best was taking the game of baseball, taking one of the most uninteresting (to the average American movie goer) aspects of the game, and turning it into one of the best and most exciting movies about the game. Miller’s slick direction, Pitt’s livewire performance, and Sorkin and Zallian’s blistering script really do a lot in making this one of the most engrossing and entertaining sports films that this generation of filmmakers has turned out. 

RM: I take it the ‘uninteresting aspect’ you speak of is statistics. Here’s my qualm with that. Within the framework of the film, much is made of on base percentage or “OBP”. Brand and Beane are trying to sell the table of scouts on the notion that players like Hatteberg and Justice are more valuable than they seem because even though they aren’t sexy hitters, “they get on base”. I couldn’t help but feel like they short-sold the importance of them getting on base…as if there were two more lines of dialogue explaining how players with high OBP would translate to more runs (great that they get on – you still gotta get ’em in).

SG: I don’t think it was short-sold at all. I seem to remember there being a line about how getting on base means more chances to score. But I don’t think, even if it had come off that way to me, that glossing over the OBP thing is that big of deal. It serves as a good set up for everything else. The new system is explained as much as it needs to be, and the rest of it is the consequences that come about because of it. The movie’s not so much about the new way of doing things as it is about how the old way of doing things isn’t too keen on the new way.

RM: But if the point of the film is that the new school is coming in to tell the old school they’re full of shit, I still think there’s a scene missing. Look at Art Howe (Phil Seymour-Hoffman). He’s as old-school as it gets, so much so that he doesn’t even want to use the team as it has been built for him. The only way Beane and Brand can get him to see things their way is to trade his favorite players out from under him.

Moving on to Miller’s direction, for me it was anything but slick. It felt w-a-a-a-a-y-y-y-y too patient…indeed, like a player going to bat looking to get on with a walk rather than put the ball in play and force the action.

SG: OK, maybe “stylish” is the wrong word, but there were some flairs in there. Miller is definitely more a director of characters and dialogue than he is images, but there was some nifty stuff. Being from the area, I do like what he did with the images of Oakland and SF, and come on. Hatteberg’s home run was pretty awesome.

RM: Hatteberg’s homerun was nice and all, but it wasn’t even played as the climactic moment of the film. He went on to add more moments of denouement that took away from the impact of the dinger. I’ll give the guy a point or two for making a grungy stadium in a grungy town look pretty cool, but he didn’t seem to get any real emotion out of the key characters involved. None of them seem to grow at all within the framework of the film (save Brand a bit).

Let’s talk about Pitt’s performance since it has left me scratching my head since the film ended. Brad Pitt has given us a steady stream of amazing performances in recent years. How does Billy Beane staring off into nothing, talking statistics, and chewing tobacco. What was so livewire about any of it?

SG: I’ll side with you on the staring into nothing. It didn’t really add a whole lot and seemed like a way to provide some sort of full circle for the film, which wasn’t necessary to begin with. But I thought everything else was great. I don’t think it’s going to win any awards, and I do think his performance in TREE OF LIFE was leaps and bounds better, but this is Pitt at his cocky best. His banter with Jonah Hill was really good, and the scenes where he lays on the charm to sign players were superb, as were the two or three scenes with his daughter.

RM: Funny that you use cocky for Pitt, because for me he seemed to have the cocky dialed all the way down. He’s playing the everiest everyman who’s ever every’d. He comes off as overmatched by the situation time and time again, and seems to need to take a minute to think about what he’s going to say next (even in that first scouting scene when he first calls out his scouting staff). 

Then there’s the script, another area where I wonder what the heck happened. Along with the fact that the film seems to lack a proper narrative arc, the moments of snappy dialogue feel too few and too far between. What’s worse is that the structure of the film is all over the place: The film is essentially a capsule of the 2002 season. After spending almost half the film in the off-season building the team, it spends another quarter in the first two moths of the season, then sails through the rest of the season in a montage before dropping us into “the streak” with a title card. Oh, and please don’t get me started on how much time the script dedicated to explaining Billy Beane’s failed playing career.

SG: See, I think the quick montages of the season, leading up to the big achievement is the way to go, because the movie isn’t about the underdog team rising up, defying the odds, and going home champions. It’s a sports movie that’s not really about playing the sport in the same way HOOSIERS is about playing the sport where the game and the teams victories are the main focus, and I liked that. I prefer sports movies that use the actual sport as a springboard for more interesting things, a la THE FIGHTER. You talk about the script being all over the place with the depiction of the season. I thought it actually floundered in Pitt’s backstory, which took up way too much of the film. That stuff right there could have all been told in one, 5 minute scene, and been just as effective, instead of the myriad of scenes that took up a good twenty minutes.

RM: But if victories are the main focus, how come we spend such a sliver of time exploring those victories? I know the team has been designed to win under the right circumstances – they dedicate a monstrous amount of screen time to that. What I never see, and seldom even hear about, is the team…y’know…winning. Hell, we barely even see them playing, let alone winning. If the game itself, and the team are the focus, then how come we spend so little time on it? As an example, I’d wager you could name more players off the squad in MAJOR LEAGUE than you could in MONEYBALL.

SG: I don’t see the victories as the crux of the film. Yes, I will agree that the team does start winning very suddenly and that we don’t get to see them play very much, but that’s not the point of the movie. The point of the movie is to explore how Beane and the A’s changed, not how the game is played from an athletic perspective, but how it’s approached from a business perspective. I mean, every GM these days is using the same method that Beane introduced, and when you and your team are that big of an influence on a whole sport, I’d say that’s something to be proud of. 

RM: Still think he’s proud when the richer teams took his influence and use it to build better along with still being able to outspend Oakland? I wanted to keep on-message with this, but I need to stray for a moment. Something the film omits, is that a big reason the team succeeded that year is because of four young players that developed well (Tejada, Zito, Mulder, and Hudson). Those players were found and brought along by the scouts – the very “old school” that Beane and Brand want to elbow out of the way.

SG: I did not know that about those four players. But, it is kind of inevitable that they go unmentioned in the film, as bringing up their accomplishments would seriously undermine the point.

RM: Exactly. I guess the crux of it all is that the concept of moneyball appeals to me as a baseball fan…but this film needed to do more to sell me than just dramatize something that I already watched play out nine years ago on ESPN.

SG: Well, you do have me there. While I was living in San Francisco while all this was going on, I didn’t really care all that much about baseball, and certainly not the A’s. I really only started paying attention when the Giants started getting good. I went into the film knowing nothing about the 20 game winning streak or anything like that. I only knew what the trailers told me, whereas you went in knowing the whole she-bang. So, maybe you do have a point there

RM: So, do you think perhaps that moviegoers like yourself are more taken with the concept of Moneyball, whereas the baseball fan in me that already knew the narrative wanted more from its presentation?

SG: I honestly don’t know what aspect the average movie goer found most enticing. The trailers made it out to be more of a traditional sports movie, so a few people were probably turned on by that. A few people I talked to went in thinking that the A’s went all the way. I, for one, was drawn in by the talent, not knowing the story to any real extent. People who know the story were probably drawn in by the opportunity to see it dramatized, but I can see where they might have been let down. 

RM: One last question – What did Billy Beane and The A’s achieve within the runtime of MONEYBALL?

SG: Well, if he’s not proud that every single team is cribbing his method, he can’t exactly bitch about it. He wanted to win, the movie makes that abundantly clear, but I think he’ll settle for what he did do. He says, “If we win, we’ll have changed the game.” They didn’t win, but the game changed anyway. And I think he’s alright. Would he have stayed in Oakland if he didn’t feel some sort of pride of what he accomplished there? No, I don’t think so.

I will agree that the film doesn’t really do as good a job of showing this as I think it should have. So I do think that’s what was accomplished. Beane and the A’s changed the way baseball is played and managed for good. Strange to think, if he didn’t do what he did, that damn curse might still be plaguing Boston.

RM: But beyond that – beyond the fact that he found a better way to analyze talent that the rich teams stole without so much as a “thankyouverymuch”, what we witness in MONEYBALL is a guy who ends the film exactly where he began it. His team has been bounced in the first round of the playoffs – again – he is still not getting any more money to bring in better players. You raise some interesting points good sir, but I’m firm in my opinion of this film. It has interesting concepts, but through the way it’s constructed doesn’t execute fully on any of them.