 Moneyball
Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt, Casey Bond, Stephen Bishop, Royce Clayton, David Hutchison, Robin Wright, Kerris Dorsey, Ken MedlockEnglish Movie
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Category |
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Sports |
Language | : English |
Time Duration | : 02:13 Hours |
Year of Release | : 2012 |
Color | : Colored |
Director | : Bennett Miller |
Studio | : Scott Rudin Productions |
Starring |
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Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt, Casey Bond, Stephen Bishop, Royce Clayton, David Hutchison, Robin Wright, Kerris Dorsey, Ken Medlock
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Moneyball is a 2011 biographical sports drama film directed by Bennett Miller and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film is based on Michael Lewis's 2003 book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's attempts to assemble a competitive team. In the film, Beane (Brad Pitt) and assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), faced with the franchise's unfavorable financial situation, take a sophisticated sabermetric approach towards scouting and analyzing players, acquiring "submarine" pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond) and former catcher Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), and winning 20 consecutive games, an American League record.
Columbia Pictures bought the rights to Lewis's book in 2004. After a number of years in development, the film was featured at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on September 23, 2011 to critical acclaim. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Actor and Best Picture on January 24, 2012.
Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. With the impending departure of star players Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, Beane attempts to devise a strategy for assembling a competitive team for 2002 but struggles to overcome Oakland's limited player payroll. During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess players' value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted him (out of high school), Beane having been a Major League player before becoming general manager. Though scouts considered Beane a phenomenal player, his career in the Major Leagues was disappointing. After some prodding, Brand admits that he would not have drafted him until the ninth round and that Beane should probably have accepted a scholarship to Stanford instead. Sensing opportunity, Beane hires Brand as the Athletics' assistant general manager.
The team's scouts are first dismissive of and then hostile towards Brand's non-traditional sabermetric approach to scouting players, most notably Grady Fuson (Ken Medlock) – who is fired by Beane after insulting their approach, and takes to the radio airwaves and doubts the team's future. Rather than relying on the scouts' experience and intuition, Brand selects players based almost exclusively on their on base percentage (OBP). By finding players with a high OBP but characteristics that lead scouts to dismiss them, Brand assembles a team of undervalued players with far more potential than the A's hamstrung finances would otherwise allow. Despite vehement objections from the scouts, Beane supports Brand's theory and hires the players he selected, such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond). Following the free agent signings, Beane finds that he also faces opposition from Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the Athletics' manager. With tensions already high between them because of a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane and Brand's strategy and plays the team in a traditional style despite their unsuitability. Beane is eventually forced to trade away the lone traditional star player (Carlos Peña) to force Howe to use the new recruits.
Early in the season, the Athletics fare poorly, leading critics within and outside the team to dismiss the new method as a dismal failure. Beane convinces the owner to stay the course, and eventually the team's record begins to improve. Ultimately, the Athletics win an unprecedented 20 consecutive games, setting the American League record. Their streak is capped with a victory over the Kansas City Royals. Like many baseball players, Beane is superstitious and avoids attending or sometimes even following games as they are in progress. His young daughter implores him to go to the A's final game against the Royals, where Oakland is already leading 11–0 after the third inning and appears set to advance their winning streak to a record-breaking 20. Beane arrives in the fourth inning, only to watch the team go to pieces and eventually allow the Royals to even the score 11-11. Finally, the A's do clinch the victory with a walk-off home run by one of Brand's picks, Scott Hatteberg. Then, despite all their success in the second half of the season, the A's lose in the first round of the postseason, this time to the Minnesota Twins. Beane is disappointed, but satisfied at having demonstrated the value of his and Brand's methods.
In closing, the film notes that Beane passed up the opportunity to become the general manager of the Boston Red Sox, despite an offer of a $12.5 million salary, which would have made him the highest paid general manager in baseball history (the implication being that his decision ultimately came down to not wanting to move away from his daughter). Also noted in the postscript is Boston's World Series victory soon after in 2004, based on the theories that Beane pioneered. |
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Brad Pitt Films, Biographical Sports Drama Film, Columbia Pictures, Oakland Athletics Baseball Team, Lewis Book, Toronto International Film Festival, Academy Awards, Best Actor, Best Picture, Oakland Athletics, Steven Zaillian Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin Screenplay, Stan Chervin Story, Moneyball By Michael Lewis, Music By Mychael Danna, Cinematography Wally Pfister, Christopher Tellefsen Edited Films, Michael De Luca Productions, Films Based On Biographies
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