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Lets talk scandal, baby!
Moneyball was in development a few years and championed by Columbia Pictures co-chair cutie Amy Pascal. It's an adaptation of a popular book by Michael Lewis.
Whispering lips say the studio spent roughly $10 million to get this project off the ground. Steven Zaillian wrote a script. Everybody loved it. Soderbergh came onboard. Brad Pitt came onboard. The budget ballooned to around $57 million, which is quite risky. Baseball movies can be hit and miss. They rarely play well overseas, and you're lucky to get $35 million domestic.
Soderbergh told ESPN: "My clearly stated goal is to set a new standard for realism in that [sports] world." He proceeded to tinker with Steven Zaillian's script.
Just days before production was to begin, Amy Pascal gasped and pulled the plug.
Soderbergh's tinkering gave the studio a case of cold feet. The project was put into limited turnaround, which meant that other studios had the chance to pick it up. They all politely declined. According to Michael Fleming:
"Soderbergh and Pascal had discussions about his vision when the director signed on. Soderbergh last Tuesday turned in a rewrite that sources said was substantially different from a Zaillian script that Pascal - and Pitt - loved. Soderbergh took the film from a classically structured drama to a hybrid that has a documentary feel, complete with footage of actual ballplayers who witnessed Beane's metamorphosis from player to exec who fielded competitive teams by using statistics instead of paying big salaries. Pitt didn't read the script until last Wednesday, but he continued to back Soderbergh."
Oh, but wait. There's also the Brad Pitt theory:
"The new spin out of the Sony camp is that Brad Pitt disliked the new script as much as Amy Pascal and that he is the one who secretly sunk the ship, though he didn't want to be seen as doing it."
But then Anne Thompson wrote:
"That is not what I'm hearing from Pitt's camp. They say he was ready to make Soderbergh's movie. It's hard to imagine Pitt agreeing to make the movie with another director at this point. It would have to be Soderbergh or no one. Pascal was demanding certain changes that Pitt and Soderbergh refused to make and threw her foot down, perfectly willing to walk away. Point is, she would have made the movie a year ago. She can't afford for this movie to lose money right now, bottom line."
Of course, Pitt's camp would continue to publicly back Soderbergh, wouldn't they?
Then there was that infamous email that made the rounds and got removed.
And David Poland had many questions, such as "How could Soderbergh be shooting interviews for the movie on the studio dime without the studio knowing what his plan was?"
But no worries, Aaron Sorkin's on it now. And, apparently, he has a whole team of writers.
And now Soderbergh has relaxed and joked about the whole sad affair:
"There have been a couple of times in my career where I've been unceremoniously removed from projects. I don't waste a lot of energy on it. It doesn't get you anywhere. As soon as it became clear that there was no iteration of that movie that I was going to get to direct, I immediately started looking around for something else to do. I have a couple of other things in development that I had hoped to move up, but actors' schedules wouldn't allow it. But I have something I can get to after the first of the year, and I'm supposed to do my Liberace movie next summer. So my attitude when something like that happens is, 'What's next?' You can't dwell on it."
Brad Pitt still sounds hopeful, but as he said, "It's a weird climate right now."
So let's analyze the scripts, MM-style.
Steven Zaillian's script is available here. Steven Soderbergh's script is available here. Both of those links were courtesy of Moneyball's Twitter account.
Zaillian's Script
There is a character moment in the opening sequence that I loved, probably lost now forever. Fade In. We're flying over the Oakland Coliseum at night, the floodlights on. We drift past the Oakland A's three premier players painted on concrete, a good visual setup. These guys are essential to the story. We turn, dip, and float toward the A's dugout. There's the faint sound of crowds cheering. There's the voice over of a sports announcer talking about an exciting game: "one out, nobody on, two on two to Saenz..." We descend into the dugout and into the "netherworld bowels of the Coliseum." The cheering and the voices of the two sports announcers get louder.
We continue to move down the cinder-block corridor "dimly lit with wire-encased lamps like in a coal mine." The announcer's growing voice continues: "a ground out to second, Thom, is not what the A's were looking for from Saenz - down by two in the ninth."
We float into a room and see the solitary figure of protagonist Billy Beane bench-pressing "with the intensity of a soul expiating sins" as a nearby TV plays a game that's taking place somewhere else. Announcer: "the A's are down to their last strike and this Yankee crowd is on its feet. Rivera squints for the sign, gets it, delivers, and -" Billy turns off the sound. He cannot bear this moment. He goes back to his bench pressing "like he's trying to sweat out the impurities of deed or thought." He sits up, switches the sound back on. Announcer: "it is bedlam in New York! The Yankees have done what no other team in MLB history has been able to do: come back after losing the first two games to win a Division Series!"
Billy sits up. The announcer continues: "This is historic not only for New York, Thom, but for Oakland. The A's have just set a new record, too, but not the kind you want: no other team has ever lost a division series after winning the first two games..." The TV shows the Yankees constructing a celebratory human pyramid at home plate while the A's, including the ones we saw painted on the concrete, sit glumly in the visitors' dugout, cameras zooming into their shell-shocked faces.
"Billy pulls himself up off the bench, walks over to an equipment area, selects a bat, regards his surroundings calmly... then suddenly swings the bat mightily at an open locker door, ripping it from its hinges... He attacks another locker, spreading its vents with a violent crash. He slams the bat into another locker... wood-splinters fly..."
That, my friends, is how you open a screenplay that will be greenlit by a studio for millions and millions of dollars with a premium director and global superstar attached.
A few thoughts about this sequence:
* Zaillian, first of all, gives us an intriguing shot that pulls you in as we float over an empty Oakland Coliseum and into its bowels. So often we think of strong openings as plot-related, that is, something exciting happens in the plot within the first five pages that makes us want to keep reading. Many times, though, intriguing shots can tease us with visuals that make you curious and want to keep reading to see where the shot and the story will take us. This is a great reminder to let your imagination take flight and consider unique experiences and new ways of looking at subjects we've seen many times before in film. There's no limit anymore to screenwriting and filmmaking, and yet, too often, we restrict our imaginations.
* Zaillian also solves some tricky issues about the setting with this floating shot. This story is about the Oakland A's. Yet, this crucial, painful loss to the Yankees, which is the Inciting Incident, takes place in New York. You can't change that. So we're shown in this sequence the empty A's stadium, how important these premier players are to thousands of Oakland fans by the fact that they're painted on the concrete, which is contrasted later with their shell-shocked faces on TV after a stunning loss. Following this game, those players will become free agents, another huge loss to the organization.
* I love the shift in values over the course of this one sequence. At first, the juxtaposition of these words and images in the baseball genre usually implies that this is a "reliving the glory days" kind of moment. The bread and butter of baseball films is a romantic sentimentalism about the game. Here, you assume you're hearing the ghosts of a past game that took place in this stadium in which there will be the inevitable thrilling victory. But we find that this isn't the case. This is a very haunting present, complemented visually with this night shot and the darkened cinder-block corridor "dimly lit with wire-encased lamps like in a coal mine." This haunting present leads to a very painful conclusion of an important game that will set this entire movie in motion.
* I love how we're first presented Billy Beane. He is so gripped by his inner turmoil about this game that he can't watch it. He has to work-out while the game is being played. It's a kind of manly expression of anxiety not seen in film before, I don't believe, and without Billy saying a word, we understand his anguish. We understand not just because he's bench pressing like his soul depends on it but also by seeing him turn off the sound to a moment he knew was coming that he could not bear to hear. In that moment, we feel the sting of his loss. We know his obvious frustrations and goals for the Oakland A's. We also get a sense of his past, too. He's working out because he must've been a player. Or, at least, he aspired to be a player.
* Every detail in your screenplay is important in terms of the information you're passing along to the audience. What did Zaillian do? He hooked us with an imaginative opening shot that sets up expectations about what we'll be seeing in the film. He makes us want to keep reading. We want to know where we're being taken and who we'll be seeing. We think we're hearing a sentimental glory moment and that expectation is turned on its head. Zaillian slyly establishes the setting, the Inciting Incident, the principal characters, the protagonist, the protagnist's goal, backstory, and inner turmoil about his team, and he does all of these things in under two pages.
I dare you to do better.
There is a lot of entertainment value in the story. You have a baseball team losing its best players. The A's do not have enough money to buy solid replacements. You have a protagonist with a clear goal of getting this team out of the cellar and somehow engineering a winning season, and interestingly, he tries with bad players. You have a strong masculine physical lead role. You have fast scenes with fast, smart, snappy dialogue, which I'm sure Pitt couldn't wait to rattle off in front of cameras.
Those factors alone make the script passable, but the story as a whole gives me pause. The idea of adapting this book, which was essentially about statistics and how scouts changed the way they viewed the statistical value of players, also gives me pause.
Why? There's no theme or strong emotional hook to this concept. There's too much emphasis on statistics and not enough on characters. After it's all over, when you think, "so what was that all about?" you realize that this story essentially amounts to the audience saying, "oh, isn't it interesting how the Oakland A's re-thought the statistical game and came up with a winning team with undervalued players on a tight budget." That's not a movie. That's an article for Sports Illustrated. That's a made-for-TV-event targeted to the most hardcore-statistics-lovin'- baseball-fanatics. For a MOVIE that'll get distributed around the world, this kind of anecdote about a change in the way we view statistics is at best a sidenote for what should be a bigger story, for what should be a gripping theme and emotional hook, which should be centered on the character's journey. We don't have that here.
What do we have? We have 128 pages of Billy Beane playing hardball with his scouts, with the owner, with the coach, with Paul the economist, and he's doing what he can to change the way people think about statistics to create a winning team. We have flashbacks to Billy's past that only serve to show how the emphasis on Billy's personal statistics during his brief attempt at playing baseball shaped his thinking as an executive and helped bring change to how the scout's view statistics. To that, I say, "Okay, so what? That's just exposition." Billy goes through women as often as he goes through baseball players, which never changes, and from what I've read isn't historically accurate either. So I have to ask, "How does that serve the story?" We're occasionally shown Billy hanging out with his daughter, which likewise does nothing to advance the story but only serves to show a different side of Billy. Of course, I'm all for character depth and I do not believe it essential that every character arcs.
But in the end, you walk away feeling not as exhilarated as you had hoped because there's an emphasis on the intellect over the emotion. That's really evident toward the end when the story loses steam and fails to deliver the emotional goods as it should. The fact that Bill James occasionally pops up to explain statistics to us only illustrates my point that there's too much emphasis on things other than the character's journey. Bill James reminded me of the motivational coach in Jerry Maguire whose words had so much more heart and who existed solely to support the character's journey.
Consider the greatest baseball films ever made. Pride of the Yankees, a favorite of mine about Lou Gehrig - that's a character's journey. The Natural - character's journey. Field of Dreams - character's journey. Major League, Bull Durham, A League of their Own - all about the character's journey.
What's my mantra? Characters come first.
It's also quite strange that throughout Zaillian's script, various characters repeatedly talk about and watch The Natural, which only made me prefer that story over this one and which also reminded me that the best stories stay focused on the character's journey. We know the theme in The Natural - dreams deferred. Would you still pursue your dreams when the world thinks you're past your prime? Great! I'm there rooting for Roy Hobbs like the rest of the world. But what's the theme of Moneyball? I'm not sure, but I can tell you that statistics is not a theme. That's a intellectual argument. If it was up to me, I'd de-emphasize statistics and emphasize something entirely different that gives us a strong theme and emotional hook. Say, a theme about failure. How often and how long can you endure failure before you give up your dreams? Thus, we'd be rooting for Billy to never give up his dreams.
When you cannot easily articulate your theme, when the emphasis on a script is on something factual or on anything other than the character's journey, it is an inevitability as sure as death and taxes that despite great scenes and snappy dialogue, the story will fall flat in the end.
Soderbergh's Script
Soderbergh opens his script with this sobering bit of news:
"Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players, and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.
"Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context.
"All that is to say an importation portion of this film will be written in the editing room. This isn't a cop-out; it's just a fact and entirely by design."
I will defend Soderbergh only this far: I'm guessing that he instinctively picked-up on the weaknesses of Zaillian's script, and he sought to, in an inventive way, make the experience more unique, emotional, personal, and generally, more realistic.
For that, I applaud him.
Having said that, Soderbergh fucked this script up beyond all redemption. He should've retitled it 'FUBAR.' He re-shaped this flawed story into something so unnecessarily convoluted. His script contains not only the same problems as Zaillian's but also piles on more problems with weak, flat, phony dialogue and mountains of verbal exposition. Oh, the mountains of insufferable exposition, so high and so vast, they should be called "Soderberghs Himalayas."
Consider the differences between these two stories in how Billy met Paul DePodesta, a guy who is crucial in shaping Billy's new way of thinking about statistics. First, let's see Zaillian's scene. This starts on page 18. At this point, the team lost the division to the Yankees. They're about to lose their three best players. Their options are severely limited. You could cut the tension in Oakland with a knife. Billy had a heated discussion with his scouts and threw a chair. And now, Billy just had a very depressing meeting with the Indians' General Manager, who changed his mind about a deal after Paul, who worked for the Indians at the time, whispered something into the GM's ear. Billy has just left the office. He sees Paul.
Billy: You.
Paul: Excuse me?
Billy: Come here.
[Paul comes out into the hallway.]
Billy: Who the fuck are you?
Paul: I'm Paul, Mr. Beane.
Billy: I don't give a fuck about your name. What are you doing?
Paul: Um... I'm doing my job.
Billy: No, I'm doing my job. You - are fucking up my job. You just cost me a left-handed setup man.
Paul: I like Rincon.
Billy: You like Rincon. You like Rincon. Was I talking to you in there?
[Billy leaves. Paul works up his courage.]
Paul: Rincon has nothing to do with your problem. Your problem is you can't replace Giambi with another first baseman like him, because there isn't another one like him.
[Billy stops walking.]
Following this moment, Paul and Billy eat at a Steakhouse. Paul enlightens Billy about what's wrong with current thinking about baseball statistics. Billy loves what he hears and hires Paul.
Now, consider Soderbergh's approach. This moment starts on page 2 and PRECEDES the Inciting Incident of the Oakland A's losing the division to the Yankees.
Billy: JP said you're the guy I should be talking to.
Paul: JP is great.
Billy: JP is great. He said you just got promoted.
Paul: Yeah, I was advanced scouting and I just made Special Assistant to the GM.
Billy: Well, Cleveland's a monster franchise. I think John Hart and Mark Shapiro are super smart. They got a good thing going.
Paul: I have to say, it's nice knowing at the beginning of the year that you're probably going to the playoffs.
Billy: I'll bet.
Paul: I hear you extended.
Billy: Yeah, four years. It's good, you know, I can watch things happen. And we're close to getting a new stadium.
Paul: Which you need.
Billy: Which we definitely need. So let me ask you: can you work spreadsheets and all that stuff, like Excel? Can you manage a payroll?
Paul: Yeah.
Billy: Great, because I suck at that. And you're totally up to speed on all the league rules? I need to make sure I don't accidentally put someone on waivers or something.
Paul: I'm pretty familiar with all the league rules. Also, I used a software program to chart games when I was advancing. It might be worth buying. It's really helpful.
Billy: Is it expensive?
Paul: I know the guy who developed it, I'm sure we could work something out.
Billy: Great.
Paul: So let me ask you. Do you really think you can win with your payroll? No small market team has made the playoffs since the strike.
Billy: I will never use payroll as an excuse. Look, being a small market team, we're constantly being pushed to the edge of extinction by the big market teams. We can't do it the way the Yankees do it. They've got guns, and we've got bows and arrows. We've got to find a way to adapt or we're going to disappear, and I like a lot of the ideas coming out of statistical analysis. It could be our edge.
Paul: You know, I was playing blackjack once and a guy sitting next to me hit on seventeen and actually drew a four. And he's collecting his money, clearly thinking to himself: "This is a good strategy for playing blackjack." And that's when I realized: that's how most teams operate, they play like the guy walking into a casino, when they should be playing like the house.
Billy: (excited) Right, exactly. That's what we have to do. We have to be the house.
Paul: You've heard of Paul Drucker?
Billy: The management guy.
Paul: He's got a thing called the Naïve Question: "If we weren't already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?" And can I drop another name?
Billy: Hey, you're the Harvard grad, not me.
Paul: You've heard of him: Thomas Paine. "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."
Billy: That's fantastic. Look, Paul, you should do this. We should do this. Before somebody else does. Somebody with money.
Paul: How comfortable are you looking crazy? I mean, people have dabbled in statistical analysis, but to run a whole team based on sabermetrics - no one's really done it before. Some of the decisions we make will look really strange.
Billy: (trying to close him) That's our edge, them thinking we're crazy. The longer they think we're crazy, the better. By the time they figure out what we're doing, we'll have beaten them. So let's do this, right?
Can you not see the huge difference between those two scenes? Zaillian's version crackles with energy. It's short, fast, and snappy. It exists in the context of a huge conflict, that is, the Oakland A's team is up shit's creek and Billy is driven to save the team. Soderbergh's scene lacked life because this came before the Inciting Incident and there's no conflict driving the story or Billy. Zaillian's exposition in the steakhouse scene isn't so bad because it's in the context of a problem. We need this exposition to figure out how to save the team. Soderbergh's exposition feels false and flat and nearly puts you to sleep because there's no conflict yet in the story. There's nothing driving what's happening between these characters.
So let's come full circle back to the scandal. I'm inclined to believe (up to a point) the Brad Pitt theory. No star at his level would stay on a project when the dialogue has been butchered this badly. I do not for a minute blame the studio for pulling the plug on Soderbergh. I certainly would've done the same.
However, I will not give one shit about this project unless someone tells me that Aaron Sorkin (and his team of writers) fixed the problems in Zaillian's script and focused on the character's journey.
-MM
