Comments on: Moneyball: The Pascal Version

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:20:57 +0000

Some are taking it as a knock against Soderbergh. I see it as Soderbergh being Soderbergh. Unlike Michael Mann, at least his artistic box office failures don’t cost $100 million.

By: Jeff McM

Jeff McM — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:36:58 +0000

Yeah, no matter which is the case, it speaks to bad managerial decision-making. Either she chose poorly from the get-go, or she didn’t effectively let Soderbergh understand what was expected of him. I’m sure she knew that, no matter what, Pascal was going to look bad, and decided that shutting the movie down was the lesser damage situation.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:45:14 +0000

It does seem hard to swallow that one draft was a radical departure from what had come before unless she simply hadn’t been paying attention.

As an outsider, that’s the galling thing that they waited a few days before cameras were going to roll before cutting the cord. So you think she just got cold feet?

By: Catherine

Catherine — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:33:00 +0000

Amy’s story that he turned in a radically different script a few days before shooting is bull. Everyone in various depts. on the film had drafts from several weeks before where it was always very clear that he was going to use real baseball players and interviews . Also he’d been shooting the interviews for a couple of months. Amy changed her mind and now 200 people are out of work with no notice. I think it would be a good idea to get some of the unions involved..because there’s a trail here of scripts and shooting that refutes her claim she was ’shocked by the new direction’..maybe if the unions get together and file a grievance some of us can get paid.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:53:47 +0000

But it was Soderbergh so I had to assume it would be good.

On the other hand, the accounts I’ve read of his version of the screenplay weren’t promising.

I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter now.

By: joel

joel — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:37:29 +0000

Good point. Any movie that might incorporate the Rally Monkey for one iota of screen time is definitely dropping to the bottom of my must-see list.

By: Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:21:26 +0000

I’ve been skeptical about this project all along. I have to assume talents like Zaillian and Soderbergh could find an interesting story with a bunch of baseball stat nerds, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything less dramatic than an Excel spreadsheet.

Plus, the Oakland A’s are in my all time Top 5 least favorite baseball teams.

By: joel

joel — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:48:03 +0000

Odd, you’d think the studio would expect something like this from Soderbergh after the last 10 years. I guess they expected to hire the guy behind Oceans 11/12/13, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic, not the guy who made Bubble, Che, and The Girlfriend Experience.

Both movies sound interesting, actually, although I’m guessing Soderbergh made his changes because the original script was a might bit too conventional and boring.

By: Sam Juliano

Sam Juliano — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:31:51 +0000

“If Goldstein is correct, Soderbergh wanted to make a $58 million art movie whereas Pascal wanted a crowd-pleasing baseball flick starring Brad Pitt. ”

I prefer the art-house movie from Stephen!

LOL!!!