Brad Pitt Interview: 'Moneyball'

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT > MOVIE REVIEWS

Brad Pitt and the rest of the cast talk about the making ‘Moneyball’. 

By Lori Hoffman

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Sep. 21, 2011

Pitt goes to the baseball field for his current film.

Brad Pitt made his first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival in 1992 for A River Runs Through It as a young actor who was overshadowed by the star power of his director that year, Robert Redford. 

Now 47, Pitt was the main attraction of the media frenzy — along with George Clooney — at this year’s film festival. Pitt was in Toronto to promote his latest film, Moneyball.  

The movie is about Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s GM who didn’t have a Yankee-sized payroll and had to use a new mathematical formula to field a competitive baseball team in a small market. Beyond his own ambitions as a general manager trying to field a competitive team, Beane was driven by his own failure as a player, to the point that he couldn’t bring himself to watch his team in person for fear of jinxing them. 

Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote), with a script by Oscar winners Steven Zaillion and Aaron Sorkin, based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, the movie is sharp and surprisingly funny as it depicts the clash between old school evaluations of minor league talent and the new stats and math formulas that were designed by Yale graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). 

On what attracted him to the project, Pitt says, “By necessity, these guys were trapped in an unfair game. They had to come up with something different. At the end of the day, it is a story about our values, how we value other people, what we value as success, what we value as failure.” 

And asked about his favorite sports movie of all time, Pitt explains, “As a kid I loved The Bad News Bears — Bennett and I talked a lot about that. I loved North Dallas Forty with Nick Nolte. That was the first R-rated movie I saw so it has a special place. Sports films work on some level at overcoming adversity. It’s something in our DNA, we want to love our sports heroes, our teams. We take losses personally.” 

Director Miller declares that baseball is a special game, “Because there is no clock in baseball. It’s not over until it’s over. It’s like life in that there are prolonged moments of boredom punctuated by extreme excitement. There is so much going on from pitch to pitch.” 

Actor Chris Pratt, who co-stars in the TV series Parks and Recreation, plays Steve Hatteberg in Moneyball, a washed up catcher who was given a second chance as a first baseman by Beane.  

Pratt found the whole experience of working on Moneyball inspiring, but was especially proud of the skills of the team assembled to make Moneyball’s baseball sequences authentic. “I was inspired by hanging out with real baseball players. Every baseball player [in the movie] apart from myself did play in the pros on a minor or major league level. I would put this baseball team up against any other baseball team from any other baseball movie ever and we would kick their asses! To hang out with these players inspired me to become a bigger fan of baseball and join a softball league.” 

Miller sums up baseball and his movie by declaring that, “There is a romantic side to this game and a scientific side. It is also a game that has more superstition then any sport ever. Inexplicable things do happen in this game. It is the most studied game. It’s got more science and math and more PhDs study it than any other game. I also think it defies understanding. Just when you think you’ve got it in your grip, it defies you.”