I’m a sucker for an inspirational sports movie, I’ve been known to cry at the end of them. Miracle is my favorite. It’s a wonder it took me so long to watch Moneyball. Not only is it a highly talked about movie, and well regarded film. It is also produced by Dana Brunetti. For those of you who might be behind on the news, Dana Brunetti and Michael DeLuca are producing Fifty Shades of Grey.
I guess the first question I should be answering is, what exactly is a film producer? From Wikipedia, “A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to the film studio or other financing entity, while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film.” Basically, they are responsible for the film and can farm out as much or as little of the work as they would like. They create the concept of the film, and choose the screenwriters, directors, actors, etc for the film that they think will make that concept come to life.
I thought Moneyball was well produced. I’ll admit, I didn’t read the book. I like a sports movie, but I enjoy a romance novel. But I did a little research and yes, they did deviate from the actual events when making the movie. For example, Billy Bean and Art Howe didn’t have the best relationship; but, it did not revolve around the roster. And well Pena, was already playing minor league ball when he was traded. But, if you’ve seen the movie, you can see that those adaptations were made to increase the tension of the movie.
One thing that irritates when movies are produced from books or real life is when things are changed unnecessarily. I’m sure, the writer or producer had a reason, but if it’s not obvious to the viewer then it didn’t work. There’s plenty of times I’ve watched movies and said, hey, that’s not how it happened, and then realized that the change made the film cinematic. And after my few minutes of whining to myself I can move on. Anyway, I’m ok with the changes made even though they’ll annoy a sports fan.
I liked the choice of actors, all the big actors did a convincing job. I’m kinda used to Brad Pitt as the strong male lead, with a beautiful female lead to challenge him. This was a change of pace for him, and he worked it. Jonah Hill as Peter Brand had the right touch of confident but also worried that he was in over his head.
I liked the pace of the movie and although the deleted scenes were interesting, they would have bogged the movie down for the wrong reasons.
It’s an art to pull together a movie that people are going to compare to a book or a real life situation. Focusing on the goal of the movie, and letting that guide you from scene to scene to create a final product, instead of making everyone happy with every scene is what a producer needs to do. I think in this case Dana Brunetti did an excellent job.
Crissy
