Brad Pitt Interview For ‘Moneyball’

Based on a true story, Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, whose unorthodox approach to fielding a team had a major impact on the game, discarding baseball’s conventional wisdom. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It’s more than baseball, it’s a revolution – one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he’s tearing out the heart and soul of the game. Alongside Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, ‘Moneyball’ stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Stephen Bishop, Kathryn Morris, and Chris Pratt. ‘Moneyball’ is released in cinemas September 23rd in the US, and November 4th in the UK. Check out what Brad Pitt had to say about the film below.

This project had been gestating for a while, what kept you interested for so long?

Brad Pitt: First I would say that it’s complicated material, it’s not your conventional story or story line, with conventional character arcs. So it took a lot of shots at it, and a lot of people getting their fingerprints on it, to try to hammer out what it would be. Ultimately I couldn’t let go of this story of these guys, who by necessity were trapped in an unfair game, an unfair situation. By necessity they had to think differently, they had to reinvent themselves. In doing so they ran up against great bias and a vitriolic wall, which really tested who they were. At the end of the day it’s a story about our values, about how we value people, what we value as success, what we value as failure, how we understand our own value, that the value system is warped with bias and prejudice – these kinds of questions. There are so many themes, I could go on about 70’s films I thought it could relate to, and these characters, but ultimately it’s about values. It took Bennett Miller to crack the story.

What themes rung true to you with ‘Moneyball‘?

Brad Pitt: I’m a sucker for an underdog story. The title of the book is ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,’ how these guys were able to survive and stay competitive, questioning the things we accept every single day. Because we are doing something the same way for so long, does that mean it’s right for today? We don’t stop and question the context of why those decisions were made, that speaks to me – why if we were inventing the automobile today, would it run on a finite resource that we’d have to go to war for, that it’d take so much of our GDP? No, we’d probably make it run like our laptops. It’s this kind of questioning I find very inspiring. If we were doing it today, is this how we would do it?

When creating your character, did you draw from that questioning way of thinking, did you relate to your own experiences?

Brad Pitt: I related it more to my upbringing. I grew up in a very Christian environment, a healthy environment and a loving a family, but there were just parameters that I didn’t understand, that I always questioned. It took me until my adult years, or leaving home until I could really try on something different for myself, new things. You’re really dealing with certain things as you grow up, figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. I just related to that time, it’s a very personal time, when you lose that comfort system, you cut the tether and you find yourself very on your own with nothing to hold on to.

Do you have a favourite sports movie?

Brad Pitt: As a kid I loved ‘The Bad News Bears,’ we talked a lot about that one. Also ’North Dallas Forty’ with Nick Nolte, I think that was the first R-rated movie I snuck into, so it has a special place in my heart (laughs). Sports films traditionally work on some level of this idea of winning, overcoming adversity, I think it’s something in our DNA why we love our sports heroes and sports team. My team (New Orleans Saints) lost the other night to the Green Bay Packers, very disappointing, but so be it, the loss you can take personally (laughs) – it makes for a very interesting genre!