On the surface, Moneyball is a baseball movie, but that wasn’t really what Brad Pitt found most interesting about playing Billy Beane.
The movie follows the real-life Oakland Athletics executive as he tries to build a competitive team without the kind of money available to baseball’s biggest clubs. His solution was to question the way players had traditionally been evaluated and put more faith in numbers and data than many people inside the game were comfortable with.
For Pitt, though, the more interesting part was the man willing to do all of that.
Before Moneyball was released, Pitt talked about seeing something familiar in Beane’s willingness to push against the way things were supposed to be done. That eventually had him thinking about his own life, the choices he had made and the times when following an expected path might not have been the right answer.
Click on the video below to hear Brad Pitt explain how playing Billy Beane in Moneyball had him looking at his own life for inspiration.
Brad Pitt found more than a baseball story
There was plenty for Pitt to study in the real Billy Beane, but simply copying the mannerisms of a baseball executive wasn’t going to be enough. Brad Pitt found something more interesting in understanding why Beane was willing to keep pushing an idea that so many people around him questioned.
Baseball had been doing things a certain way for a very long time. Scouts trusted what they saw, organizations relied on familiar methods and there wasn’t much reason for the people inside that system to believe somebody needed to come along and rethink it. Then Beane did exactly that.
That was where Pitt discovered a more personal way into the character. He connected with the idea of reaching a point where you have to decide whether to go along with what is expected or take a chance on doing something differently. In that part of Beane’s story, Pitt found inspiration that had very little to do with running a baseball team.
For an actor, that was a much more interesting place to start.
It also helped Moneyball avoid becoming a movie that only worked for serious baseball fans. Knowing the sport certainly adds another layer to it, but you don’t need to know batting averages or understand how a front office works to recognize somebody becoming frustrated with an old system. That broader idea was something Pitt connected with, and it gave him another reason to see Beane as more than simply a baseball executive.
Moneyball works well beyond the ballpark
That may be one reason the movie has held up so well.
The statistics and roster moves are important because they explain what Beane was trying to accomplish, but they aren’t the whole story. There is also the pressure that comes with taking a different approach when everyone can see whether it succeeds or fails.
If things work, you’re the person who changed the thinking. If they don’t, plenty of people are waiting to tell you that the old way was better after all.
Pitt had more to work with there than the mechanics of baseball. Beane was stubborn, frustrated and convinced there had to be another way forward, even when the people around him didn’t necessarily agree.
That gave the actor a way into the role that felt personal.
And it is probably why calling Moneyball simply a baseball movie has never quite covered it. Baseball is where the story happens. The bigger idea is what it takes to question the rules everyone else has already accepted.
For Pitt, understanding that part of Beane meant looking at some of those same questions in his own life.
Moneyball is available on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, digital platforms and is currently streaming on Hulu.
You May Also Like:
