ACTING LIKE I'M NOT | a day in reality tv

By Mister Mooks

I had responded to a craigslist ad seeking “big personalities” for a major network’s Proof-of-Concept, profiling a law firm in Staten Island.  A Proof-of-Concept, I later found out, is basically like a pilot, except instead of airing it and assessing the public reception, only the heads of the production studio watch it and decide right then and there if they want to make a batch of 13 episodes.  Apparently that’s how you do it when you’re a big-time network that makes new, shitty reality TV shows every other week.

Anyway, I sent them a link to some video work I’d done where I’d played a sort of obnoxious asshole (type-casting, I’m sure), and they wrote back saying they liked it and wanted more.  This time, they wanted to see me talking to the camera, explaining why I’d be a “phenomenal law firm intern.”  I figured most people would be responding to this earnestly, so I took a different approach and went full-douchebag: “Let’s break it down word by word,” I said, and proceeded to explain that “law” represents everything about how I live my life; “firm” represents my convictions, as well as my abdominal muscles; and “internal”…well, like, my abs are like, inside me, too, man.  I closed by mentioning, “I also know PowerPoint and Excel.”

Apparently it went over well, so they asked me to come to the shoot at an address in Staten Island and to be there by 2PM.  And that was all they said.  After asking for more info, I got a call from one of the producers, who explained things a little more.  But only a little.  All I knew was that I’d be acting as though I was coming in for an interview at the law firm.  “So this is like a documentary?” I asked.  “Sort of,” he said, “in the way that Jersey Shore is a documentary, I guess.”  We talked about how I’d do a variation of the asshole personality I showed in the video, and he made it sound as though the two guys interviewing me would be thrown off and it’d be funny.  I’d be over-confident and under-qualified, a perfect combination for a terrible interview. 

As I drove down the West Side Highway, getting pumped to Crown Heights Affair on Studio 54 Radio and feeling good about my tie clip, I tried to imagine the two lawyers interviewing me.  They’d be stuffy types, probably some by-the-book tax attorneys, which is why the producer told me to be a little outlandish in my attitude, making them uncomfortable.  I looked forward to trying to explain how my “previous work experience” (read: bartending) had thoroughly prepared me to enter into the judicial world.  They’d prolly look at each other, like, “Whaaaaaat?”  Yeah. 

The first indication that my presumptions were off-base came when I walked into the building and saw the other “applicants” signing their photo release forms in the lobby.

One young guy is wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, with his bushy mess of hair tied in back.  His name is Frankie – I can tell because it’s tattooed in big letters under his left sleeve (peeking out from under the right sleeve is a skull adorned with roses).  He tells me he got the first one when he was seventeen, and the second one not even twenty-four hours later.  It seems as though that could have been last week.  “I just woke up the next morning and loved the way it felt in the shower, man,” he says, stroking his triceps.  He must be very clean.

Then there’s a woman no younger than forty with fake tits no smaller than double Ds.  She’s wearing a low-cut azure dress and keeps brushing her platinum-blond hair away from her oversized designer sunglasses.  Her name is Dakota.  She will later share with us some story about partying with Pamela Anderson, who at the time was snorting something or other and encouraging her to do the same.  Dakota has to be back in Manhattan later to shoot an episode of Girls, where she claims she’ll be playing Lindsay Lohan.  This seems like a stretch; she must have quite a range.  I assume she means Lindsay’s mother, but she repeats herself (or at least mutters “Lindsay Lohan” again), so who knows.

Joe is a retired narcotics detective from Long Island who looks more like a card-carrying motorcycle gang member than an ex-cop.  I had actually seen him in the parking lot as he got out of his shiny black Chrysler 300, complete with tinted windows.  He wears blue jeans and a (p)leather vest over a t-shirt, both arms covered in tattoos.  He has a permanent tan covering his bald head and a bronze goatee to match.  Occasionally he takes a drag from his electronic cigarette held between ringed fingers.  At most, he might be 5’7”.  Back in the parking lot, we just nodded to each other solemnly, but he will quickly reveal himself to be anything but the quiet serious type as he jokes with and pokes at everyone else on set.

You get the idea.  Everybody else was similarly ridiculous in some way – a black girl in skin-tight pants with a fashion haircut; an Ecuadorian woman in a cocktail dress that looked like Angelina Jolie method-acting a junkie role; a pudgy hipster dude with big bifocals and an Amish beard.  When he tells us he lives in Spanish Harlem, Joe says, “The [100]23?  I used to do Narcotics up there.”  The hipster replies, “Yeah, man…I do a lot of narcotics up there, too.”

So first they film us downstairs, walking into the building and waiting for the elevator.  By “they” I mean the one girl who holds a camera and the intern who tells us when to walk in, one by one.  I start to wonder where the rest of the crew is (or if there even was a crew), and why they wouldn’t just let us go upstairs and meet the guys in the firm.  Don’t they want to go over what they want us to say to each other?  Other questions arise among us “applicants” – is this an audition, or is this the actual shoot?  Is there a real internship opportunity?  How many of us will they take?  I don’t care one way or another about most of these inquiries.  I just want to have fun.  But it looks like some of my fellow interviewees wouldn’t say no to a real job offer after all.

Finally, we go upstairs to the office, and it becomes even clearer that I won’t be dealing with the uptight brand of lawyers I’d anticipated.  The first hint is the gorgeous cleavage of the heavily made-up Italian receptionist, who, after a double-take, I determine is not here as an actress.  She is a staple of the office, and I knew this because she is included in a few of the many – at least a dozen – hand-drawn portraits of the proprietors of the firm.  Now, by “portraits,” I really mean, “caricatures that you get for ten bucks from a guy on the sidewalk in Times Square,” and by “proprietors,” I mean “Mario and Lou.”  I thought of asking why there isn’t the muzak version of the Godfather soundtrack playing over the stereo, but for some reason I figure that won’t go over well.

They film us again one by one, this time walking in the office door and reciting to the receptionist, “I’m here for the internship.”  After this they pile us all into a conference room to hang out while they set up for the actual interviews.  The ten or so of us sit around the big conference table, and are mostly moody and silent.  I’m sitting next to Joe, whose occasional hits from his e-cig waft over me, smelling like some kind of fruity concoction, oddly enough.  Small talk starts among us, and Joe launches into war stories from his Narco days, including the time he got shot.  “Gimme your hand,” he tells the black fashionista, who shrieks when he presses her fingers to his ribcage.  Apparently the bullet is still inside, as Joe tells us, “Because it calter—cawtah?—caulterized to the major organs.”  He then shows us the stab wound on his arm but (fortunately) refrains from showing us the one on his “buttocks.”

Meanwhile, Dakota talks about her time in LA, where she worked at some charity events for Playboy.  She mumbles something that includes the phrases “week-long” and “scrabble game,” and I can’t stop myself from saying I’m not surprised a scrabble game at the Playboy mansion takes a whole week to finish.  Everyone laughs and she tries to explain that it was a “scramble, not scrabble,” but I prefer my version.  When I mention that I have to get back to the city for work later in the evening, she asks me, “What are you, a stripper?”  Joe then puts on a lispy voice and puts his hand on my thigh.  I tell everyone Magic Mike was actually based on my life, not Channing Tatum’s.  We all laugh.  We’re having a good time.

Another hour and change goes by before we’re moved to the hallway to finally begin the slew of interviews.  They line us up and tell us we’re going to go in one by one, to be ourselves, and just have a nice chat with “the guys,” who are still yet to be seen.  At first I thought this was to prevent us from knowing what we were getting into, but a quick look at the lineup makes me realize I’ve got this backwards.  I imagine what it’s going to be like for them when Dakota walks in with her silicon spilling out of her dress, using the phrase “never convicted” when relating her previous experience with the law.  And here I thought I was the one brought in to throw a wrench in the interview process.  Now I realize I’m the straightest of the bunch.

The first “applicant” goes in, and I’m up next.  The producer I spoke with on the phone comes over to make sure we’re on the same page about my “character,” and we agree I should go in there with the mentality of someone who thinks he already got the job, assuming this interview is just a formality.  Now that there is an attitude I can pull off.  The first guy comes back after no time at all, says it went “smooth,” that the guys are pretty nice.  The crew readies the set for my turn, and then I go in.

The receptionist with the beautiful bosom leads me to the corner office and introduces me to Mario and Lou, who both sit behind a big desk.  In the corners of the room are two cameramen, whom I’ve been instructed not to look at.  I sit down across the desk after shaking hands and them doing the stereotypical “Heys” and “Ohs” and “Hey-ohs” that you’d get from the cast of Goodfellas.  Lou, the larger of the two, has a cue ball-head and wears a suit from the Big & Tall section of Men’s Wearhouse.  Mario’s at least a foot shorter with plenty of gel in his hair, and it takes me a second to realize he means “law” when he says “lorr.”  I strike my cross-legged, furrow-browed pose and we get into it.

They look at my resume (my actual one – the producers had liked the idea that I actually had previous work experience, unlike my fellow “applicants,” I guess), and ask me why I want to work in law.  I launch into a rapid-fire monologue about the importance of the legal system in society, permeating the values whose foundation was established with the writing of the constitution in 1776…at some point Lou cuts me off, saying, “Whoa, did you like, memorize that speech, or something?”  “Careful, Lou,” Mario says.  “Pretty soon this guy’s gonna be sitting in your chair.”

There’s some other chit-chat and then one of them asks, “You know, you’re a smart guy, you went to Columbia…if you wanna practice law, why aren’t you in law school?”  I think for a second and then tell them I just want to work in a law firm, and I didn’t think you had to go to law school for that.  “I mean, for instance,” I ask, “did you guys even go to law school?”

The seconds of silence that follow, along with the daggers shooting out of their eyes, make me think of cement shoes and fish wrapped in newspaper.  But it turns out they were mostly shocked, not just angry, and mutter out something about how of course they went to law school.  Still, I’m glad the cameramen are there as witnesses.  Anyway, that about wraps up the interview, and I pretend to not understand.  “So I’ll be starting next week, or…?”  They laugh and throw me out.

I walk back into the hall with my “applicant” friends, feeling good about having fun.  Then the producer comes out and repeats something I said in there, saying that it was hilarious, and that everybody in the monitor room (a separate office where the producers and director had been watching everything on screens) was cracking up, dying with laughter.  He goes on to say the VP of Talent was in there and wants to keep in touch.  “She gloms on to people,” he says.  “Like Joe out there – we’ve been in talks with him for a long time now.”  What do you know – ol’ Joe is gonna be a star, too.  I stroll out of the office and get back in the car to whoop and holler along to more disco as I drive back to Manhattan, thinking about what kind of facial expression I should use when they put me up on billboards to promote the show.  Sorry, did I say, “show?”  I mean shows, plural.  After all, they’re gonna glom.

A day later I realize that there is no show and might not ever be…and even if there is one, I won’t necessarily be in it…and aside from all that, I worked that day for free, not even for a few bucks for gas…and who knows if there really was anybody in the monitor room at all?  Do they just say that shit to everybody?  What was in that sheet of paper I signed but didn’t read at the beginning of the day?

So here I am, back in the office for another day of regular old Reality, where I play Jim and there’s no Pam but there are plenty of Michael Scotts.  Ah, well.  It was fun while it lasted.  Stay tuned for my series finale!

(GUNSHOT)

(SLUMP)

TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK | shut the fuck up

By Mister Mooks

I’ve started an experiment at work this week. Actually, “experiment” is probably the wrong word. That implies I’m testing a hypothesis, unsure of the results that will follow. In this case, I know exactly what the conclusion will be. Namely, this:

Out of the several hours I spend at my desk in the office each day, only about thirty minutes in total could be considered true “work.” This week, I’m cramming all of those isolated minutes into one complete half-hour (is “complete half-hour” an oxymoron?), which means – that’s right – I’m going to conscientiously abstain from doing my job for the rest of the day.

I know this is not a novel idea. I’m certainly not the first to do this. And yes, I’m ripping it straight out of the pages of Tim Ferriss, that efficiency douche who also claims you can get jacked by working out for only four hours each month. (Actually, I don’t really think he’s a douche. But it’d make me a douche if I didn’t give him shit like everybody else does. Right?)

So here’s how it works. After arriving in the office, I log in to Skype so my colleagues know I’m “here.” Then I look at how many new emails are waiting for me, ignore them, and then…that’s it. Until noon. Then, in a mad rush, I send off all the necessary responses and do the bureaucratic robot processes that make up my job, and go to lunch. Then I come back and don’t do anything until 4:00, when I repeat the procedure, and then get the fuck out as soon as the clock hits the mark.

So now we’re talking about something like seven hours of “free time,” Monday through Friday. That’s 35 hours a week, 140 a month, fresh for the pickin’. In theory, I should have The Next Great American Novel written in no time. All those half-written screenplays of mine should practically finish themselves. Oh, and I’ll finally get through all the lessons on Codecademy, read the complete works of William James (Henry, too – why not?), and do all of the other enriching, educational, and worthwhile things that I’ve been putting off for…well, years.

Right.

Instead, I’ve been catching myself reading articles about the heaviest woman on the planet losing weight through “marathon sex,” waiting for friends to answer me on Gchat (come on, guys…guys?), and watching Youtube videos of shit like a politician shooting himself in the middle of a press conference. And here I am, acknowledging the problem, fully aware not only of the real disservice to myself but also of the simple solution to the issue, and yet…not doing anything about it whatsoever.

This smacks of the worst kind of bullshit, and this self-deprecation crap smells even worse. Excuse me while I spiral into a recursive vortex of variations on hating myself. Or, better yet – join me!

Because I know I’m not alone in this. After all, some of those friends on Gchat are actually responding, which means they’re not doing their work at work either. And it means they’re certainly not doing the “Good Work” at work. And how many times have we had that old conversation: “Hey man, you know what we should do? We’re all creative types…we should get together and have some kind of, like, salon, like Gertrude Stein and shit.” “Yeah!” “Great, I’ll write something.” “I’ll write something, too!” “Awesome!” And then you high five and shake hands and bro-hug and go your separate ways, only to find yourself remembering that conversation months later, when you’re at work watching all the trailers on apple.com for the second time, and you haven’t written a single goddamn word of that one-act play you were gonna have everyone read aloud while sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes and listening to Django Reinhardt.

Christ, even this piece (of shit) of writing is meant to appear on one of those “collaborative blogs,” and if it does, it will be the inaugural entry in an otherwise barren wasteland of abandoned ideas. More time was spent on theorizing what the blog could become than on the actual production of content – and by “more time,” I mean infinitely more time, since no time has been spent on actual writing at all.

But enough bitching. There’s gotta be some optimistic way out of this piece, and I intend to find it. Hell, I guess I could say, “Well, look, I’ve spent these morning hours well, and now I’ve got a whole 750 943 words to show for it!” And then I could end in that call-to-action voice, saying, “You, too, can turn your ideas into tangible content – won’t you join me in the crusade for self-improvement by contributing to our collective blog as originally idealized?”

I dunno, maybe that’s too hokey. Here’s the more accurate version:

All I did was throw a bunch of words together, without thinking too much about it, and somehow got you to read all of them. And that’s pretty satisfying. So maybe the real ending to this is a threat. If you don’t contribute, then mine is the only voice you’ll hear coming out of this place, and that’s not gonna be good for business. That’s not gonna be good for anybody. But I’ll be having a ball, and feeling good about how I spend this newfound free time at the office. Plus, it looks a lot more like work when I have a Word document up on the screen instead of the Wikipedia page for Frotteurism.

For now, I gotta get back to being a mindless drone of bureaucracy. Don’t worry - I’ll be back in a half hour.

#LATENIGHTPROBLEMS | the two-pronged struggle of snl

By Brian Kenney
 

Statement: The "Best of Chris Farley" ranks alongside The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy as one of the best selling DVD's of all time.

Statement : In March of 1995, Chris Farley, the standout cast-member of SNL and rapidly rising television star, was chosen to be on the cover of New York Magazine to represent that month's centerpiece article written about a week "behind the scenes Saturday Night Live".  The cover of the magazine read "The Inside Story on the Decline and Fall of Saturday NIght Live" and the article was titled "The Death of Comedy".

Water is wet. The sky is blue. Saturday Night Live isn't as funny as it used to be. Some things change, and some don't. 

And it would be a waste of time for me to write, or you to read, something that tries to defend or criticize the quality of the current Saturday Night Live. The common consensus seems to be that the current show 'is pretty funny sometimes' and I think I agree with that.  

The show will always be faced with 'golden age' comparisons (Bill Simmons with Eddie Murphy, my Mom with Bill Murray, me with Will Ferrel) that are a little unfair both because of the way 'Best of' DVD's make these past era's seem more consistently funny than they really were and because of the unfairness of any kind of  'golden age' comparison.  As Owen Wilson said in his character's (self-admitted) minor revelation from Midnight in Paris, it's not helpful to think that the present doesn't compare to some past era because, "That's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying."

And to try and prove whether something is 'funny' or 'not funny' is...kinda...yeah. Listen, I watched Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie last weekend and that movie wacked me out so thoroughly I don't think I'm going to be able to clearly think about the difference between funny and not-funny for a few months. (Don't ever ask me what Shrim is. Please.)

But there is something that's becoming more apparent every time I watch the show: Saturday Night Live is fundamentally disadvantaged in it's ability to do topical humor.

This is through no fault of the show's writers or cast; it's just a product of having to compete with the world wide superwebs. This won't be news to anyone, but if something happens  on Sunday, the topic will be run through so many times, and you will here dozens of jokes through so many mediums (Twitter, The Onion, Facebook memes, Conan, e-mail's with your friends, any of the pop-culture blogs) that the topic is usually tired and dry by Thursday.  I don't think there is a way to measure how many jokes it takes for  a news piece or topic reach its comedy saturation point, but that point does get reached somewhere.

Then it's Saturday, and Tina Fey is hosting SNL. She runs through her monologue and makes a joke telling her soon-to-be-born daughter to "stay away from that Charlie Sheen".  

And, again, I don't want to try to make a case that the jokes made on SNL are good or bad jokes. Tina Fey might be one of the single funniest people now or ever.  It's just that the 55th and 56th jokes you've heard on about Tim Tebow or Rick Santorum are never likely to get the same reaction as the 2nd and 3rd. 

To sum up: How do we get Kel on this show over Kenan? Am I alone on this?

MOVIEMAKING INEFFICIENCY | how moneyball missed the point

By Dave Mulhern

Moneyball is an excellent book by Michael Lewis that details the behind-the scenes life of the front office of the 2002 Oakland Athletics. The 2002 A's and GM Billy Beane - due both to their success and to the book that chronicled it - were the first and most famous face of the years-old "sabermetric" movement in baseball that prioritizes statistical analysis ahead of traditional scouting methods in the construction of a baseball team.

It's a story of overcoming disadvantages by enforcing a nontraditional methodology in the most systematically and rigidly traditional corner of American sports. Specifically, the challenge of Moneyball is that of applying a decidedly intellectual approach to a game largely informed by anecdotal and situational evidence and played in great numbers by overgrown children indoctrinated in old baseball's conventional wisdom.

A tale of ingenuity and inventive thinking, Moneyball was owed a thorough and envelope-pushing cinematic treatment. A creative, out-of-the box approach to moviemaking would have garnered the appropriate atmosphere for a film about an uncommon and somewhat subversive baseball ideology. Instead, the Hollywood powers that be gave us a movie rife with issues both large and small. 

First and most egregious is the absence of Joe Morgan as a character. The media as a whole was critical of the sabermetric approach to building a team, but no one quite as stubbornly, visibly, and indignantly as Joe Morgan. He was cited several times in the book as a prime example of baseball's old guard, and was extremely outspoken - if incoherent and uninformed - in his criticisms after the book came out.

The other one comes with an easy explanation of "that's just how movies work," which is the tacked-on storyline about Beane's turbulent home life in which his ex-wife raises their daughter with her new husband (played by Spike Jonze). They do so in a manner not entirely agreeable to Beane, and his quirky daughter writes a song for the Juno soundtrack (or something) to express that it's tough having divorced parents. Now, besides the fact that these are not the scenes I'm there to see if I'm watching Moneyball, out of this storyline comes a scene where Beane's ex-wife leaves him a voicemail about the team's recent success that is abhorrently cheesy, lazily written, and unnecessary. This criticism would feel much more unfair if it weren't for the line "You done good, BIlly." 

Here's the thing about Moneyball: Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The Social Network) adapted the screenplay. Bennett Miller (Capote) directed. Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men, The Social Network) produced. Mychael Danna (Capote, Little Miss Sunshine) did the music. Brad Pitt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Jonah Hill played the movie's three biggest roles. 

It feels like the decision-makers behind this movie took every piece of conventional moviemaking wisdom and built the 2002 New York Yankees of personnel and overdone sports-movie tropes to tell the story of the 2002 Oakland A's. With that in mind, let's complete the comparison by identities from the '02 Yanks to the various key Moneyball players.

Brad Pitt - Derek Jeter
Seriously, this one is almost too easy. Clear captain/star parallel, good looking dudes, impressive list of famous former and current mates; the match is nearly perfect. Jeter is 1,000% old-school baseball scout wet dream. He hits for a high average, steals, bunts, scraps, and looks good and owns every room he walks into with his charisma. He' a "plus fielder" because he made an awesome play against the A's, and he's got all the intangibles that make scouts swoon.

These two are among the best and most charismatic performers in their respective fields. Pitt, for all his baseball ignorance and anti-Moneyball big name/big paycheck status, puts forth great performances in a variety of roles, including Beane in Moneyball. Similarly Jeter, despite being the figurehead of the evil baseball empire for 16 years and playing a non-SABR- friendly style of ball, has been a cornerstone of three World Series champions since 1996.


Perhaps the most important parallel, though, is the 'original' status of each one's involvement. Pitt was the first key contributor to sign on for the movie, committing to the project in its original incarnation in 2007, when Bennett Miller was Steven Soderbergh and Jonah Hill was Demitri Martin. Jeter, had been with the Yankees six years by the time '02 came around and has been the face of the franchise through many personnel switches, both successful and otherwise.


Aaron Sorkin - Roger Clemens
Aaron Sorkin is undeniably talented. He's been praised and awarded at nearly every stop of his career, from A Few Good Men through Sports Night, The Social Network, and everything in between. As far as Hollywood writers go, Sorkin is the ultimate hired gun.


Clemens entered Major League Baseball with the Yanks' division-rival/historical nemesis Boston Red Sox and spent time with another divisional foe in Toronto in 1997 and 1998 before coming to New York as a free agent ringer and a five time Cy Young winner. Clemens embodied everything that baseball purists resent about the Yankees and the free market system of player movement in sports, taking an enormous contract to play for an established juggernaut of a team instead of challenging himself by joining an up and coming team or staying loyal to a franchise.


The comparison strengthens when you compare Sorkin's Moneyball adaptation to Clemens' 2002 season. Both were objectively good, but Moneyball didn't approach Charlie Wilson's War. Similarly, Clemens had a 2002 regular season in which he only won 13 games (he averaged 16.25 in years that he pitched 200 or more innings) and lost his only postseason start. Also, since this article concerns the sabermetric movement and wins are like poison for stat-heads, that was also his third-worst season for WHIP in that same stretch.


Jonah Hill - Jason Giambi
Remember Fat Jonah Hill? He was quirky, funny, and endearing as a guy who excelled at one thing that was at least slightly linked to his appearance. Just a legitimately funny guy who always had a presence in a defined secondary role. He parlayed some great comedic performances into the role of Peter Brand, where he would slot in as a solid comic relief character and a key player in a highly regarded cast.


Now think about 2001 AL MVP Jason Giambi, a player with a distinctive style of his own, a mean-streak player and a prototypical cleanup-hitting basher. His personality dominated the A's team in a way that a first baseman rarely does. He filled his role perfectly, hammering balls to the tune of a .333 average, 47 Home Runs, and 120 RBIs. In addition to that, he led the league in the all-important Billy Beane statistic of On Base Percentage at a ridiculous .477 clip. (Giambi also led the league that year in Walks, Slugging Percentage, and subsequently On base Plus Slugging.)


By the time that Giambi sold out to the Yankees, shaved, cut his hair, and became 2002 New York Yankee Jason Giambi he was a shell of his former badass self. And it seems silly to even state this but HOLY CRAP SKINNY JONAH HILL. Both men shifted to fit a new role that was not theirs previously. Both were worse for the change, even though they still did well (though Giambi still hit homers he struck out 30 more times than the year before; though Jonah nailed his awkward-funny-nerd role it was not as good as what he does well).


Phillip Seymour Hoffman - Bernie Williams
Bennett Miller - Jorge Posada
It sort of feels like both of these pairings should go together. Bennett Miller and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are apparently childhood friends. Which is not to say that Bernie and Jorge are, but both were original and lifetime Yankees, the closest parallel we're realistically going to make here.


Hoffman is absolutely a prototype character actor that can act his way into a convincing and compelling leading role. What stuck out about casting Hoffman as Art Howe: Art Howe weighs - oh, let's say - about 190-200 pounds (author's note: I looked for this for a while and honestly could not find it). Phillip Seymour Hoffman weighs in at conservatively 225. Shaving his beard and his head make him look more like Art Howe, but come on, one is a tall skinny dude and the other is Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman pulls it off, but is probably miscast there.


Similarly, Bernie Williams, as great as he was (5-time All Star, though not in '02), was mis-cast as a top-line middle of the order hitter, especially by 2002. He homered in the low 20's and drove in 80-some RBI's and was a good hitter who contributed to a lot of good teams and could occasionally produce his way to being a featured talent. But he was never Derek Jeter or Jason Giambi the same way Hoffman was never Pitt or Tom Cruise.


Miller and Posada get points as a pair for being overlooked in central roles. Perhaps no one is in more control of a baseball team on the field than the catcher. Every signal goes through him, every mound visit involves him, and he touches the ball during every play. The director shapes the movie similarly, but in 30 years people will not think of Moneyball as a Bennett Miller movie in a similar way that people will not think of the 2002 Yankees as a Jorge Posada team.


Mychael Danna - Robin Ventura
Digging a little deep for this last one, but that's sort of the point. Both Ventura and Danna had pretty forgettable contributions to the final product of each entity, but were also sort of symptomatic of the systematic issues of each. They each had moderate success before coming over (Danna in the films already mentioned and Ventura with the White Sox and Mets), but neither was the linchpin of the success or failure of their movie/team.


Danna's music fell somewhere between "Explosions in the Sky in Friday Night Lights" and "Hans Zimmer in The Dark Knight" without pushing either envelope. Ventura hit 27 HR's and 93 RBI's in 2002, and was replaced the next year by Aaron Boone (the gold standard statement for non envelope pushing in baseball). Neither was bad. Neither was great.


If the makers of Moneyball wanted to make a truly transcendent sports movie, they had a solid story and cast of characters to work with. And they came out and made a good sports movie. But they made it in all the wrong ways. They defied the character of the very story they were telling in the makeup of its cast and the structure of its production. Ultimately, it was an fun movie, and probably more successful financially than its underdog counterpart would have been. It just feels like such a shame that such an opportunity was missed to capture the spirit of one of the truly unforgettable sports stories of the 2000s.