Two years ago, Sony pulled the plug on a Brad Pitt-starring, Steven Soderbergh adaptation of Michael Lewis’ statisticky baseball book, Moneyball, just a few days before it was to begin shooting. Soderbergh had planned to shoot it in an “informal, documentary” style, which kind of makes sense, seeing as how the book is non-fiction. But studios tend to be terrified of anything unconventional, so they brought in Capote director Bennett Miller and got a rewrite of the script from Aaron Sorkin, who’s brilliant at writing slick Hollywood stuff that’s just entertaining enough that you forgive it for not being very realistic (“How do I know you weren’t studying? Because you go to B.U.!“). So that’s why now, instead of people talking about statistics like in the book, we see some old guy asking Brad Pitt “Who’s Fabio?” to illustrate how out of touch old baseball scouts are. Oh well. At least Sandra Bullock’s not teaching inner city blacks to play football.
[hat tip: WithLeather]