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.

"Pie?! There's no pieing in baseball!"

[hat tip: WithLeather]

Michael Lewis wrote the best-seller that became the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. An adaptation of his book, Moneyball, is set to begin shooting in a few weeks with Brad Pitt playing the lead.  Now Brad Pitt’s production company is fast-tracking an adaptation of Lewis’ latest book about the sub-prime meltdown, The Big Short.  Michael Lewis is so hot right now, he could take a crap, wrap it in tin foil, write a book about it, and sell it to Oprah who’d eat it page by page like a goat.

Vulture has learned that Pitt, who is producing an adaptation of The Big Short, Lewis’s explication of America’s 2008 financial meltdown, is moving quickly to get his most recent best seller made: Insiders tell Vulture that Paramount and Pitt’s company, Plan B, are imminently hiring screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Interpreter) for a cool three-quarters of a million dollars to adapt the Lewis book.

Iraq War movies have tanked, which would indicate that moviegoers have little interest in paying to see their country’s current sh*tstorms reenacted on the big screen. And yet Hollywood seems to think that economic Armageddon will prove more alluring than war. In addition to The Big Short, Fox’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps arrives in theaters on September 24, while Summit Entertainment is developing Rigged with star Kevin Spacey, based on author Ben Mezrich’s nonfiction account, Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, From Wall Street to Dubai.

I read this book a few months ago, and I think what people are forgetting when they paint it as another depressing financial crisis story is that the book starts before the crisis, and focuses mainly on the people who were betting everything against sub-prime mortgages (hence the title, “The Big Short”).  That way, you end up sort of rooting for the eventual financial collapse, because you identify with the characters who are taking a big risk to bet against these worthless mortgage bonds, even while everyone is telling them that they’re crazy.  It’s a great read, and because it’s sort of character driven, I could see it working as a film.  That is, as long as they don’t turn it into a story about some savant from the inner city who, even though he can’t read, scores in the 98th percentile in “financial protection instincts.”  And one of the main characters in the book has Asperger’s Syndrome, so I guarantee that’s basically what will happen.  AGAINST ALL ODDS, IDIOT SAVANT MAKES GOOD THROUGH STOCK MARKET.  YER CHANGIN’ THAT BOY’S STOCKS.  NOPE. HE’S CHANGIN’ MAHN.  IN THE MORTGAGE CRISIS, IT’S ‘BLING BANG.’

Seriously, just wait.

Billy Beane explains what he looks for in a pair of titties.

That’s right, folks, Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ other, less popular book not about Sandra Bullock bringing pass blocking to the inner city, is once again set to hit theaters.  From Deadline:

Columbia Pictures is locking in a July start date for the Bennett Miller [Capote]-directed Moneyball. The picture is close to getting a green light after the above the line participants adjusted their deals to bring the film’s budget down from near $60 million to somewhere in the vicinity of $47 million.

The effort was helped by the delivery of the latest rewrite by Aaron Sorkin [your parents' Joss Whedon]. The participants seemed to take to heart the message of the Michael Lewis Moneyball book, which was about how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane hurt his playing career becoming a bonus baby phenom who signed for the money, and then remade himself as a baseball executive who fielded winning A’s teams with a fraction of the payroll that rivals were spending.  I’m told everybody took deal haircuts, including Brad Pitt, who is certainly getting less than the $15 million he signed on for when he originally agreed to play Beane.

As I wrote about Freakonomics, the problem with turning a research-based non-fiction book into a conventionally narrative feature is that they take a book that doesn’t look like a movie and go, “Hmm, how could we make this look like a movie? What does a movie look like?”  And the next thing you know, they’ve turned all the interesting insights and unique structure into 50 f*cked-out clichés and it looks like every sh*tty movie ever.  That was basically what Sony signed on for with the original Moneyball script from Stan Chervin and Steve Zaillian.  Then Steven Soderbergh came in and actually tried to make a movie that was unconventional like the book, and Sony bailed on it three days before shooting.  Brad Pitt’s Moneyballs were probably pretty blue at that point. Now, they’ve got a respected writer and director (the guy who wrote West Wing and the director of Capote) on board, and it’ll probably be an okay movie, but with little chance to innovate. Like it or not (and keep in mind, it sucked) The Blind Side has set the movement back ten years.  It’s basically the film equivalent of Two and a Half Men.  And that’s why God made Sandra Bullock’s husband f*ck a Nazi.  The lord works in mysterious ways.

"Very funny, motherf*ckers."

In a shocking turn of events, The Blind Side author Michael Lewis said in a recent interview that Michael Oher, the subject of his book, wasn’t entirely thrilled with his portrayal in the movie as a noble, helpless slum ogre.  From Bloomberg (via Movieline):

Bloomberg: Have you kept up with Oher, the football player at the center of “The Blind Side.”

Lewis: Yes, but very loosely. Michael liked the book, but when the movie came out he was just starting his rookie year, and I think he was hazed constantly in the trenches. So he refused to go see it, he didn’t go to any of the premieres, he didn’t come to the Oscars — he didn’t identify himself with it.

Since the movie came out, the one thing I’ve heard from him is, “It’s not true that I was that idiotic when I started.” They took surprisingly few liberties, but the few they took really bothered him.

“Look, baby, we know you’re good at protecting the quarterback.  Baby, you’re the g*ddamned Albert Einstein of knocking people down.  What our movie presupposes is, maybe that’s because Sandra Bullock told you to pretend he was your new white family?  This is Hollywood, baby, don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of everything.”

The Blind Side, based on the book by Michael Lewis, is the fartwarming sorta true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family.  According to the trailer, the Touhys help Oher fulfill his potential as a huge black guy by introducing him to football and teaching him to smile and sleep in beds. And then of course there’s coach Bullock’s most important lesson, pretend the quarterback is your new white family.