The Ides of March

Back in the late 1930′s, when our great-grand-parents were coming of age and discovering sex and politics (most assuredly in that order but I have no way to verify) populist film director Frank Capra brought forth the great grandfather of all political films. The title was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). It starred Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, and what was billed, at the time, as the greatest cast of supporting actors ever. The film garnered 11 Oscar Nominations but won only one Oscar.

A film adapted from a popular novel by Margaret Mitchell, called Gone With the Wind, walked off with most of the gold that year including Best Picture.

However Mr. Smith was a brilliant film – Jimmy Stewart played Jefferson Smith who was appointed as a compromise by the governor of an unnamed western state to replace a Senator who had just passed on. Smith was appointed because the sitting governor couldn’t abide the political boss’s handpicked stooge and he had to worry about his own re-election so he couldn’t name a popular reformer because that would piss off his bosses. So, the middle of the road type, read as unknown, Jefferson Smith is appointed to the Senate vacancy because he was naive, inexperienced, an idealist, and yet could be (they assumed) easily manipulated.

Mr. Smith turned out to be a film that stood Washington on its head. While it is an inspirational and feel good story of the highest caliber, the Washington Press Corps and the US Congress reviled the film because of its portrayal of the corruption  and venality in those hallowed halls of the American Government. The Senators and Congressmen didn’t much care for the fact that they came off looking like a bunch of crooks at worst, or a bunch of hogs at the trough at best.

So with a film like that one, symbolizing one of the major roots of political drama in cinema, we can look back and take note of some of the off-springs of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, beginning with Robert Redford in The Candidate (1972), Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men (1976), Joan Allen in The Contender (2000), and of course, The American President (1995) which was directed by Rob Reiner and starred Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. These films made statements about the life and times of American politics and its natural bedfellow – the press.

Moneyball

Let’s get the positioning of the film Moneyball out of the way at once. Though it is a film about baseball – it’s not quite mentionable in the same breath, or same way as Hoosiers with it’s last second winning shot, or Rudy with its miraculous touchdown catch by a kid deemed too small to play, or even The Natural with Robert Redford hitting a homerun into the light towers causing the light bulbs to explode, the crowd to roar, hats to be tossed into the air in the delirium of victory, and of course, the music swelled. It’s nothing like those films. There is a magical game-winning hit, but it doesn’t conclude the season, or even the film.

This was real life, and as the Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane mused, “If you don’t win the last game of the season, no one will remember what came before.”

Therefore we can say that Moneyball isn’t a classic sports film with an uplifting ending at all. Given the title, you then might think it is about the art of the deal, or about the business of baseball, and to a degree it is. Beane set out to change the game of baseball. He said the game was unfair – How could a team with a $39 million dollar payroll successfully compete against a team with a $114 million dollar payroll. In fact the film opens with the Oakland A’s losing to the New York Yankees in the playoffs to end the A’s 2001 season.

So going into the 2002 seasons, Beane’s A’s lost three key players to free agency, and he was told by the team’s ownership that there would not be more money coming in to replace those players. So making millions, or being a major player in the acquisition of expensive players on the free agent market isn’t the topic of the film either. They were a small market team with a small budget and Beane had to make it work.

Moneyball, the film, came out of Michael Lewis‘ best selling book, Moneyball -The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Beane said that the A’s would have to become the baseball equivalent of a card-counter playing at a blackjack table. They would turn the odds on the casino.

Your goal shouldn't be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy Wins. In order to buy Wins, you need to buy runs

That put him in direct opposition to the way things were done in baseball for the past 100 years. Beane, along with his sabermetrician Peter Brand – played by the marvelous Jonah Hill, were going to turn the way players were scouted and developed on its head.