More background on the screenplay development of “Moneyball”
I have many posts tracking the circuitous course Moneyball took through years of development and pre-production hell finally making its way into theaters. So when I wrote this — Moneyball: The movie that almost never was — I figured I had gleaned pretty much everything possible to know about the screenwriting process on that project.
I was wrong.
Let’s start with the official writing credits for the movie. Per the film’s IMDB page:
Screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, based on the book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis
If you’re familiar with the movie, I’m guessing you know who Lewis is. Ditto Zaillian and Sorkin. But what about Stan Chervin? For a fascinating journey into the Hollywood script development process, hit the link:
Enter an article in the September 2011 issue of San Francisco magazine titled “The Legend of Billy Beane.” Written by Bennett Cohen, who is himself a writer-producer-director, Cohen read numerous drafts of Moneyball scripts by multiple writers including Stan Chervin. He also interviewed some of the projects principal players including Chervin.
The whole article is worth reading, but let me pull some key excerpts focusing on Chervin’s involvement in and contributions to Moneyball:
It turns out, a true baseball story isn’t even what sold Sony Pictures, the movie’s production company, on the project; it was the personal element that writer Stan Chervin brought to the material in 2004. Chervin belongs to a literary species unique to Hollywood. (In the spirit of full disclosure: I went to school with Chervin at UC Berkeley.) A talented writer, he has made a good living penning numerous scripts over the course of two decades, and his particular knack for developing and pitching material was exactly what was needed to get Moneyball rolling. Yet the movie will be his first actual credit.
Sony was particularly taken by a central element in Chervin’s pitch: Beane rebuilding his relationship with his estranged teenage daughter, which would function as a personal-life mirror of his move from failure to redemption in his professional life. Chervin admitted he made it up and explained to me his deeper purpose: “For me, when you’re dramatizing a true story, the focus has to be more on the moral truth — the emotional truth — rather than the literal truth.”
His pitch successful, Chervin wrote one screenplay, then another draft, as various elements came and went. Other writers were brought in, director David Frankel (of The Devil Wears Prada fame) was attached, and Chervin was brought back for yet another draft. At this point he made perhaps his most valuable contribution to the project: What he wrote was good enough to interest Brad Pitt in playing Billy Beane.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of stars when it comes to getting movies made. Chervin tells a story about how he once pitched a project to two different studios. The first one passed on it, so for the second pitch, he made one slight change: He walked in with George Clooney, who had agreed to star in it. That time, it sold.
Chervin’s Pitt-attached draft, dated July 13, 2007, centers on Beane’s professional life, tracking his progression from a disappointing career as a player to a satisfying one as the A’s GM. In a way, Chervin transferred the emotional content of the father-daughter conflict, which was now gone from the story, into Beane’s relationship with his team, mimicking the logic of a romantic comedy: Billy meets team, Billy gets team, Billy almost leaves team, Billy stays with team. At the end, another suitor arrives — Billy is offered a job as GM of the Boston Red Sox (which did happen) — but he decides to stay with his true love. After he announces this decision, the team literally embraces him.
It’s ironic and for many writers a bittersweet reality that script development and the film production process can take such a long time that the contributions of the early writers, who often play a pivotal role in getting a movie up and on its feet, tend to get lost in the haze of months turning into years.
In that light since Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin have received a lot of public acclaim for their writing on Moneyball, deservedly so [I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine the script garnering some nominations during award season], I figured it was time to turn the spotlight onto what contributions Stan Chervin made to the project.
So I’m happy to announce that Stan has agreed to do a GITS Q&A. We will discuss Moneyball, his career, his current slate of projects, and lots of questions about the craft of screenwriting.
Look for that down the road at GITS!
For more of the San Francisco magazine article, go here.
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