“If we win, on our budget, with this team... we'll have changed the game. And that's what I want. I want it to mean something.” Talking About Moneyball with our guest, filmmaker Mark Pellington
Andy and Pete welcome acclaimed filmmaker Mark Pellington to discuss his remarkable career as well as one of his favorite films, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball. Mark takes listeners on a journey through his diverse body of work, from his groundbreaking music videos for artists like PM Dawn, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and U2, to his Emmy-nominated title design for the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. He also shares fascinating anecdotes about his experiences working on films like Jerry Maguire and his own The Mothman Prophecies, offering insights into his creative process and the power of storytelling.
The conversation then shifts to Moneyball, a film that has captured the hearts of audiences (as well as becoming a personal favorite of Pete’s). Mark delves into what makes this film so special to him, from its masterful screenplay to the outstanding performances by its cast. The discussion also touches on the film's themes of nostalgia and legacy, which resonate deeply with Pellington's own experiences and creative pursuits.
Throughout the episode, Mark's passion for his craft and his thoughtful approach to storytelling shine through, making for a captivating listen. Whether you're a fan of Moneyball or simply appreciate the art of filmmaking, this conversation offers a wealth of insights and inspiration. Join Andy, Pete, and Mark for a lively and thought-provoking discussion that celebrates the power of cinema.
Welcome to Movies We Like • Mark Pellington on Moneyball
Talking About Mark
Talking About Moneyball
Wrapping Up
“If we win, on our budget, with this team... we'll have changed the game. And that's what I want. I want it to mean something.” Talking About Moneyball with our guest, filmmaker Mark Pellington
Andy and Pete welcome acclaimed filmmaker Mark Pellington to discuss his remarkable career as well as one of his favorite films, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball. Mark takes listeners on a journey through his diverse body of work, from his groundbreaking music videos for artists like PM Dawn, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and U2, to his Emmy-nominated title design for the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. He also shares fascinating anecdotes about his experiences working on films like Jerry Maguire and his own The Mothman Prophecies, offering insights into his creative process and the power of storytelling.
The conversation then shifts to Moneyball, a film that has captured the hearts of audiences (as well as becoming a personal favorite of Pete’s). Mark delves into what makes this film so special to him, from its masterful screenplay to the outstanding performances by its cast. The discussion also touches on the film's themes of nostalgia and legacy, which resonate deeply with Pellington's own experiences and creative pursuits.
Throughout the episode, Mark's passion for his craft and his thoughtful approach to storytelling shine through, making for a captivating listen. Whether you're a fan of Moneyball or simply appreciate the art of filmmaking, this conversation offers a wealth of insights and inspiration. Join Andy, Pete, and Mark for a lively and thought-provoking discussion that celebrates the power of cinema.
Welcome to Movies We Like. Each episode, Andy Nelson and Pete Wright invite a film industry veteran to discuss one of their favorite films. What makes a movie inspirational to a cinematographer or a costume designer? Listen in to hear how these pros watch their favorite films. Part of The Next Reel family of film podcasts.
Andy Nelson:
Welcome to Movies We Like, part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network. I'm Andy Nelson and that over there is Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
It's me, Pete.
Andy Nelson:
On today's episode, we have invited filmmaker Mark Pellington to talk about Bennett Miller's Moneyball, a movie he likes. Mark, welcome to the show. How are you guys?
Mark Pellington:
Nice to, nice to see you. Nice to be here talking about movies. My favorite thing.
Andy Nelson:
Absolutely. Very much excited to talk to you about this and very much excited to talk about this movie. This is a first for us. You know, we've talked about money money ball over on our other podcast, the next reel, but
Pete Wright:
we haven't talked about it here. It's been years. It's been a long time.
Andy Nelson:
It's been it's been a long time. And considering this is also one of Pete's favorite movies, we said, you know what? Let's talk about money ball. Yeah. This is this is gonna be a fun one.
Mark Pellington:
I think 5 years ago, if you had asked me to be on it, it wouldn't have been there.
Pete Wright:
It aged up.
Mark Pellington:
Really in the last 3 years, I think, since COVID where I've spent more time at home and just really vaulted to the top of my deep, deep, deep dive appreciation, like, 15, 20 times, see all the layers and all the lines. And then when I met Bennett recently, that really took it to the next level, and he told me a couple of anecdotes that were just fucking great. Wow. Ending.
Andy Nelson:
Well, I hope we're gonna get to hear some of that stuff. So that's exciting. Before we dig too deep into that, though, let's talk a little bit about you, a little bit about your history and and how you, kind of came into the film industry. I know it was kind of circuitous through MTV and and videos and and all sorts of things, but you've been keeping busy in the industry steadily since, essentially, you started all the way back there, working in those, TV days.
Mark Pellington:
40 years. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, it's
Pete Wright:
I was thinking about that this morning when I was looking at your catalog. It's like, I was a fan of your work when I was 10.
Mark Pellington:
If you say you watch Jeremy when you were 8, I'm ending the
Mark Pellington:
softball.
Pete Wright:
I was in junior
Mark Pellington:
high, and I said
Mark Pellington:
Why don't they ever pick another video? Like, I when I saw 9 inch now or when I saw Bruce Spring, like, it's always Jeremy. Jeremy hit, like look.
Pete Wright:
You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a softball, though, because, you know, it wasn't actually Jeremy. It was PM Dawn. Oh, yes. Massive PM Dawn fan, man.
Pete Wright:
So, like, that album. It's a great album.
Mark Pellington:
First two records, but that first one is genius. Yeah. You a good PM Dawn story. Right?
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Mark Pellington:
So I had made mostly hip hop, rap, and dance videos from 87 to 90. Information society
Pete Wright:
Your energy's now.
Mark Pellington:
The waters. She's homeless. Information Society, 2 big hits. So I I had not done any rock videos. I had done a video for Disposable Heroes of Hypoprocy, Michael Franches band, and we did the PM Dawn video down in Miami.
Mark Pellington:
Right? I met the guys. I met Prince B and Jared, his cousin. Right? Island Records was 2 blocks from my house in Manhattan, my apartment on Lafayette Street.
Mark Pellington:
So I go down and meet them and they're like, he's all the Prince Bees, they're very trippy and blah blah blah.
Pete Wright:
And You're channeling them right now. It's so good.
Mark Pellington:
Probably 29 years old at the time. They were, like, 18 or in 20. And we're leaving Ireland right down at 4th, right next to Tower Records at the time. And we were talking about records and samples and all their samples, and I said, oh god. You guys should sample ELO.
Mark Pellington:
And they're like, who? Electric clay you've never heard electric clay orchestra. I'm
Mark Pellington:
like, no.
Mark Pellington:
Come with me. Yeah. There's a school in a little bit. We walked up to my place, and I played Steve Miller band.
Pete Wright:
Uh-huh.
Mark Pellington:
ELO, Fleetwood Mac. They took a stack of records from me that I never got back.
Mark Pellington:
Oh, no.
Mark Pellington:
Especially ELO.
Mark Pellington:
Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Mark Pellington:
It's, you know, like, great samples in that shit. Great samples. And they're sitting there listening to records. And I'm like, here, try this one. And they're like, I mean, they were like kids in a candy store.
Mark Pellington:
So we went to Miami, did the video, and sweetest guys in the world just, you know, but always was like, when are you gonna send me my give me my records?
Mark Pellington:
Give me my records. Yeah. Right.
Pete Wright:
Man, somebody got screwed in that deal. I think it was you.
Mark Pellington:
But you know what? From MTV, which taught me how to trust my creative instincts in an analog world, get out messages and ideas starting with 15 seconds, then 30 seconds, and 60 seconds, culminating in a very avant garde collage show I made with a partner, John Klein, called Buzz in 1990, which at the time was, like, predated. It was way, way, way ahead of its time. So storytelling was always, like, nonlinear and kind of impressionistic and what we know now is content, 2 minute sound image text. Right?
Mark Pellington:
But we kind of created that at MTV. Right? Documentaries were a natural form, working with poetry was a natural thing, and it wasn't until I moved and did Jeremy, like, Anthrax video after that, which were the first narratives, like, starting to tell a story in the form. And I remember, Jeremy was like, okay. Events, cause, and effect.
Mark Pellington:
Events that happened from the beginning, middle, and an end. All the videos before had all been collages. Right? So learning about narrative, learning about characters, moved to Hollywood, met my wife, make my first movie, then you make got lucky enough to do Arlington Road, which is a real baptism, And then just keep going, up and down, business changes, tragedy in life, ups, you know, and then, like, you kinda, like, your life goes one way and the Hollywood goes another way, and you're like but you always believe in yourself. Right?
Mark Pellington:
You always believe in your ability to tell stories, but your taste is your taste, kept making videos, kept making TV pilots, blind spot, cold case. I just kept working. And then I think COVID was kinda like a real, what I consider now the beginning of the 3rd phase of my life. I'm 62. Maybe I'll teach.
Mark Pellington:
Maybe I'll talk more in wretch. I wrote a book about the first 40 years. It's coming out next year. It's called The Visualist. And it's, like, videos, documentaries, commercials, movies from analog to 1985 to 2025.
Mark Pellington:
Right? 40 years of process, like a big DVD commentary. You know what I mean? Wow.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It's awesome.
Mark Pellington:
Anecdotes, stories. What was it like cutting 3 quarter inch tape? How do you develop a style? Videos that don't get made, editing. Like, every anecdote, every story, every but I think for filmmakers and students and fans of the different mediums, I think it'll be an interesting read and maybe podcasts.
Mark Pellington:
Maybe I could just, you know, talk bring different people on and talk about different experiences. Oh, that's awesome.
Pete Wright:
It's fascinating.
Andy Nelson:
I mean, you you've got a wild variety throughout your career. 2 things that I wanted to ask you about that that definitely caught my eye. 1, on Jerry Maguire, you got credited as a bachelor party film consultant, which
Mark Pellington:
I wanna know about that.
Andy Nelson:
And then on homicide life in the street, you, apparently were also doing title design.
Mark Pellington:
I got nominated for an Emmy award for that.
Andy Nelson:
Congratulations. That's fantastic.
Mark Pellington:
K. Well, in 1990 I don't know what year that was. 91 or 92. I'm from Baltimore. Barry Levinson's from Baltimore.
Mark Pellington:
I had not done a movie yet. I had not done any narrative yet. And I knew a girl, but I was pretty well known for, like, videos and titles and stuff like that. And the girl said, oh, you should do the titles for homicide. We'll pitch you to Tom Fontana and Barry.
Mark Pellington:
So I met them and, you know, being from Baltimore and stuff like that, and Barry Levinson was just like, we don't want some guy just walking through the door like, hey, it's Magnum PI. And at the time, title sequences could be anywhere from 50 seconds to 80 seconds. You know, they were their own form. Right? So I said, alright, I wanna go to Baltimore and shoot the city, and shoot the inside of the homicide station day night, all on 16 millimeter black and white film, reversal, print stock, all these different things shot, like, 9 hours of footage, cut it all together.
Mark Pellington:
I made this great 10 minute piece, showed it to Barry. He's like, don't worry about the nighttime stuff. Just keep it daytime and inside of the station house. I remember shooting, like, Yasset Coto and John Pulido with, like, a little inky light and Bolex, like, swinging the light around. You know,
Mark Pellington:
like, oh, is this art school?
Mark Pellington:
You know? I was like
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Right.
Mark Pellington:
I knew what the fuck I was doing. And, anyway, that was the story of that. And then a few years later, I got to direct an episode with James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Wright, and Broadway legend, Lynne Thigpen. Right? And it was the 3rd episode in a trilogy to start the season.
Mark Pellington:
And my first scene, the first day was a 10 page scene with James Earl Jones. Like, he knew the character. This is the 3rd part of a trilogy. Yeah. Fuck.
Mark Pellington:
Never done episodic TV. You're just there as a traffic cop. Right? And he does the first take, like an 8 page monologue, and I'm just like I'm like, I'm a I'm a director. I better say something to him.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Right. Right. I'm like so I go over, and I'm trying to just basically tell him between these 2 big 4 page chunks of monologue to take a bigger break in between the 2. Right now, I would've just gone and walked away.
Mark Pellington:
I go talk to him for 2 minutes and trying to direct and intellectualize. He goes, son, I've worked with a lot of directors, first timers, experienced pros. You don't need to use so many words, just tell me to take a bigger pause.
Pete Wright:
Oh my God. Years
Mark Pellington:
later, I'm doing a Bell Atlantic commercial with him and I reminded him. Of course, he didn't remember. But I said, you gave me one of the best pieces of advice ever as a director on that show. Wow. So that's my homicide AB story, NPM dot.
Andy Nelson:
That's great.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Jerry Maguire. I was friends with Cameron Crowe. Cameron's was from lived in Seattle. Cameron was friends with Pearl Jam, friends with Alice in Chains, his wife, Nancy Wilson from Hart.
Mark Pellington:
Like, he he was friends with them all. So after Jeremy, he reached out and was like, hey. I really, really like that video, blah blah blah. I met him as a huge fan of his. And for a little while, he became kind of, like, a mentor There's some short stories that I want to option.
Mark Pellington:
This is just when I was spending time in LA trying to, like, move out of videos into that, and he became kind of a mentor, a friend. I'll never forget. He came on some commercials that I shot. At the time, I was doing a bunch of sports commercials like Reebok and a little Nike thing at the time, which weren't like Nike things now, but and he came and he was like, yeah. I just wanna come and take some notes.
Mark Pellington:
So as you know, like, it was about the movies about that world. Yeah. And, God, 1995, whatever, I met him at the Formosa and he hands me the script. He goes, I wrote a character based on you. I'm like, what?
Mark Pellington:
I wrote this character, Bill Dooler, he's Jerry Maguire's best friend, he's a commercial director, he throws him his bachelor party, blah blah blah. I read the script, I'm like, okay, great. Who's gonna play me? In the interim, he goes, I'm making this bachelor party film. Will you help me?
Mark Pellington:
I'm like, sure. It's the film that they show at the bachelor party.
Andy Nelson:
Oh, sure.
Mark Pellington:
So he had shot some stuff, so we shot some more people. Me and my party, we shot some more people, and, like, as, you know, they were all ex girlfriends of Jerry. Cut like a 7 minute version of it or whatever. So we just were feeding him some some stuff for that part of the film. Then one day he goes, I want you to audition to be in the movie.
Mark Pellington:
I'm like, what? Yeah. You should play yourself.
Pete Wright:
Wow. And they're making you audition for it.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Right now. Audition for him and Gal Levin, and he's like, that was good. So I'm like, okay. Good.
Mark Pellington:
Is that good? Can I go now? And a month later, he goes, I want you to come in and read with Tom Cruise for James Brooks. I was like, get the fuck out of here. He goes, just be yourself.
Mark Pellington:
So the scene was at the bachelor party. I walk in with Cruise, and I'm like, the scene got cut. And I'm, like, watching the bachelor party, but people the film, the batch people aren't laughing. I'm like, Jerry, there's a seeding wrongness with this. This is like people so, you know, a longer scene, and I audition, and I guess the sight gag of me next to Cruise, Jim Brooks is just like, ho ho ho
Mark Pellington:
ho.
Mark Pellington:
Cruise is like Yeah. Wait. And I leave, and I see this red haired girl, Renee Zellweger. She lashes. They must've liked you.
Mark Pellington:
And I leave, and I'm driving home, and Cameron calls me and goes, you got the role. And then you got cut? That scene got cut, but I'm in 6 scenes.
Pete Wright:
That's fantastic.
Mark Pellington:
Fat residual checks too.
Mark Pellington:
Hey. That's outstanding. That's awesome.
Pete Wright:
That's so funny.
Andy Nelson:
Funny how these things work.
Mark Pellington:
And I was also in Almost Famous. I play the doorman in Almost Famous.
Andy Nelson:
So awesome. Oh my god.
Mark Pellington:
I auditioned to play Lester Bangs, which was the role that, Phil Hoffman did. Yep. But I went and I said, no, dude. This requires an actor. But, look, Cameron's like that.
Mark Pellington:
Cameron likes just to explore, and, you know, that's what's great about him. We're still good friends.
Andy Nelson:
That's awesome. That's awesome.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. Big fan. I I got I got 2 narrative questions. One of them I'm obligated to ask, because we just did, mothman on another podcast that we do. And the entire conceit of this show is a collection as part of our horror podcast that we do, and the entire conceit is around when the horror is ultimately unexplainable.
Pete Wright:
Right? That we're just scared because of the nature of this thing that has no obligation to explain what or why it's doing the things to us that we're doing. Exactly. And and, I'm curious how you rationalize that angle as the filmmaker behind this thing because that seems to be, you know, and we're big big fans of it. Let me say that first.
Pete Wright:
But it seems to be when people are critical of the movie, it's that they don't get that part of it, that that it it's unexplained with intention because that's the horror of it. Am I lying to you in any way, shape, or form with that assessment? How did you how did you think about that?
Mark Pellington:
Seeing and explaining it are 2 different things. In the process of rewriting the film and coming on board and taking old drafts where, like, where they were seeing more of it, I was like, that's less interesting to me. Right? Like, I wasn't into the paranormal. I didn't get like, my father had Alzheimer's and would sit there and be like, and talk to, like, his 7th grade friend.
Mark Pellington:
Like, I believed in the power of subjectivity and the power of the mind to imagine whatever it wants. Right? So that's what I was into. And I said, the less we see the monster, right, the thing coming towards you flash towards Deborah Messing, or it's in a drawing or and in that particular thing, it could be injured cold with the shape or moth man, and there's a lot of permutations of the form that the entity could take. And the nonfiction book that John Keel wrote, a phone call, a light, as Alan Bates says, an energy, a light, a god, a like, it could take a lot of different forms.
Mark Pellington:
Right? Like, a lot of different forms that could unnerve somebody. A weird sound, a light, like, what is it? What is it outside of our world view of energy, really, of energy that makes people uncomfortable, that manifests itself in fear? And it's that unknown.
Mark Pellington:
And I tapped into, like, being in 6th grade and being afraid of the dark and seeing shadows. And, like, my brain told me that, whether it was there or not, and it wasn't, but my brain was very powerful. So I just locked into that and then not explaining it. I'm like, how do you explain the unexplainable? We got into trouble with people where we tried to say because the truth is there was a real logical reason why the bridge collapsed.
Mark Pellington:
Right? But we were like, no. However, in the end of the movie, we never explained why the bridge collapsed, meaning, oh, it's just some larger thing. You know, a few a few critics are like, took us to the mat for that. We're like, okay.
Mark Pellington:
Well, like, we're not making a documentary. How did it feel? So the minute you wanna make something a little bit less black and white, you're gonna eliminate a lot of the culture. Right? And that was then 20 years ago, but 20 years 22 years later, and last year, I showed it at a horror film fest in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Mark Pellington:
The movie fucking held up. And why does it hold up? Because it kind of works on that classic level. Right? You know?
Mark Pellington:
Like, the fog I love Rupert Wainwright. The fog doesn't hold up. Right? But Mothman holds up because it was grounded by, like, don't look now and Nick Nicholas Rogue and, like, those kinds of things that were you don't know somebody's gonna hold up years later, but the fact that it does and sitting there with an audience and feel like this could be made yesterday Totally. And it's because of that thing.
Mark Pellington:
So we're developing as a TV series, we're really close to getting it made as a series, right? Oh, really? And the woman from the studio was like, Yeah, but we need to know exactly what Mothman is and who it is and what it means. And I said, respectfully, I'm on this project to protect the fact that you're not going to know that. You can get possibilities, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but the minute you start to name it and say what it is, you will lose every mothman fan out there because the appeal of it is that you're not sure, and people assign their own meaning and bring their own sense of experience and fear to it.
Pete Wright:
I I think that's I mean, that just nails it because that that this this film is maybe on the spectrum of audience participation, sort of asks more of the viewer to bring the things you're scared of. Right? The fact that you don't show me mothman makes me interpret the movie through the lens of my own fear. And I think, you know, we we talked recently about Skinamarink, which is one of those movies that, like, it it exists in your own fear. Right?
Pete Wright:
You're seeing stuff that you're creating that they didn't put on screen. You're creating the fear. And I think that's the kind of participation. It's a very trustworthy movie, Mothman, in that regard.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Yeah. And I like skinnamarink a lot in because you feel it. I like to see it on a big screen. I only saw it on a small screen.
Mark Pellington:
I'd love to see it. Like Yeah. Huge. I did stuff for you too, worked with you too in the sphere. I'm back.
Mark Pellington:
I'd love to see that on the sphere.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Totally. Right?
Andy Nelson:
Well Absolutely.
Mark Pellington:
But but to just to finish that up, and the good thing with Mothma is they Mothma but injured cold and Will Patton sees this thing coming through this hole in this abandoned factory and its shoulders like that. The only reason its shoulders like that is because literally 40 feet high in the abandoned brewery was a silhouetted shape that kind of hunched to the left. I was like, and it's out of focus, a guy walking out of focus, backlit with smoke, shot in infrared. There's no effect. It's all just pure energy out of focus.
Mark Pellington:
You don't know what it is, but you know it's as he says, it looked human. Yeah. Right. It's coming towards you. That fucking you put the right sound on it.
Mark Pellington:
That shit was any that can scare anybody. Yeah. Like, right over your shoulder right now, if I told you over your shoulder
Pete Wright:
Don't. Don't. I'm looking at my own camera. I don't want you to say that.
Mark Pellington:
I'm the voice of John of injured told. You know? Yeah. I know. I know.
Mark Pellington:
Hello, Andy. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Hello, Andy. What are you wearing, Pete?
Pete Wright:
Don't you know? You're wearing
Mark Pellington:
a blue and black sock.
Pete Wright:
We we love you, Mark. Don't be a dick.
Andy Nelson:
To to that point though, the sound design was spectacular. Like those the the recordings and everything. Like, I mean, that's that really just kind of like grates at my soul when I'm listening to those things. It it's incredibly effective.
Mark Pellington:
Claude Natessier, French guy, had done Thin Red Line, and I hired him before I hired the DP. Smart.
Andy Nelson:
Smart. Yeah. Yeah. It's it was very important in that film.
Mark Pellington:
And Liza Richardson, the music supervisor, gave me just piles of CDs of just stuff, like like weird, ambient, British band, Otegra and Biosphere, just weird shit. I was like, oh, that's good. We'll use that. Finding the right things. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Pose would play on top of it, mix it with the sound design. I can't wait to make the series or a sequel to the movie.
Pete Wright:
I'm just yeah. My cup runneth over with the excitement. Like, I'm ready now. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Me too.
Pete Wright:
Can I can I I I wanna change gears speaking of this this aspect of audience participation? Right? Asking of the audience to bring the emotional weight to the movie. I I wanna talk about nostalgia, and and I I couldn't have watched that movie 2 years ago and really understood it. But then my dad died, and I found myself in the place of nostalgia.
Pete Wright:
So I watched the movie, and I am I'm blown away at the power of legacy. And and I'm curious where that where that sits for you in in sort of what you what you live for, what you want to die having done.
Mark Pellington:
Wow. Well, you know, that's, thank you for watching it. I know I'm really proud of that movie, super proud and, you know, got it, made paid for it myself with my brother, made my money back, got it out in the world. I was like, fuck it. I'm gonna go make this movie for under a $1,000,000.
Pete Wright:
You got a stacked freaking cast, man.
Mark Pellington:
Yep. Well, it was a good piece of material. Alex Ross Perry, great writer. And, you know, I had been interested in memory and mortality probably ever since I made a documentary about my father and his battle with Alzheimer's in 1993, 94. So even the videos after that, Leonard Cohen, the Connells, and many videos after that played with this idea of memory and mortality and identity.
Mark Pellington:
And then, my wife died in 2004. You add that onto it. Shirley MacLaine movie. I made the last word. How does a woman wanna be remembered?
Mark Pellington:
So I was always really interested in that stuff. Was always a collector, you know, was always a collector of objects and books and physical media. I'm doing a TV show. Right now, we're developing called the collectors. So I've always just really been interested in that.
Mark Pellington:
And, yeah, what you leave behind and what is the, especially in a increasingly nontaxile world, what is the power of an object? Right? And this had come from memorabilia and my dad dying. What do I wanna hold on to? What are we gonna sell?
Mark Pellington:
You know, and just, like, collecting stuff over time, and what do I give away? What do I keep? Oh, you're a packrat. You're a hoarder. Be like, yeah.
Mark Pellington:
But one person's junk is another person's treasure. So I was always really, really interested in that stuff. So I had a file that I had that really started even maybe 2,008 ideas, anecdotes, stories, a treatment for a video, like music video, like, 4 or 5 minutes is the perfect length to tell a idea. Like, there's a fire. And what does somebody take out of a burning house?
Mark Pellington:
Like, that's a great idea for a music video. You could follow somebody around and, like, they go in their drawer and they take this thing and they run outside and then they decide. Like, you could tell that story in 5 minutes if you want. So I had that treatment and things I had written about my wife and other I had, like, a 30 or 40 page file of stuff. It was called the death of nostalgia.
Mark Pellington:
So I was processing and working through this stuff in my own healing. Right? You know, like in grief recovery. When I met Alex, I said, god. I'd love to do something with this material.
Mark Pellington:
I sent it to him, and Neil Labute had sent me a play because I was looking to do something small. Neil had sent me a play about a brother and sister going through their parents' possessions. Right? And I said, well, that wasn't that that gave me the idea of those two characters. Alex and I, he kinda wove together some we said, okay.
Mark Pellington:
Let's make it like an album that unfolds. We discussed, oh, should there be an event, like a memorabilia thing like Nashville? Should they all come together? Should it be and I didn't wanna make it, like, $20, like, only follow the object, although we kinda do that with the baseball. But Yep.
Mark Pellington:
Let one character kinda like an album. Before you know it, you're list like, Sandinista. Right? Like, oh, okay. Oh, before you know it, you're listening to fucking Jimmy jazz or, you know, like, a dub thing, but you started with Police on My Back.
Mark Pellington:
So, you know, let it unfold. Again, you're also asking actors only to be in it for a certain amount of time, which is better in that period of time from Thanksgiving to Christmas when nobody's working. And back then in 2017, 18, you could do that. Right? Actors were like, sure.
Mark Pellington:
I'll come do it. Pay me x, shooting in LA. And, so it kind of unfolded like that. Alex wrote it, paid him, done, made it, got it out there.
Pete Wright:
It's, I mean, there's there's some uncanny stuff, I mean, just in terms of how human the the movie feels to me now that, you know, the the sequence where Offerman's talking to to Ellen and says, you know, I we can take care of you. And she says, you just told me you you didn't want to. Like, that I I had that conversation with my mother. Like, that was that that hits it's one of those movies that hits me so hard. I feel like I was just run through in my chest.
Mark Pellington:
I think if you haven't gone through something like the death of somebody, what to do with their possessions, an older parent, like, it's very much like if you've and I've gotten emails and, you know, over time, fans, if you've gone through those experiences, you really relate differently to the film. If you haven't, you don't. It's like my movie I met with you. If you didn't do drugs with your friends and do a lot of cocaine and alcohol with people in your twenties and experience that part of thing and then hate yourself 20 years later, then you hated the movie. Right?
Mark Pellington:
I'm like, okay.
Mark Pellington:
So that movie came out of that set of experiences. Nostalgia came out of that. I don't think well, actually, I wanted to because I recut my first movie going all the way, and oscilloscope released that. I literally was telling the editor the other day. I said, let's recut nostalgia.
Mark Pellington:
Oh, wow. Just make a new version of it. Right? Like, Soderbergh's my hero. Right?
Mark Pellington:
He recuts fucking days of heaven.
Pete Wright:
All the time. What what do you wanna get out of a recut like that?
Mark Pellington:
There's a lot of stuff that didn't make it in, and I'd like to do a version that's less like, I watch it now, and it just feels very slow and sentimental. And I found an old, like, 8 minute teaser we had made that was a lot more aggressive. I'd just, like, squeeze everything in and just make it, you know, just a different a different energy. Yeah. Like, I watched it the other night.
Mark Pellington:
Part of it was like and I watched John Ortiz out by, you know, like, outward. He's comes out and goes through the burn thing and
Pete Wright:
The wreckage. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
And looks there and takes a picture of it and says, lives lived. And at the time, I was, like, very moved by that, but now I'm like, k. Like, maybe just take the picture.
Mark Pellington:
Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah,
Pete Wright:
comment on it. I just saw it. Yeah. I just saw what you said there. Don't worry.
Pete Wright:
Right? Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
But when you're making it, right, when you're making a piece of music and you feel a certain way, I was fucking sad.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Mark Pellington:
I I was like, fuck. And you make it, and you're like and that's what's great about it. And years later, you can look at it and be like, fuck. That was sentimental or that was
Pete Wright:
Well, do you know I I like, I it's one of those movies. It's one of those experiences where I feel like I don't know if it's a good movie because of how strongly I felt while watching it. Like, I brought so much of myself to that movie and the experience of it. Like, I don't I don't think I could come back and give you a, like, an an, you know, a proper critique of it because I loved my experience of it so much.
Mark Pellington:
And they had a lot of fans and a lot it's I actually, I think it's probably one of my higher Rotten Tomatoes scores as in that world because there was a lot of really good reviews, and then the people that didn't connect to it, they didn't connect to it. Right? And, like What
Pete Wright:
are you gonna do?
Mark Pellington:
If you didn't experience something like that, I remember saying, I think older critics are gonna like this better than younger critics.
Pete Wright:
I believe it.
Mark Pellington:
People with no attention span, it moves too slow for them, blah blah blah. You know, it doesn't fucking matter. You throw it on the pile and let somebody discover it 5 years later, 20 years later, it's there.
Pete Wright:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. That's the magic of it.
Mark Pellington:
I think Ham's really good in it.
Pete Wright:
Ham's so good in it. Ham is, you know, he's my my spiritual brother, though. I think he doesn't even we never met, but I'm sure we'd get along famously.
Mark Pellington:
He's a good guy. Yeah.
Andy Nelson:
Before we switch to Moneyball, I wanna I I I do wanna ask about, Arlington Road because that's a film that you made in, 90 9, which was I I loved it. It was one of those fantastic, endings that just would, like, really kind of hits you. And then, of course, like, September 11th and everything happened. And now I I'm I'm I'm seeing that you are developing a a TV series of it. And I'm just wondering, like, in the scope of the the way that the world has changed, like, has that made it easier to get something like that made, or is it harder to?
Andy Nelson:
Or
Mark Pellington:
as far as, like, the tone of terrorism and all that? Hard. We're, like, floating around. You know, they're still trying to get it made, but and it's a great script, and this guy, Seth Fisher, wrote it. It's like, you know, the TV business is, like, 3 years ago, like, yeah, well, we want this, we want that.
Mark Pellington:
And, like, well, we don't want that. Well, we want this, but we don't want this, this. We want it's a little dark. Kind of I don't know. Now nobody wants anything.
Mark Pellington:
Ugh. And it's fucked. And, like but we still believe in it. And no. It's like, TV's impossible.
Mark Pellington:
It's it's really impossible. So, I we're still it's still alive, but, like, I don't know. I think things have to change. I think this system has to collapse, and it's broken and it has to collapse, and out of the ashes, both in movies and TV, I think, I hope some sort of risk taking will reemerge, and some sort of renaissance of like, and you gotta do them cheaper and be like, great, let's just go do it cheap. That's why I like to just develop small movies that I can hopefully get an actor to do.
Mark Pellington:
But everything's hard. TV, there's so many committees in studios and you you know what it is, like streamers and algorithms and Yeah. It's I know. Thank God we made the movie though.
Andy Nelson:
No. Yeah. Truly.
Mark Pellington:
Because it was made in the day, made by a European company, Polygram financed it. Right? And after Polygram financed it in 90 in 97, fall of 97, shot it in 98, They fit we finished it, Polygram folded, and Lakeshore was the production company. I think Universal, Ron Meyer saw it and said, fuck this, shelve it, put it direct to video.
Andy Nelson:
Oh my god. God.
Mark Pellington:
So this is dark and weird, and Tom Rosenberg, bless his soul, the head of Lakeshore, bought it back, sold it to Screen Gems, and they put it out. It got delayed twice, Once because of Columbine and once for some something else, and finally, it came out. And, you know, at the time, domestic terrorism was the hot button topic. Right, and that's why Aaron wrote it. I think about that.
Mark Pellington:
I I just walked out of civil war, and I was like, god. That makes Arlington Road look like Barney. You know what I mean? Like but, like, that's too real, man.
Pete Wright:
It's too real
Mark Pellington:
for people.
Andy Nelson:
Well but it's, it's powerful, and I I don't know. I I it's one of those films that I it's always stuck with me. Like, it has always stuck with me. It because, like, you get to the ending and just it suddenly it's like you're thinking about all of your neighbors. It's like who who lives around me?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
It subverts it subverts brilliantly. It was a great script, and I'll never forget the first time I read it and watching it now. It's the same thing. You turn the page. You're like, oh my god.
Mark Pellington:
Oh my god. It's built as this oh my god. He's gonna save the day. And then the rug's pulled out. Right?
Mark Pellington:
And you're like, that's that's it. The best story about that, and I'll be brief, the original ending is Tim Rob Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack take Jeff Bridges' kid. Like, he lives with them. Right? That was the original ending.
Mark Pellington:
And they're out on the lawn, they say, any news yet? And Tim says, maybe New Orleans, maybe Chicago, very specific cities.
Andy Nelson:
Mhmm.
Mark Pellington:
And I tried to convince Sony to let me do 50 different versions of maybe Baltimore, maybe Atlanta. Right? And you could even put the audio, just make 50 different prints for each city. Right? Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. And we tested the version where Jeff Bridges' kid stays with them, And, like, it it was always testing around the same thing, but women, it tested, like, 12 with women. Like, okay. You're killing the hero and you're taking his kid?
Pete Wright:
And you're taking the kid. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Which makes you think, like, those other kids aren't even their kids who blew up his hand. Right? Mason Gamble?
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right.
Mark Pellington:
And I come out afterwards, and it was Aaron Krueger's original vision. And it played really it was fucking perfect. Right? It was so it took the dark ending and just took it even further. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. It just
Mark Pellington:
fucked with you. And I'm in the parking lot, and the produced Rosenberg comes out, and he goes, god. That was terrible. Bubba is I said, I thought it was perfect.
Mark Pellington:
Perfect. That
Mark Pellington:
gets in my face, and I'm
Mark Pellington:
like, dude, it's your movie. Shit. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Starts coming after me, and the security guard comes up between us.
Mark Pellington:
Oh. Dude, we're like, we're
Mark Pellington:
in a fist fight. I'm like, we didn't get in a fist fight. You asked me my opinion. It was the writer's original vision, and it was perfect.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Wow. God, man.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Pushing buttons. That's what it was doing. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Nelson:
No. Good stuff.
Pete Wright:
Let's talk about one that's that's less controversial.
Andy Nelson:
Alright. Let's shift our attention to, to something less as as Pete said, less controversial. We're gonna talk about baseball now.
Mark Pellington:
There are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us.
Mark Pellington:
That's a dollar, man. What? Welcome to Oakland.
Mark Pellington:
I need more money. We're not New York. Find players with the money that we do have.
Mark Pellington:
I like Perez. An ugly girlfriend. Ugly girlfriend means no confidence.
Mark Pellington:
You guys are talking the same old nonsense like we're looking for Fabio. We got to think differently.
Mark Pellington:
Who's Fabio?
Trailer:
Your goal shouldn't be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.
Trailer:
Who are you? I'm Peter Brand.
Mark Pellington:
First job in baseball?
Trailer:
It's my first job anywhere.
Mark Pellington:
We're gonna shake things up. Why don't you walk me through the board?
Trailer:
I believe there's a championship team that we could afford because everyone else undervalues them. Like an island of misfit toys. We want you at
Mark Pellington:
at first base. I've only ever played catcher. It's not that hard, Scott. Tell him
Mark Pellington:
to watch. It's incredibly hard.
Pete Wright:
He can't pro.
Mark Pellington:
But what can he do?
Trailer:
You want me to speak?
Mark Pellington:
What I point you again?
Trailer:
He gets on base.
Mark Pellington:
We are card counters at the blackjack table. We're gonna turn the odds on the casino.
Mark Pellington:
I'm heading
Mark Pellington:
in. Text me to play by play. Wait. What? I don't watch the games.
Mark Pellington:
Billy Bean has tried to reinvent a system that's been working for years. There was a nice theory, just not working out.
Pete Wright:
How long is Billy Bean gonna last?
Mark Pellington:
He's proven himself right out of a job. In their minds, it's threatening the game, threatening the way that they do things. Hey, daddy. Do you think you'll lose your job? What?
Mark Pellington:
Where'd you hear that? I go on the Internet sometimes. Don't go on the Internet. Watch TV or talk to people. You're discounting what scouts have done for a 150 years.
Mark Pellington:
What the hell am I doing?
Mark Pellington:
What is happening at Oakland? It defies everything we know about baseball. Just plain crazy. If we win with this team, we'll change the game. It's better This better work.
Mark Pellington:
I'm just kidding.
Andy Nelson:
Now my first question coming into this is, I I thought it was interesting reading up about you that your your dad played football. Was baseball a thing in your family too, like, in the in the world of sports? No. Okay. It was a football family.
Mark Pellington:
I I went to a boys' school in ball. I played lacrosse. I never we didn't even have a baseball team. I was never really a baseball I liked the orioles. I was I was never a baseball fan.
Mark Pellington:
Actually, I was like,
Mark Pellington:
Okay. But I
Mark Pellington:
love Moneyball.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Well and that's that's an interesting thing because there's there's sports movies and sports fans, and a lot of sports fans like certain sports movies. But then there's other people who aren't necessarily as much sports fans, but they can still just love the sports movies. And this is one of those movies that it's a movie about math and statistics and, like, the way that it incorporates into redesigning how baseball is done. And it's I mean, I I imagine that a lot of people who are fans of baseball kind of saw this.
Andy Nelson:
And and, likewise, when they read the book and even just learned what the team was doing, were scratching their heads. Like, is this how is this what baseball is going to be now? And I think that's an interesting element that we definitely deal with in this film.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. I was always into statistics. Like, even though I was in the baseball, like, I would read box scores for all the sports. It's such a weird movie. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Like, if if you try to get that movie made now, no fucking way. Right? But I think it's the power of Michael Lewis's books. Right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That guy brings cred.
Mark Pellington:
And how he takes these things and tells the story. I was even thinking about going on this, they've got a master class in storytelling, and he, like, teaches it. Like, wow, what, How he tells a story is really fascinating. The story of a team that used math and the the archaic statistical model, pre algorithmic at the time, you know, really like ground floor to kind of recalibrate how we evaluate talent. But underneath it, to me, it's about, like, giving second chances to to outcasts, and it's like the bad news bears.
Mark Pellington:
Right? It's like, k. You're an underarm submarine thrower, and you're all gonna be on the scrap heap, and you're elbow shit. Right? So they basically take chances on a bunch of misfits and put them together and use their brain and their heart and their logic.
Mark Pellington:
That's, like, the alchemy of Brad Pitt, who's great in everything, but to me, it's just he's so likable, and him and Jonah's chemistry is so amazing. But, look, it's Zalian and Sorkin. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Andy Nelson:
What a team.
Mark Pellington:
Fuck. And Michael Lewis. I mean, come on.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
So when I was like when I met Bennett recently, I mean, I had met him years ago but reconnected, I was like, God. Like, what was that like? Like and then he took Soderbergh's draft and got his draft. He kinda did what I did on Mothman. He kinda did a mashup of many of them.
Mark Pellington:
He wrote some scenes, but it's so ingenious on the page. I was gonna ask him to send me a copy of the screenplay because it's just it's gripping. And I know that Soderbergh won the cast, like, the idea of making it docu style and putting some of the real footage and real he wouldn't have the real players play themselves. Right? But I think Bennett took that coming from a documentary kind of background, but took the classic architecture of Zalien, who's incredible.
Mark Pellington:
Right? Just every movie is written. And the dialogue of Sorkin and, Jesus, that's, like, that's a good soup. Right? Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
When I watch it over and over and over again and, like, Wally Fisher's photography and certain choices, like, you just stay on them. He's driving and he hears something, hears something other than it turns. It's like stays on a 1
Pete Wright:
And you never leave the car. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Right? It's
Mark Pellington:
very subjective. And, like, Spike Jones is Robin Wright's new husband and, like, that discomfort and all the scouts and how he dresses down the scouts and, like, I'm gonna point it. I'm gonna point it Pete again.
Mark Pellington:
Don't make me
Mark Pellington:
so great. So I never the reason it was on my I never tire of watching it, and every time I watch it, I discover something new, some inflection that a character does. Like, you're not believing this Bill James bullshit, are you? Like, every every secondary character, every line now I've done that in the past with movies over the time that become these movies I love. Diner, growing up with diner.
Pete Wright:
Truly.
Mark Pellington:
Inside out, 25 times. I knew every line, everything inside out. You know, other guilty pleasures, you know, League of Their Own, Clear and Present Danger, you know, these movies that just become, you know, all the president's men. And so Moneyball has is in the pantheon of those movies I adore.
Pete Wright:
There's there's something you you talk about Sorkin, you know, as a dialogueist, which is, you you know, that's his stock and trade. Right? The the fact that this movie doesn't feel like a heavy Sorkin dialogue movie, we don't get the extended walk and talks. I think for me as I was watching it again last night, I was looking at it and thinking, what is the Sorkiniest Sorkin part? And I think you get it anytime he is yelling at his assistant to get somebody else on the phone.
Pete Wright:
Those kind of phone montages are the things that feel Sorkin to me. The rest feels incredibly naturalistic dialogue and grounded in in the space. Like, there's nothing that takes me out of it thinking people don't talk that way. This feels human to me.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Watching a scene, and you're watching a guy wait for phone calls to happen. You don't cut the other side of the phone call. Yeah. Get me, get me Dombrowski.
Mark Pellington:
Hey, Dave. Right? So you're getting the inner workings of you're getting the inner workings of the of the deal making, yet you're just like, are we seeing him? And you're like, call it you you do you're there. You're very present.
Mark Pellington:
Like, you're sitting right across from him. It's like what I like about draft day too. Draft day is moving into that. That's a real guilty pleasure because that's super cheesy. Like, Seattle, home of the Seahawks.
Mark Pellington:
Like, just I'm embarrassed. It's so Ivan Reitman. Eating it eat pancake eating motherfucker. Like, just oh, yay yay. But, like, Moneyball is really the portrait, and it's so classic.
Mark Pellington:
Like, we suck, rise up the winning streak. It's a great sports movie. Right? It's a great outsider's movie. Right?
Mark Pellington:
It's a great portrait of determination. Right? It's really weird. It's weird and brainy.
Pete Wright:
It's a baseball movie that's not really about a lot of baseball.
Andy Nelson:
But it it does fit for the baseball because there are those baseball fans who are, like, their own little statistician. Like, they're sitting there with their card, and they're they're writing all the hits and the the balls. They're they're tracking everything as they watch the games. And so in it it's interesting because it really does baseball is a sport that there is already kind of this level of of that statistical, watching that goes into it for for some fans. And so I I do think that's an interesting element with this particular film is that we're actually seeing how even on the inside of building the team, they're trying to figure out how to use those same sorts of tools.
Mark Pellington:
He made it really clear. He's like, look. We're not trying to replace this, this, and this. We're not trying to replace 1 guy and 31 homers and da da da. In the aggregate, and I'm not a math person at all.
Mark Pellington:
I'm, like, the worst. We're trying to replace him numerically, and we need people to get on base because, literally, they get on base. And the odds are literally, like, well, where do we predict we're gonna be? It's just all that thing of probability. So if you think about the word probability, that really underneath it, it's about faith.
Mark Pellington:
Right? It's really like Brad Pitt had faith in Jonah that there's something here. Right? Jonah knew the numbers, but they had faith he had more faith in the numbers than the players because Art Howe was like had no faith. Like, Hoffman's like, I just wanna put something, you know, that I can show to teams next year on my interviews, right, then Art Howe is famous.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. But, like, really, it was, like, faith in the process. So as a filmmaker, you're like, I know everybody's telling me I suck. I know everybody's telling me fuck off. I know everybody's telling me why you're making movies, but have faith in yourself.
Mark Pellington:
Right? Because Brad Pitt's prepared to go down with the ship. Right? He knows. He's like, alright.
Mark Pellington:
Well, if it doesn't if it flames out, he gets shit canned. Right? Great scenes with his daughter. Say, no. It'll be okay.
Mark Pellington:
Like but he's not arrogant. He goes through all his things, but I think with a different actor, it may have been a different movie, but he's so human and likable. He's never been better to me.
Pete Wright:
For sure. And and Hill and Hoffman. I mean, Hoffman is a Surly coach. I mean, come on. He's fantastic.
Pete Wright:
The thing that's interesting about this to me is that that this is a movie that even if you don't celebrate the baseball part, you can certainly, like, relate to the idea of finding value in the pieces that are still valuable. Like, I don't care if your shoulder's bad. I need you to be able to catch ground balls. Like, I don't that's the skill that I need. I don't care if your knees are bad.
Pete Wright:
I don't care. I'm finding value in parts. And I relate to that. Like, I really I think maybe again as I'm getting older, like, I relate to seeing that in people and in myself, and that that makes a strong connection for this movie.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. I think that your, well, your connection to nostalgia as well is like that. And and ironically, they are leaning into the math, right, which we know years later, this is where we are as a data driven, algorithmic, quantitative culture, not qualitative. Yet these scouts are, like, going on intuition, and this is the way it was done. And without it being like, oh, it's about data, like, in a way, like, there's a new world coming and we better jump on or we're gonna be left behind.
Mark Pellington:
Right? So this movie, like, presaged all of those general managers in the way that baseball is, real like, it was ahead of its time in coming out.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Mark Pellington:
In the, like, baseball was just doing that. Right? So I think that's what, you know, Michael Lewis does, and credit to Sony for making that, that, like, now it's a given. Oh, yes. Sabre, all these data things, put the pitcher, he pitches 2 pitches.
Mark Pellington:
That's why they've changed the rules to make it not like that so guys can't come in and just pitch 1 pitch to a left hander then switch him out. Games were 4 hours long. Right?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Mark Pellington:
So, yeah, it's really weirdly prescient on that level. You have no sympathy for the scouts to get shit can that are hanging on to the past. It's not in
Pete Wright:
Well, they made them the evildoers like that in a script. Throat. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Cup of throat.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Award season, Andy, how to do, at award season? Because I know it won all the awards because it's Moneyball.
Andy Nelson:
It had 29 wins with 82 other nominations.
Pete Wright:
It didn't win all the awards.
Andy Nelson:
It didn't win all the awards, but it won a lot. It won a lot.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Andy Nelson:
It was a frustrating run at a lot of the awards, the ones that I'm talking about, because the artist was very popular at the time At the Oscars, it was nominated for best picture, but lost to the artist. Brad Pitt was nominated for best actor, but lost to Jean Dujardin in the artist. Jonah Hill was nominated for supporting actor, but lost to Christopher Plummer in beginners. It was nominated for adapted screenplay, but lost to the descendants. Nominated for best film editing, but lost to David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Andy Nelson:
And nominated for sound mixing, but lost to Hugo. And then over at the BAFTAs, some similar stories here. Pitt was nominated for best actor, but, again, lost to the artist. Hill was nominated for supporting actor, but lost to beginners. And adapted screenplay, but lost to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Pete Wright:
So you just told me that it won 29 awards out of 82 nominations and then only graced me with The Losers. That seems really spiteful.
Andy Nelson:
The the thing that's frustrating with the movie is that it is one of those movies that a lot of the wins that it had were at smaller places like local critics circles and things like that. Like, that's where a lot of the awards were.
Pete Wright:
Joe's Outdoor Film Festival best feature?
Andy Nelson:
Well, like, it won at the BMI Film and TV Awards for, Michael Dana's film music. At the Boston Society of Film Critics, Brad Pitt won best actor, and, the screenplay won, best screenplay. It won, Critics Choice Award for best adapted screenplay at the Critics Choice Awards. At the Chicago Film Critics Association, it won best screenplay. Hollywood Film Awards director of the year, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, best adapted screenplay.
Andy Nelson:
Las Vegas Film Critics Society, best screenplay. You can see where I'm going with the Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Trend here. Yeah. No. I get it. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Alright. How to do at the box office?
Andy Nelson:
Well, Miller had a handsome $50,000,000 to make his baseball stats movie, plus another 35,000,000 for prints in advertising, which is about a 119,900,000 in today's dollars. The movie premiered September 23, 2011 opposite Dolphin Tale, Abduction, and Killer Elite along with the limited release of Machine Gun Preacher. It opened in the number 2 spot and stayed in the top ten for 7 weeks. Went on earn 75,600,000 domestically and 35,500,000 internationally for a total gross of a 156,700,000 in today's dollars. All told, the film landed with an adjusted profit per finished minute of just under 300 1,000.
Pete Wright:
I had no idea that it was such a horse race between Moneyball and Machine Gun Preacher.
Andy Nelson:
As you watch a film coming at it from, you know, having worn as many hats as you do, Like, do are you watching for different things intentionally as you watch it, or are you just kind of, like, sitting there and then and taking it in? And then as you notice things, you're like, oh, I haven't noticed that before. Like, I mean, do you approach it with these different ways? Because, I mean, you had mentioned the reason I'm asking is because you had you had mentioned Soderbergh earlier and how he kind of does these he'll go in and recut movies just to see what it's like and stuff. And so I just don't like, I'm curious as a filmmaker who loves to explore, especially somebody who, like you, like to go in and would take some of your projects that you've done and, like, you were talking about redoing recutting nostalgia just to kind of change pace.
Andy Nelson:
And I'm so I'm just always curious, like, where's the nudges for, like, the curiosity, the things that that drive you and poke you as you're looking at these things, especially many times?
Mark Pellington:
Well, when I redid my first movie going all the way, it was because, like, Jesus, I was never happy with that movie and the little company oscilloscope that released it. I was like, what filmmaker wouldn't wanna get a chance to remake
Andy Nelson:
Their first film. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Not get paid. You do it for free, but somebody pays a $100,000 for you to remake your first film Sure. And put new score, new voice over, add 20 minutes, take away 30 minutes. You never get a chance to do that. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Yeah. Then you make a dance film, then I'm working on a doc and, like, recutting nostalgia is just be like, okay, because I made that where I was in my life then. I'm in a different place now. A, nobody's asking for it.
Mark Pellington:
Nobody cares for it or wants it. So maybe I give it to my editor and be like, here, here's here's a few grand. Do you wanna try and see what happens? And then I could show it to, Bleecker Street and be like, what do you think of this? Maybe they say yes.
Mark Pellington:
Maybe they say no. Maybe put it on your thing. It's like the point being, like, you can get a chance to revisit. People remix albums and they re release songs. Right?
Pete Wright:
Right. Right.
Mark Pellington:
You know, like, it doesn't just because you made it, maybe it's like, you know what? I was not, like, I couldn't do that. I wouldn't be interested in doing that on Mothman or Arlington Road or anything else. But, like, nostalgia I look at and I've been like, yeah, there's there's a lot of footage that didn't make it and there's a different if there's a remix of it. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Like, rescore it. We make it a little more urgent and darker and a little nastier underneath it or a little just more more energetic. Like, 85 minutes, not 2 hours, a little less lives lived. You know? Still just see what happens to it.
Pete Wright:
Well, that's what that's one of the things that's interesting about the, about going back and remaking your first film. It's like the the idea that the I and and forgive me. I haven't seen it. But all the commentary that I read about it is that you remade that movie and made it absolutely timeless. Like, it's it is a functionally different film.
Mark Pellington:
It's as it's as good as the book was when the book came out. And it had been not like kicking and screaming, like, you go to Sundance, it's your first movie, and, ah, it's a little long, and nobody tells you to make a movie longer or darker.
Mark Pellington:
Right? Yeah. Right.
Mark Pellington:
And then you're exhausted from making it, and you're like, yeah, it's okay, and it got decent reviews, and you're like, alright. It helped me make my next movie. You can work with actors, but I was never really satisfied with it. I never felt like it was as good as the book that I read. So in making it, years later, the greatest gift was making it, and the novelist who wrote the screenplay just died about 6 months ago, Dan Mayfield.
Mark Pellington:
And get him to see it before he lost his eyesight, right, and show it in Indianapolis. He got to see the premiere of his movie twice in his life.
Mark Pellington:
No. That's unbelievable.
Mark Pellington:
And just for him to see it, and he goes, that's the book. Right? And that was the book. So the friendship, not the sex comedy, but the friendship. And the frustrating part is I think oscilloscope didn't have as much luck with, like, selling it to a streamer.
Mark Pellington:
The business is so tough, but, like, you never give up and you can go to Amazon and they'll point you in the right direction and the original's there with commercials of, like
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Doesn't matter Get it on some fast service.
Mark Pellington:
Can be discovered. You know? It's just like sitting in my computer does no
Mark Pellington:
good. Like, it's
Mark Pellington:
gotta get out there. And as you get older, you become less precious. I made a dance film for $7,000, and Kino Lorber released it. It was like, okay. I wanna make this thing, and we made it and put it in slam dance.
Mark Pellington:
And, like, who wants a $7,000 dark dance film?
Mark Pellington:
Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
Not many people, but it's out there.
Mark Pellington:
But it's out there. Yeah. Right. Right.
Mark Pellington:
And you add to it, and you're like, okay. It got me through something I wanted to get through and express about grief that you can't do in words and you could do in music and dance. And that opens you up, and it's like, fuck it. Just it's so hard these days, and there's no judgment, and there's TikTok. There's all this everything.
Mark Pellington:
As an artist, you just you just gotta, like, trust your instincts and do the best you can and use any opportunity to create that you can. Today, I'm finishing a a $40 budget, and an 8 minute music video
Andy Nelson:
8 minutes.
Mark Pellington:
For a band, and it's very it's about the issue in Palestine and Israel, and it's kinda nonpartisan. But it's like literally, like, I can't watch this stuff and not make something or do something.
Andy Nelson:
It's great. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
And I haven't made a video in a while. I was, hey. It's just like, the footage is there, shoot the singer, this old guy with a iPhone and a flashlight. Just make the shit. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Like so I'm getting that way more in terms, like, movies of just, like, how low can you go? There's a filmmaker. He's made 4 movies. His name's Matthew Porterfield made a movie called Salazar's Point, Putty Hill. Makes them all under a $1,000,000 in Baltimore.
Mark Pellington:
Really good. 22 days, $700,000. People are doing it. Like, to sit there and say, I need 5,000,000, like, because you wait around. I'm 62.
Mark Pellington:
I I have a lot of shit I wanna make. So the way I can make it is make it cheap, and, like, it'll look like a movie, and if actors can wanna be in it, It's more important to make it than to you know you know what I mean? Because that that's where we are. For guys of my generation, if you don't make love, lies, bleeding and you're not, like, the hot person great film, by the way, love, lies, bleeding.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding film. Yeah. For sure.
Mark Pellington:
But, like, great. She's having her moment. She should. She's a great filmmaker. Right?
Mark Pellington:
So you make stuff. I've made 9 movies. Doesn't matter. It's harder and hard it's hard for all filmmakers. I'll go have lunch with Wayne Kramer who made the cooler other people.
Mark Pellington:
It's like, it's really hard to get a movie made.
Andy Nelson:
I mean, Bennett Miller, this is you know, he he's made Foxcatcher since this, you know, and since 1011, one other film. I mean, yeah, it's it's hard to get these sort of movies made, period.
Mark Pellington:
I said, Bennett, you gotta move a little faster.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
He's been working on a documentary for 5 years.
Mark Pellington:
Oh, really?
Mark Pellington:
That's gonna be mind blowing. Yeah. Do you know he does AI art? He has these incredibly beautiful portraits, photo portraits made in AI. Okay.
Mark Pellington:
Just check out Bennett Miller Gagosian Gallery, and they're, like, 19th, early 20th century photographs, all made by AI.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating.
Mark Pellington:
That's awesome. A brilliant, smart, really nice guy. But my friend Ted Hope is a producer. Ted Hope, like, spawned the careers of Ed Burns and Ang Lee and with James Shamus coming to Good Machine. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Like, just basically created that nineties indie cinema. And he's just like, you gotta make movies so cheap. There's gotta be a reaction to the system because it's just gotten so difficult and so much fear and so numbers driven. I made 5 movies for a company called Lakeshore. Tom Rosenberg was like 1 guy, if he liked the script and got the script right, he'd be like, this is what we're making it for, get a good cast.
Mark Pellington:
And that was it. I've never made a studio movie. I've never made a studio movie. I've always made independent movies. I've been attached to 8 studio movies, and they never got made.
Andy Nelson:
It's it's it's interesting. Just the stories that you're telling, it really does and and just the fact that we're talking about Moneyball and everything that that, Billy Beane had to go through to make these changes. And as you said, like, he's putting his whole career on the line with these decisions, but he's going whole hog. That's exactly kind of the mentality that, like, people like you and other filmmakers, indie filmmakers need to be taking in order to change this system.
Mark Pellington:
Well, you you make a good point. His owner, right, think about the Oakland A's now are gonna play in a minor league stadium for 3 years in Sacramento before they go to Vegas. Right? So that franchise, even before Moneyball and Moneyball in subsequent, has been a disaster. Right?
Mark Pellington:
And the owner in the movie, the owner's like, this is what I got. We're never gonna be this. So Billy Beane was really, like, super dogma 95. Right?
Mark Pellington:
It was like,
Pete Wright:
yes.
Mark Pellington:
Have any money. Yep. I'm gonna get Hatterberg and this guy and this guy for peanuts because every year we build stars, they're gonna leave. Right? And it happens all the time in sports.
Mark Pellington:
Now it's college sports. Leave for the next best thing. In college sports, everybody's a free agent. You can go play wherever you want at any time. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Sports are like so now anybody can go play anywhere. Contracts mean a little bit in certain pro sports. So Moneyball was really, like, tapping into that. Yep. No money.
Mark Pellington:
I gotta put together a team for a budget. Right? Like, Moneyball was super indie.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. And, like, okay.
Andy Nelson:
It's how do we compete? Yeah.
Mark Pellington:
One of my favorite lines is, like, you know, playing 1st base is easy. Tell them, wash, and Ron Walsh is like, incredibly difficult. That's right. And that guy knows the is the manager of the angels. Right?
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. You suck. That's suck.
Mark Pellington:
He had thrown to the wolves, that guy. I'm all the time in that movie.
Pete Wright:
The other one is, hey, man. What's your biggest fear? Oh, anytime a ball gets hit in my direction. No. Seriously, man.
Pete Wright:
No. Seriously. Anytime the ball gets hit in my direction.
Mark Pellington:
Chris Pratt's never been better. And I tell you, Chris Pratt's an actor that, like, I just god. I wish he just acted more.
Pete Wright:
He's he's gotten into a space of being Chris Pratt.
Mark Pellington:
What's the last movie he really played at dimension? No no no offense to, like, galaxy, and those are entertain nothing is entertainment.
Pete Wright:
This has been awesome, man.
Mark Pellington:
Well, I love the film. I love talking to you guys about it and all the other stuff. Point the viewers to my website, mark pillington.com. There's all the videos and all the docs and all the stuff, and go into a section called the vault, and there's all sorts of goodies in there. And you'll have
Andy Nelson:
a link for your book when it's out on there too.
Mark Pellington:
Yep. Right. It's called the visualists. Excellent. Coming out next year, powerhouse books.
Mark Pellington:
And, I'm just gonna keep going till they tell me to sit on the bench, and even then, I'll keep going.
Andy Nelson:
You just gotta keep going. Yeah. Just that's that's the way.
Mark Pellington:
Going until your number's up.
Mark Pellington:
And And, I mean, you know,
Andy Nelson:
that especially, like, being a creative, being a somebody with, like, an artistic mind is, like, that's what drives you. Right? It's, like, always kind of making something, churning it out. And I think that's what that's what's exciting is the new thing and and just kind of like, what can you do next? And I think that's what's inspiring about talking with you and just hearing how you have moved through so many different areas within the industry, and yet it's always just like trying to click and, like, come up with something.
Andy Nelson:
And I think that's what's what's so exciting. And, again, it just I like I the whole connection, it's just interesting talking about Moneyball with all of this because I just feel like there's so much of that connection with it. You know?
Mark Pellington:
Yeah. I'm trying to learn. You know? Like, especially the last couple years, really try to learn and look and absorb and, you know, when I was doing that YouTube stuff and helping them at the Sphere and like, because I love to do this immersive stuff and my visual stuff and maybe I teach, and maybe I write a book, or may there's a lot of different ways to be creative. I do a lot of, like, photography and still art.
Mark Pellington:
Maybe I move more into that. Like, I know what the grind of getting a TV show is made, and, like, that's a grind. There's gotta be other ways to express yourself and think about the world critically and visually. You can be visual and critical and think and not just keep beating your head against the wall with corporations and agencies and chase actors where you're basically powerless. You know?
Mark Pellington:
And unless you're, like, one of, like, 5 people, you know, it's a very it's like the Chateau Marmont private room, like, hello. Right? You know, like, if you don't have access Yeah. Right.
Mark Pellington:
Makes it
Pete Wright:
tough. I'm sure most of us on and listening to the show can't even relate to that joke.
Mark Pellington:
It's just so inexpensive.
Mark Pellington:
Actors that sat on my couch and couldn't get arrested and couldn't get because they didn't mean anything, and then they become big stars, and you can't like, hello. That's the shot. Hello. Yeah. In your hi.
Mark Pellington:
Oh, hello, Mark. I fondly recall talking about your little art piece. I'm sorry. I'm
Pete Wright:
I can't take your call right now.
Mark Pellington:
Carriage to the castle. Oh my gosh.
Mark Pellington:
Pretty stuff. Why don't I have some more? Alright. Well, I mean, it has
Andy Nelson:
been a fantastic conversation, Mark. Thank you so much for joining us. Amazing stories. It's been a thrill.
Mark Pellington:
My pleasure. You guys take care. We'll talk soon.
Andy Nelson:
Alright. Thank you all so much for joining us today. For everybody else out there, we hope you like the show and certainly hope you like the movie like we do here on Movies
Mark Pellington:
we like.
Andy Nelson:
Movies we like is a part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network and the Next Reel family of film podcasts. The music is chomp clap by Out of Flux. Find the show at true story dot f m and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, threads, and letterboxed at the next reel. Learn about becoming a member at the next reel.com/membership. And if your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, we always appreciate it if you drop one in there for us.