danefergus: Brad Pitt Relates To 'David Vs. Goliath' Story In 'Moneyball'

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Brad Pitt Relates To 'David Vs. Goliath' Story In 'Moneyball'

'I certainly feel injustice,' he tells MTV News.
By Eric Ditzian, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill in "Moneyball"
Photo: Columbia Pictures

You'd think it's been a while since Brad Pitt felt anything like an underdog, since those days in the late '80s when he was pumped just to get a few lines in a TV show like "21 Jump Street" or had to console himself with work as an extra next to then-hot shots like Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz. These days, he's Brad Pitt: Oscar nominee, beloved of Angelina Jolie and ... freaking Brad Pitt.

But as the actor admitted to MTV News at the Toronto International Film Festival, there are still times when he feels like the world is against him, when he finds himself in a similar situation to the 2002 Oakland Athletics, the small-market Major League Baseball club at the center of his new movie, "Moneyball."

"I certainly feel injustice," he said. "I'm no foreigner to that, whether it's real or perceived."

Unjust is certainly the situation the A's find themselves in the film, which is based on the best-selling nonfiction title by Michael Lewis and which hits theaters September 23. The team had a vastly smaller payroll than other teams but nonetheless was able to rise to the top when general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) employed a newfangled, statistics-based approach to building his roster of players.

"These are guys that are working in an unfair game," Pitt explained. "They are a team with no money trying to fight — it's David vs. Goliath. How are they going to be competitive? How are they going to stand a chance? They can't fight the other guys' fight; they're going to lose every time. These guys had to rethink it and rethink what they were doing.

"They're Galileo, in a sense, going up against an institution that is not going to be very happy about them questioning their norms," he added.

Check out everything we've got on "Moneyball."

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