Director Bennett Miller on Why Moneyball Worked: 'It Became Personal to Me'

So it was Brad's job to ease studio nerves during production?

I'd try to hold the dam up myself as long as possible but if water broke and began to burst through and it looked like it was going to spill over, I'd call in the cavalry.

Can you talk about one time in particular that you had to call in the Brad Pitt cavalry?

It happened many, many times, but the very first time I met with Brad, we discussed whether we thought we could make a movie like this at a studio. Is it possible? And he said, "Yes, let's just do it. If anybody ever begins to make things difficult, just let me know and I'll take care of it." There were many instances, but in the edit -- at one point you have to show a long edit early on to show where you are, and the edit definitely had a different feel and a different taste. It's not a traditional Hollywood movie in regards to its style. Brad responded really positively to it and helped create an environment of confidence so that we could let the thing gestate and become what it needed to be. He came in with a really strong voice at that point that helped protect it so I could continue directing the way I wanted.

You always hear actors talk about how each director has a different style, but I'm curious whether you have to adjust your directing style for each actor you work with.

Yeah, I mean the aspect of directing that pertains to working with actors, for me, is very flexible. Actors do approach their jobs in very different ways. Ultimately, what you care about is getting the performance, and I definitely like to hang back a little bit and figure out how different actors work and how different actors work with each other in different circumstances. I definitely will become a different person to facilitate a performance.

So how did you approach Brad and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill differently in this case?

Brad and Jonah and Phil all have very different approaches. It's kind of a longer explanation, but Brad is the leading role here, which means that he has a very different job than Jonah or Phil here. A leading actor needs to carry the story with his performance. That's what the leading actor does. They lead you through the story so that relationship necessarily has to involve a lot more discussion about what we're doing, the purpose of the scene and what we need the scene to deliver. I think that Brad is typically a character actor and typically if he wants to do something, you can let him loose. In this case though, it was really a collaboration in storytelling. Jonah is very improvisational. Brad and Phil are also really strong improvisational actors, though they tend to not approach things like that. We did do a bit of that in this movie, and that was great for Jonah. And what's there to say about Phil? He's just one of the greatest actors ever.

In the past couple of days, Art Howe has been speaking out about Phil's portrayal of him, specifically how unflattering he considers it to be. He also mentioned that he thinks it was an unfair characterization that the actual Billy Beane provided to the filmmakers. Do you care to comment?

I hadn't heard that. I'm going to look that up after this call to see what he said.

Finally, what are you working on next?

I've got a couple of things that I was trying to get made before Moneyball, and it looks like I might be getting them on their feet now. But nothing really to talk about yet.

Read Stephanie Zacharek's review of Moneyball here.

[Top photo of Bennett Miller and cast at Moneyball's Toronto Film Festival premiere: WireImage]

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