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From Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/more_moneyball.php

More Moneyball

A few days ago I posted a short piece about a letter posted by Carson Reeves' Scriptshadow that seemed to come from the Soderbergh side of the fence about the Moneyball shutdown. But that was only the beginning.

Reeves soon after removed this letter after threat of legal action. But an HE reader who'd copied the original letter pasted it into the HE comments section after the Scriptshadow deletion. Which led to my being told by the same people (not Sony legal, apparently) that the letter had to be removed because it was extremely actionable. I didn't see how or why, but I took it down anyway after talking it over with friends.

I never got into what was said in the letter, but MCN's David Poland has posted an intelligent inquiry piece that addresses asome of the issues rasied by iut, and in so doing he takes a swipe at sites whose reportings about the episode have more or less given Soderbergh the back of their hands.

"Movies die every day," Poland writes. "Feelings and careers are hurt. (Over 200 people were put out of work unexpectedly by [the Moneyball] cancellation.) But the cheap slaps at Soderbergh are way over the top and as unnecessary as slapping down someone you just fired with gossipy attacks (even if accurate), adding insult to injury. Hollywood treats artists like shit because of money and ego. But there is no excuse for those of us who cover the industry to be equally venal."

Original Post:

Scriptshadow's Carson Reeves today posted a favorable-to-Steven Soderbergh perspective [dead link]the Sony/Moneyball meltdown that sounds -- emphasis on that word -- fairly knowledgable and well informed. It comes, he says, "from someone very close to the project."

In a preface Reeves writes that "in real life there are two sides to every story, but in Hollywood there are a dozen [and] it seems that this thing is way more complicated than just 'your draft/my draft.'"

This latest perspective argues with Reeves' own view that Sony chief Amy Pascal reacted reasonably to Soderbergh having turned Zallian's allegedly "solid" Moneyball script "into an incomprehensible mess."

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 3, 2009 at 6:50 AM