Buster Posey seems to be following in the footsteps of two famous people from an adjacent industry — how will his performance wind up comparing?
“if I’m being honest with myself, always thought this would be something fun to do,” said Buster Posey in Monday’s press conference. Fun isn’t a term most would use to describe the hard work of running a $300 million operation where success is determined by a crapshoot. And yet, it makes sense, because Buster’s just built different. But how will it go?
When I think about that statement and what’s happening with the San Francisco Giants right now, I’m reminded of other star turns from in front of the camera to behind it and I come up with two comparisons: George Clooney and Ben Affleck.
Both are A-list stars who leveraged their fame and success to become directors and producers who gained control of the vision for a project. There are many cases where this has occurred, and I think the most direct comparison is actually Clint Eastwood, but in order to create the biggest tent possible, I’ll stick with the two faces who are most familiar to the most people. Plus, Ben Affleck is the 21st century Clint Eastwood anyway.
The filmographies for either guy doesn’t go very deep — Clooney with 9 movies and 2 TV shows, Affleck with 6 movies and 2 shorts — but it’s clear that they’re going for different things in their storytelling and self-mythologizing and that difference is where Buster Posey comes into this. Of course, maybe you won’t agree with my conclusions about these filmmakers. Let’s give it a shot.
- Clooney is concerned with big and pop cultural themes: fame, integrity, the environment, sports. They’re message movies about Important Things (“Our government lies to us!” “Art is important!” “The environment!” “These Olympic rowers from Washington state ticked off Hitler!”) populated with archetypical characters. What happens in them is typically something historical or history-adjacent. They often feel like movies that would play after he’s given a speech at a fundraiser or in front of the United Nations.
- Affleck makes pulp movies: guys doing stuff, be it robbing banks, working for the CIA, being detectives (and, in that one, it’s a guy and gal), or selling shoes. But the focus isn’t on the real history or the hook it’s about the story of those characters and how they make decisions that creates the drama and changes them. His movies often feel like ones you’d have found in the DVD stack of a college dorm at the turn of the century.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably still wondering what this comparison has to do with baseball and the Giants. I am placing the parameters of how this switch from star player to exec could go. Will he wind up being able to mimic the job and accomplish some things or will he turn out like Ben Affleck and direct the Best Picture?
The fame angle in all this has been downplayed because, well, how could we talk about it without simply spewing our own intuitions and assumptions? But I see this as a pretty big part of the equation, for good or ill. Farhan Zaidi and so many other current execs got into the game because of the famous book/movie Moneyball. It’s not unlike kids catching the acting bug at a young age because of a play or a movie they saw.
Buster Posey being so famous that the broad concept of him becoming the President of Baseball Operations doesn’t sound immediately ridiculous, and that’s because of how he got to be famous: a patient, prepared, clear-speaking guy who just wants to win and was one of the best to ever do it.
Affleck co-wrote Good Will Hunting and has always been in and around good movies, so the move to directing wasn’t a shock. He and Matt Damon were at the tail end of the indie filmmaking surge we saw in the late 1900s. He’s been involved with some global causes, but these days he’s more committed to making sure the film industry survives in some form, and created a production company that seeks to make with sustainable financial models.
I sort of have my own criterion for what I want to do with the movie and develop it, and sometimes it’s in sync with kind of what people in general see and sometimes there’s just a piece or two that I want to make sure that I get. I wanted people to come out of “Gone Baby Gone” genuinely arguing and not presenting one truth, for example. I felt successful for the most part in that, although there were many, many other things just filmically and execution-wise that I don’t feel that I presented.
So I have these goals. For example, in [“Argo”] I really wanted to make the tones work together fluidly.
With Clooney, it has always seemed like a guy who wasn’t taken as seriously as he desired and so he’s tried to prove himself in other ways. He’s more like a politician, too, with humanitarian work a key component of his public profile.
“It’s more fun, you have a lot more control. I get to boss them around and I don’t have to learn how to row. […] It’s fun to come in in the morning and it’s fun to write a screenplay and then have somebody build a set that you wrote, it really is.”
There really is a nexus between these three men. A photogenic guy taking on a surprise role that nobody imainged for him except himself? That describes Clooney, Affleck, and Posey. They’ve all used their fame to lift others up (Posey’s on pediatric cancer research) and wound up aiming that power of fame at making the type of projects they want to see.
Making a baseball team and making a movie has a surprising amount of overlap. If Posey were to approach it like an auteur (as Farhan Zaidi might’ve), then his lack of experience creates a lot of downside. Genuinely, though, nobody with any sense of the Giants or who Buster Posey is thinks that’s even a possibility. It’ll be a collaboration, and that’s why the Clooney-Affleck comp works!
Being a film director means making every decision about a movie, including which decisions to delegate and which to answer. It’s no different in a front office. At the end of the day, the buck stops with the President of Baseball Operations (or general manager). Buster can get advice from a variety of contributors and let Bob Melvin manage however he wants, but he’s now responsible for every player and every goal of the organization.
Will he be a thoughtful big picture guy who generates competent if unspectacular work (a Clooney) or a thoughtful craftsman (an Affleck)? The easy answer is that he’ll just be himself, which could be better than Clooney or Affleck; but, their experiences are instructive.
That they chose to leave their situations as stars to work behind the camera — effectively increasing the public scrutiny — should tell us just how much they wanted to direct. That the people who finance movies didn’t balk at the idea should also tell us something about how they present to others their commitment. And their first movies showed a great bit of passion for making a good first movie. That tenacity is a virtue. It is instructive. And it’s the reason why we should expect a quick turnaround with the Giants.
It can be as simple as this: Buster Posey wants to make something great. I’ll be lining up Opening Day to see it.