You know exactly what we're talking about: well-meaning, fragile, cerebral, maladjusted boys with an anemic sexual persona and child-like notions about women. It was cute for a while! And we certainly needed someone besides Matthew McConaughey to fill our wasted nights. But now ladies in their twenties are stuck with these infants in Morissey onesies as our leading men. No wonder tweens and mommies are swooning for the pasty boys in Twilight, at least those guys will leave a couple of marks on you after a romp!

It's not just an aesthetic thing. It's a (lady) boner killer for a any woman who has a dark streak —and really, what self-respecting woman doesn't? These awkward young men are so soft, so emotionally naive that it's clear that any one woman with a penchant for a couple cocktails and hair pulling would shatter these precious, cutesywutesy little boys. Bring back the angry young men who could at least make you feel like a woman instead of a girl.

Examples! Run the clips please:

Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland. Sad, smug, virgin who tries to save a slutty K. Stew.

John Krasinski in Away We Go. Cheerful, smug, bookish Dave Eggers stand in who tries to shield his unborn child from the ills of normal people who lead unmeaningful lives.

Demetri Martin in Taking Woodstock. He even has the haircut of an 8 year old (actual age: 36).

Joseph Gorden-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer. Morrisey loving nerd tries to pin down his manic pixie girl.

Micheal Cera in Paper Heart. I like Michael Cera a lot. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't have genitals — just a fleshy, rainbow colored patch that rests under his corduroy pants.

Hugh Dancy in Adam. Maybe Hollywood is getting the point? Adam is the same kind of nerdy, quirky, sort of hunky outsider. Except this movie blames all of his quirky awkwardness on Asperberger's syndrome. Fine! That's it! No more! Jokes over.

Rumors have been swirling since Variety first reported last week that Soderbergh's vision for the film differed dramatically from the vision studio executives had for the film, but up to this point no one associated with the project has been willing to speak on the record about it.

But yesterday Sony's Amy Pascal, the studio executive in charge of the film, spoke to the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein. According to Pascal, what it all boiled down to was essentially simple—The studio loved screenwriter Steven Zaillian's original adaptation of Lewis' book, while Soderbergh felt the script lacked authenticity and rewrote it himself, making radical changes that Pascal and the studio weren't willing to gamble on, fearful that Soderbergh would turn it into an "artsy" film like Solaris or Schizopolis, especially when baseball movies traditionally don't do well at the box office outside of the United States. Soderbergh was insistent that everything in the movie had to have happened in real life.

Reports Goldstein:

Some changes to Zaillian's script were subtle, others were dramatic. At one point, Beane signs Scott Hatteberg, a journeyman catcher with a bad arm whom Bean can get for peanuts and turn into a first baseman. Beane loves Hatteberg's ability to get on base, but his staff is appalled — he just can't turn anyone into a slick-fielding first baseman overnight. In Zaillian's script, one of the coaches watches Hatteberg taking ground balls at a Little League field, his wife armed with a plastic laundry basket full of baseballs. She hits the balls to her husband off a tee, with their 4-year-old daughter backing him up down the line. One ball takes a bad hop and goes between Hatteberg's legs. When his daughter scoops it up, the coach quips: "Maybe we should sign her."

Soderbergh cut out the joke because it was the screenwriter's invention — the coach had never actually said it. He also cut out a scene where Beane gives a tongue-lashing to Jason Giambi, one of his departing free agents, again because it didn't actually happen. Zaillian's script was anchored by on-screen monologues by Bill James, the oddball guru of modern-day baseball statistics (who today works in the Boston Red Sox front office). James functioned as a Greek chorus for the film, offering wry, Yoda-like explanations about the complexity of the game.

Zaillian's deft renditions of James' maxims were funny and always to the point, allowing the audience the opportunity to see inside the game. In one monologue, James says: "If you score three runs and the other team scores four, you can be inspired as all hell but you still lost. The numbers represent the ineluctable sum of victories and defeats, and that cannot be made one iota larger or smaller than it is by PR campaigns, personal animosities or any of the greater and lesser forms of B.S." But in Soderbergh's draft, the James material had all vanished, presumably to be replaced by interviews with Beane's real-life associates.

At a "summit" held after Soderbergh turned in his draft of the script, he reportedly pleaded "trust me" to the Sony executives, who were obviously unwilling to do so. Besides Pitt, the film was also set to star comedian Demetri Martin as well as former ballplayers Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, David Justice and Lenny Dykstra, but Soderbergh's unrelenting zeal for authenticity proved to be the project's demise.

Bob Costas would be proud.

As for Michael Lewis, he seems unfazed by the developments with the film version of his book, telling MSNBC recently, "I don't understand why they bought it for a movie in the first place."

Sony's Amy Pascal Speaks Out About Moneyball [LA Times]
Image via Vulture

A month later, you're informed that you'll appear in every single scene of Ang Lee's new movie, Taking Woodstock. That's pretty much how it happened to Demetri Martin, who'll play the film's hero, Elliot Tiber—a young, Jewish gay from upstate New York who found himself, by sheer happenstance, mounting the generation-defining cultural event of its time.

Martin described the experience to AfterElton:

"James Schamus, the head of Focus Features, called my agents and said, ‘Hey, I want to meet with Demetri, just a general meeting.' Okay. So I went in to Focus, and I just met with the guy. He was really nice. He just asked me questions about what I was working on. Great, well, good to meet you. We just talked about music and plans, just writing things."

[One month later] Schamus wanted to meet with him again – only this time with Ang Lee and about a specific role.

"I went into the Ang Lee meeting and I had read the book and they're like, ‘I don't know how much you know, but we want to do this movie. We're kind of interested in you as a character. We're not going into as much of the like underground New York gay scene and that stuff. We're focusing more on the family relationship and this guy's personal journey, as a gay person who is in the closet in 1969 as that relates to making Woodstock happen and finding yourself as a generation is finding itself.'"

A week later Schamus asked Martin to come back and read for Lee.

"I did four scenes [and] I was like, this is a long shot, but this is for real now. And then two days later, they were like, ‘Okay. We'll do this with you.' Wow! I'm in every scene in that movie! It's crazy! I'd been in like two or three movies before and did like two scenes, tops. Now I'm in every scene, and I'm working with Ang Lee?"

We're dying to see this, even though we fear this particular casting may become the un-bendy straw that finally breaks the gay camel's back with regards to straight actors winning juicy gay roles. How ironic it would be if Taking Woodstock incited its own Stonewall riot, with hundreds of angry, out-of-work gay actors storming out the doors of Starbucks WeHo, chanting, "What do we want? Parts! When do we want them? Now! What will settle for? Featured extra! When we settle for it? Also now!"

• Exclusive: Demetri Martin takes on "Taking Woodstock" [AfterElton]

• Demetri Martin heads to 'Woodstock' [Variety.com]