An Interview with Million Dollar Arm’s JB Bernstein

We recently had the chance to chat with JB Bernstein, the real-life inspiration between Jon Hamm’s character in Million Dollar Arm.

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Ben Breitbart:           I was just wondering, what’s it like to see what started off as an idea you have go all the way through the contest and the Major League experience and then into a major Disney movie?

JB Bernstein:             You know, it’s surreal and it’s extra especially surreal because ultimately this was not just an idea; it was an idea that everybody told me wouldn’t work and told me and my business partners that there was no way this would work.  At every juncture, people told us we were crazy, so to see it have this uber success, it’s not just the boys and what they accomplished and the historical nature of going from never having heard of baseball to within thirteen months actually winning a game in the Minor Leagues, seeing that kind of Herculean accomplishment and then to couple it with the movie and the book from Simon and Schuster and ESPN did a little documentary on me:  Surreal is not even the word that fully describes it, but it’s really the only one I can think of.

Ben Breitbart:           Can you give us a little update on what happened to your life after the movie, so to speak?  I mean, we saw where the movie ends; what happened to you following that?

JB Bernstein:             Well, I married Brenda and we have a three and a half-year-old daughter, so on a personal level, I think my transformation from being this jerky agent to a good husband and dad is still underway, but I’m certainly a lot further along and trying to get better every day.

Professionally, my career was always pretty good, but there’s no doubt that the movie has had a positive impact on our agency and it’s given me a new platform to relate to some of the younger players, like oh, that’s the guy from that Million Dollar Arm movie, so you immediately have a link with a younger guy, twenty, twenty-one years old who might be harder to draw a common ground to.

Certainly from Rinku and Dinesh’s standpoint, I mean, the movie has given them amazing notoriety.  They’ve been to the White House and met President Obama.  They have really lived this amazing life and been able to do things for their family, buy both their families new homes.  Their mom and dad don’t have to work anymore and obviously, Rinku is still chasing the dream of being a baseball player here in the Minor Leagues for the Pirates.

Dinesh is actually a pitching coach and he is going to be doing an internship at USC as pitching coach and then ultimately, hopefully when Major League baseball opens an academy in India, Dinesh can be one of the primary instructors there.  This movie, this story, this idea has changed all of our lives forever and for the better and we’re all very grateful.

Ben Breitbart:           Since you opened the door, what was it like to see Jon Hamm playing you as the “jerky agent”?  Was that hard to watch?

JB Bernstein:             You know, it’s funny; you know, everybody says jerk, I like to use the adjective myopic.  I was solely focused on my career for so long that you just forget about the things that are really important and I owe a lot to Rinku and Dinesh and to Brenda for reminding me that in some ways, yeah, it’s hard to watch the front edge of that movie and to see such an honest portrayal of what I used to be like and how my life was really just about doing deals and dating models and how I had convinced myself that I thought I was happy during that time.

Now realizing the things that truly make me happy and looking back on that time; I don’t want to say it’s embarrassing, but it is a little tough to watch, to think that I convinced myself I was happy in such an empty life, especially knowing what I have now, so yeah, from that perspective, it made it a little bit tougher to watch.

Ben Breitbart:           Obviously, when they transition stories to film, sometimes they make changes for creative reasons.  Is there anything in the movie that you felt didn’t accurately portray the story of what really happened?

JB Bernstein:             You know, it’s not a documentary.  I’ll start by saying that and most movies are based on a true story; very, very one or two small elements that’s true and then they build a big Hollywood story around it.  The reality of our story is that our story was so crazy and so far-fetched that they didn’t have to change a lot.

There are certain things creatively that they moved around things in terms of the timing, but the major points of the movie; meeting a fish out of water in India, the boys being a fish out of water here, how I screwed up their first try-out, how they were successful with their second try-out, how I met my wife and ultimately fell in love; all the major themes and plot lines of the movie are fairly authentic to how they happened in real life, so that’s why we’re so proud of the movie, is that in this case, real life was imitating art more than real life.  It’s usually the other way around, right?

Ben Breitbart:           Yeah, that’s what amazing is you’re watching the film; sometimes you see these true life stories and you condition yourself to when you go out of the theater to realize it wasn’t all there, but then to see just all of the cinematic moment, in many ways it was like four movies in one, right?  You had your fish out of water story.  You had the hubris of the first try-out, you had the success and to find out that that was all true is almost unbelievable.

JB Bernstein:             Yeah and that’s what I think Tom McCarthy said as he was writing this, was … We’d go over things and I’d tell him stuff and my business partners, Rinku and Dinesh would tell him stuff and he’d be:  I’m not going to change any of this.  The scene where we have that big dinner and Brenda walks out in that blue sari; right down to that dress, I bought her that dress when I was in India and that’s our Thanksgiving dinner that we had together with me and the boys and her and she cooked, not them, but ultimately, I was married to Brenda the following day.

Those guys harped on me “You got to get married, you got to get married,” so there’s so many scenes that are so similar to how it happened in real life.  When you watch the movie, to see these seminal moments, these life changing moments of your life and they are people on the screen and it’s not you acting them out, is really rewarding, but at the same time, it’s bizarre.

Ben Breitbart:           Are you still in touch with Rinku and Dinesh?

JB Bernstein:             Of course.  Yeah, of course.  Dinesh is in India, so I speak to him probably once or twice a month.  I speak to Rinku on average once a week.  He’s still playing, so obviously, there’s a lot of stuff he still needs; you know, when he needs equipment or things from Under Armor or whatever, he’ll call me up, so we stay in touch and talk about what’s going on.  Like any great player, he’s focused on baseball.  It’s a tough road he’s chosen, so he puts a lot of his focus on that, but we’re in constant contact with what’s going on in their lives.  They’re a part of my family more than they are clients.

Ben Breitbart:           I just got one last question for you.  Are you willing to make a World Series pick?

JB Bernstein:             Of course, I’ll make a World Series pick.  I personally think … Looking at all the teams, I always like an underdog story and I would lean towards the Royals, but I know they’re not going to win the World Series, so I’m going to be realistic and I’m going to say I like the Dodgers’ chances.  I mean, they’ve got great pitching and in a short series or a long series, I wouldn’t want to face Kershaw; I wouldn’t want to face a lot of the guys that they have.

I remember when the Yankees lost to the Diamondbacks.  They had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and it was basically those are the four games, the Diamondbacks won and they won the Series and so when you’ve got aces like that, it’s going to be very, very tough to beat the Dodgers, so that’s my pick and plus I love Magic Johnson, so I’m going to pick the Dodgers.