(PCM) If you’re looking for a movie that will have you feeling inspired when you walk out of the theater, put your money down for a ticket to Disney’s “Million Dollar Arm,” opening Friday nationwide. Based on the true-life story of JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm), a down-on-his-luck agent, who fails to sign the sports superstar client who would save his agency, so he comes up with a wild scheme. He creates a contest — “The Million Dollar Arm” — that takes place in India, where he hopes to find a couple of cricket players with great throwing arms that he can turn into Major League pitchers here in the U.S. He discovers Dinesh (Madhur Mittal from “Slumdog Millionaire”) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma from “Life of Pi”).
“It’s a story about working hard,” Hamm says. “The journey that these two boys went on from literally never having seen a baseball to getting to an elite performance level is an impossible journey. [They had to] put in 200 percent because [they] didn’t grow up playing this sport, haven’t been doing it since third grade… It’s mind-blowing, but it doesn’t happen without an incredible work ethic and an incredible commitment on both of their parts to focus on this and to really, really achieve.”
JB is aided in his search by a cantankerous but eagle-eyed retired baseball scout Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin), and they find two 18-year-old boys who have no idea about playing baseball, yet have a knack for throwing a fastball. Hoping to sign them to major league contracts and make a quick buck, JB brings the boys home to America to train. While the Americans are definitely out of their element in India, the boys, who have never left their rural villages, are equally clueless about life in the U.S.
“I had never been [to India] and being thrust into the chaos was an eye opener,” Hamm says. “[It] let me understand on a visceral level what JB went through, which is literally like coming up with this idea is one thing, then sort of willing it into existence is a whole other thing. And we show a bit of it in the film, but the practicalities of doing that in India when you have never been there, have no experience over there is, is it is impossible, and yet it happened.”
As the boys learn the finer points of baseball, JB, with the help of Brenda (Lake Bell), the 
tenant in his guest house, learns valuable life lessons about teamwork, commitment and what it means to be a family.
Read on for more of the interview with Jon Hamm:
This performance is wildly different from Don Draper on “Mad Men.” What was it about this script and this story? Had you ever heard of it?
No. I read the script and loved it, and then looked back to the title page and went like, “Wait a minute. This is true?” I, I am a huge baseball fan and somehow this flew under my radar. I didn’t know, so two hours later I was in Google… finding out everything I could about this. I was like, “Oh, my God. This actually happened.”
You’re right that it’s about 180 degrees from Don Draper, but it’s affirming, it’s uplifting, it’s heartwarming, and it’s emotional. It’s not a sports movie so much as it’s a movie that moves you. I was, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the finished product and how it’s much more than just a sum of its parts. It has this wonderful message. My day job I play not the greatest guy in the world and it’s nice to, portray that, and to make this movie is a family film.
Is there a difference for you as an actor when you’re playing somebody you know is still around?
Obviously, what you desperately don’t want to do is be false, but I think that translates into any performance. It was such a pleasure to meet, not only JB, but Rinku and Dinesh and everyone who’s involved in this whole story has their real life counterparts and the last thing you want to do is sort of offend and, and portray them in some way that rings false. I think it’s a testament to Tommy‘s [McCarthy] wonderful script that he got everybody on the page to the point where I read it, and didn’t realize it was a true story until I looked back to the front page. Tommy is a wonderful writer and he has the ability to make what seems like a simple story resonant in a way that brings so much more to it.
How people create families is one of the big themes in this film. What experiences from your own family life did you bring to your performance?
I’m in a modern family myself. Everyone’s like when are you and Jen [Jennifer Westfeldt] going to get married? We’ve been together for 16 years. We’re as married as anybody I guess, I don’t know. However you define it is what it is, and you can see in JB and Rinku’s relationship, the real guys, that there is this sort of paternal and loving relationship there and that was part of the thing that again attracted me to this guy learning that and what that means.
I don’t have kids, but I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a daycare teacher, I have tons of nieces and nephews and I feel like all of these people are my family. I lost my parents very young. I’ve had a lot of surrogate parents in my life, family friends who have sort of adopted me in many ways, so I have a very fluid definition of family as well. And again that’s just reason 401 why I responded to the script. I think it is a big part of the journey of this character.
Disney’s “Million Dollar Army,” directed by Craig Gillespie from a screenplay written by Tom McCarthy,” opens in theaters on Friday, May 16.
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