short has just been nominated I guess a couple weeks ago was nominated for five
Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director it just won the BAFTA
Award which which battered win best special effects and starts at exactly
what i was gonna get a Best Adapted Screenplay Best Adapted Screenplay for
those of you who have who have seen the film or those of you who haven't it's a
fantastic movie about the economic crisis of 2008 and helping folks
understand exactly what happened in so let me start by asking a straightforward
question so I imagine you're sitting at home you flip through the economic
crisis you've just read a fantastic book explaining exactly what happened to our
economy and you thought to yourself
collateralized debt obligations that that just screams movie that is what
happened
well I read the book to give Mr Lewis and credit I picked it up one night and
I could not put it down so even though is filled with all these esoteric
products he just had amazing characters at the center of the book that you
really connected with such as this strange combination of leg something
we've all lived through amazing characters and tons of incredible
information so the next morning I told my wife and I just read one of the great
books kind of of our times and she was like you know go take the kids to school
i dont care but I figured I'm a comedy guy this will never happen so I kinda
just let it go for a year or two and then lo and behold the project was open
and I was excited about it I heard that you were a little skeptical when this
was first proposed that they would turn the big short which is which is one of
the more know who they they they just where the New York Times
all so when I wrote it I wasn't thinking it was a movie when I heard he was
interested I thought that's a movie I thought there's a chance and I thought
that but I mean I knew his movies not all of them but scene I mean Talladega
Nights has this Iconix data center may be the most watched movie
after I think it is and is that the trend towards children or adults in the
compound counting nice when will all the the the problem with the story
problem wall street is that it's boring and going on on the screen and I it's
it's a it's static people on telephone calls its screens things moving on and
it's not it's not inherently filming and with it you know when I'm writing a book
about Wall Street the problem I have is how how do I make this interesting
enough to me or entertaining enough to deliver with the information the stuff I
want to deliver to the audience reader in a way the reader will accept it
the literary challenge is so much less than the film challenge because he's got
you dealing with a mass audience and my audience I mean even if it's a million
people it's the people who are vaguely interested in the markets kind of want
to know what's going on here are you want to be entertained and and I thought
he's got a gift for making people feel things in a dark room I mean that it
made its way to you but I just figured he would find a way to deboard off I it
so interesting is that in the introduction to book your career even
before you became a journalist sort of traces exactly this time that we've been
living through the invention of collateralized debt obligations taking
mortgages making them them into something that means Street and Wall
Street Wall Street can sell it means you can buy in let me ask me when you're
thinking about what your goals are in writing the book and then making the
movie are they the same goals is there some is there a difference they are and
what you're trying to get across I bet this is one thing that's the the two
enterprises had in common it was a desire I desire to go to make people
understand what happen
over to open a window on an opaque world once I figured out what happen i thought
people need to know that people need to want to read about this and it's the
impulse is to let people in in a land that we have heard him talking about was
the energy that I felt too when I read the book was that Lewis said Let Me In
I'm a guy who's not trained in economics or finance at all interested and then
very quickly after reading his book and some of the other research I did I
started thinking like oh my god this is like the language of power
this is what we're all missing in america we're fighting over politics and
culture and the truth is it's not boring at all it's incredibly exciting when you
get turned on to it and that was the key was that I was not bored and by the end
I felt like I've been given a special gift I was told Lewis at one point of
footnote in the book worries if you've kept up with the book to this point they
deserve a gold star underneath all this which was that these people's
personalities who they were mattered that's why they were able to see what
they were able to see so you couldn't tell the story without without getting
this character cross because this these these personalities these characters had
been busy shut out of the process they were kind of people who wouldn't get
jobs at big Wall Street banks and there was something the their ability to see
what other people missed was tied to who they were I really feel like the movie
is about more than banking even I think it's about what michael was saying it's
about our culture and who we value and who we look to as the authority and what
standards are we using that we look for a member hearing Paul Krugman described
as someone who like why don't they listen to you in the white house when
you go in there you're clearly a smart guy because we're here is what happens I
come into my Men's Wearhouse suit which caused three hundred and twenty dollars
I'm with my slow be friends we tell the president what they should do and then
all the sudden the guys from Goldman Sachs and be avail
walk in and they've all got $1000 Cara cards and $4,000 suits and they take
over the room and they were all guys were captain of the Cross team they're
charming their charismatic and that's who you listen to and I think ultimately
that's really what the movie is about is not just with banking but with politics
with you know industry with science I mean right now in our country's sciences
like under attack and is treated with this sort of dubious questionable
attitude which is insane if you really think about it so the reason I was drawn
to the story was more than the banking thing which is really important but just
a question of how we value people but let me ask me push back a little bit on
that car think that the underlying philosophy and values of capitalism is
you want your smartest people to go where they're gonna make the biggest
Richard right that's that's much like the justice system says everyone
deserves a prosecution and defense we're not gonna leave it to lawyers decide
who's innocent and guilty that we want capitalism to take our best and
brightest and put them in the things are going to make them rich will go ahead
but so how do you really actually work very well though ok I mean the people
that people that in fact one of it if we were to take one lesson away from the
financial crisis it was that you could see that money could be made huge sums
of money could be made by by somebody doing things that were horrible for
everybody else
illegally it wouldn't it perfectly legally so what you know that then the
the the the link that you wanna make between like the amount of money you
make in your your your contribution to the society is separate people got rich
doing horrible things and people get rich doing horrible things while they
were doing them or did they didn't believe somebody someday this is so this
is there's no I in which the line the movie when the movie tell me the
difference between stupid and stupidity and fraud and now my brother my wife's
brother arrested this was in the middle of a heated I really like the way he did
this in the movie that he left a bit to the viewer to decide as I try to do this
in the book it was one of the things you need holes for for the audience to walk
in and exercise some discretion
over the story and that's a good stories all do that they leave holes for the
reader to walking two and one of the holes I left was his stupidity years in
fraud I would go back and forth really hard to tell hard to tell I would even
say this you can even go a step further back and say was it from the very
beginning was it ideology or was it always a scale because I really think
that like greenspan yeah I did sell the problem of debt that the market's always
work and I really think they or did day I don't know what they have to loosely
true so I think it's absolutely true I would rather argue the case that
greenspan failed to really regulate the banks probably assume that they would
both basically regulating the little man I can understand you can make the
argument the other way they know what you're saying but I think I'd rather
argue the full year's exam please give is the show and it's a silly show
Survivor the second season there's a woman on the show who lies to everyone
and lies and cheats and lies and cheats and then on the final episode it comes
down to two people and she's been voted out and they have to get up and they
have to give a speech so she's just lost a million dollars in she goes on the
most righteous self-righteous tirade against this one guy saying you lied to
us
trade as anyone we've just seen this woman lied to everyone and i really
think she believed it she lost a million dollars and I think that could do weird
things to your head so I don't know I mean you should let me ask on this kind
of talk about here is characterized the character of the didn't follow any
dissent is one of four the record to say that I did not understand a little
stupid
warps morals he was really good I love it