The Big Short
released 2015
www.ink2quill.com

“The Big Short” is a financial, historical, biographical, comedic, drama based on the book called The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine written by Michael Lewis. It was produced by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Arnon Milchan, Kevin J. Messick, Brad Pitt and Louise Rosner. The screenplay was written by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay. It stars a huge cast who includes Ryan Gosling, Rudy Eisenzopf, Casey Groves, Charlie Talbert, Harold Gervais, Brad Pitt, Maria Frangos, Christian Bale, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Hunter Burke, Bernard Hocke, Shauna Rappold, Adepero Oduye, Colette Divine, Anna Wendt and special appearances by Ludacris and Pharell Williams and many more.

The Big Short IMDb webpage

“The Big Short” is a film about the events leading up to the big housing crash of 2007 in the US. If the film “Wall Street” was about the unbridled greed and excess of the 80s then “The Big Short” is about the popping of that bubble circa 2007/ 2008. If the film Wall Street had the famous quote from Gekko´s speach `… because greed is good´ then “The Big Short” counters that lunacy with relevant stats like. `Every time the unemployment rate increases by 1% 40,000 people die as a consequence´.

The story of “The Big Short” Is three parallel tales that converge at the financial crisis of 2007. You have the story of the Deutsche Bank salesman, played by Ryan Gosling and based on the story of Greg Lippmann, who is among the first to understand Michael Burry´s analysis. You have the story of young investors Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley, played by John Magaro and Finn Wittrock respectively, who see an opportunity to make a windfall through shorts. The third story is the most interesting of all. It´s the story of Michael Burry, played by Brad Pitt, who is a very astute observer of trends in the market. Some attribute his skill to a certain handicap of his but, either way, his analyses were spot on and shook the canyons of Wall Street before the collapse hit.

So, with both films we go from a time that, some could say, resembled the roaring twenties when excess was celebrated, to a kind of economic collapse and depression when the methods used in the previous decades were questioned and changes were promised. The 2007 collapse, like nearly all collapses involving fraud, were a time where blame was thrown around by everyone from politcians to bloggers to podcasters and 20/20 hindsight was as common as coffee.

“The Big Short” is a really fun watch about some very interesting people in very interesting times. I highly recommend it. So many talented people worked on this project and the screenplay is taken from a very good book whose author has a knack for bringing certain aspects of human behavior to light. Check it out.

John

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