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“People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood.“
Money Night Extravaganza is breaking the fourth wall and info dumping a whole of of financial information on you with Adam McKay’s The Big Short.
Forrest Miller, Conan Neutron and J. Andrew World are joined by Chris Ferry of the Easthampton Film Festival for this one. 

Interweaving three separate and distinct stories into a larger narrative is not an easy thing to do. As one of Adam McKay’s first “serious movies”, this does a great job of explaining one of the worst financial times in the US and the world and is really almost the apex of all the movies we’ve talked about this month.

A ton of breaking the fourth wall, actors explaining to the audience various topics. You have cameos from people like Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, and Selena Gomez and the father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler who explain the financial concepts in an interesting way. 

It gives the film a surreal kind of documentary feel that I think allows them to frontload a ton of information without boring an audience. 

This film, like its characters, is mired in a certain ambivalence. The book, written by Michael Lewis, is probably more sure of itself and the crusading position that it occupies. 
The three stories are interesting.

One has a scumbag version of Ken, no but Ryan Gosling at his haughtiest and most pretentious, as Jared.. a Deutsche Bank Bond Department Executive who narrates the entire 2008 Financial Crash. 

Jared brings information he’s overheard about trades being made by Scion Capital, Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) one of the few characters who has his real life name.. to Morgan Stanley where it’s accidentally intercepted by a Hedge Fund named Frontpoint staffed with a morally outraged Steve Carrell as Mark Baum, Kendal Roy without a Famous Dad, and others.. the most cynical on Wall Street 

Michael Burry has been trading a billion dollars in short bets against the Housing Market. Something that was not done, something NOBODY HAD EVER DONE in 2005. 
They even create a pay-as-you-go Credit Default Swap for him at Goldman Sachs. 

A third group has a small investment firm with two young kids named Charlie (played by the husband from Past Lives) and Finn Wintrock who link up with a prepper version of Brad Pitt to follow Jared’s short bets with their own. 

Ultimately, the Housing Market Bubble obviously bursts, and an extreme amount of ambivalence surrounds these outsiders, many of which are working for the very banks they’ve shorted, realizing what they’ve done.
 
Nobody really pays, the taxpayers bail it all out, and we’re left realizing that the financial wheel has just kept turning.

Everybody so self-interested, with no idea of the commons and presented in such a way that gives you a fourth wall breaking of explanation but also doesn’t forget to be an entertaining movie. NOT a “eating your vegetables” movie. One of the best representations of what Adam McKay does here without verging into the “hate tulpa” of films like Vice. The housing crisis especially is one of the most misunderstand scandals in finance, and this lands the plane in getting that across. This works. 

Podcast, Youtube
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