Maybe it wouldn’t have succeeded as a work of art if it had ended with responsible government crisis managers making horribly unpopular decisions that stabilized the financial system and prevented a second Great Depression. Michael Grunwald, a Politico writer who ghost-wrote former Obama treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s autobiography, wrote last month that “The Big Short is designed to make people angry. Some experts say there was fraud, though others say the lack of prosecution probably means a fraud case would be too tough to succeed.Ī few critics have ripped the film directly. Some agree banks should be holding more capital, but they do have more than before the crisis. “Really, you don’t put anyone in jail? When me, as a comedy director, can read this and see like seven, eight clear incidents of fraud.”Įxperts are mixed on these issues. “I think that’s the one really shameful thing on Obama’s watch,” he said. McKay said he raised that point with the Obama team. He remains incensed that the Justice Department never prosecuted any senior officials from banks, or from credit ratings agencies that abetted them.
But he still sees banks as too big - in fact, larger than they were before the crisis, because so many of them have acquired smaller banks in recent years - and carrying too much risk on their balance sheets, because they aren’t required to hold more capital.
“I understand there’s some good stuff in Dodd-Frank, there’s no question,” McKay said. They did not challenge McKay’s account of what was discussed.) I must say, we do not appreciate that at the end of the movie, you did not mention Dodd-Frank and acted as though nothing has happened.” (Administration officials confirmed the meeting took place. Rodriguez/Getty Images For Dga)Īs McKay recalled in an interview, “He said, we very much enjoyed the movie.
THE BIG SHORT DIRECTOR MOVIE
The movie says nothing about that effort, which is why McKay found himself arguing with a senior administration official in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.ĭirector Adam McKay at the Directors Guild Of America Awards on Feb. The Obama administration, which spent two years crafting and passing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill in response to the crisis, does not share that view. The banks took the money the American people gave them and used it to lobby the Congress to kill big reform.” After the crisis, he says, “Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries. “The Big Short” ends with the narrator declaring that nothing has been done to punish the bankers who crashed the system, or to stop other bankers from crashing it again in the future. (Who else would use a blackjack-playing Selena Gomez to explain complex financial products?) The issue is what happens on screen after the crisis hits. Most financial writers and movie critics agree that the movie nails the run-up to the crisis, and engagingly so. It also has opened McKay to criticism over whether his film’s concluding message is accurate.
Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) recently described McKay’s film as “a movie masquerading as an educational event, or an educational event masquerading as a movie.” It is that odd combination that has made McKay’s film, based on the Michael Lewis book, a serious contender for best picture. That film is “ The Big Short,” a half-caper, half-explanatory-journalism account of the 2008 financial crisis, which has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture. But first, they had a bone to pick with his latest film. They wanted to talk about harnessing the power of pop media to explain economics. Steve Carell, left, and Ryan Gosling in "The Big Short." (Jaap Buitendijk/AP)Īdam McKay, the director who made “ Anchorman” and “ Talladega Nights,” hit Washington last month on an Oscar campaign tour of sorts, which included a meeting with several of President Obama’s closest economic advisers.