Late Night Schlock: Financial Meltodrama

HBO premiers its adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail” today  at 9 ET/PT.  I’ve got my bowl of popcorn all ready.   My Businessweek hit my mailbox today detailing the all-star line up of the still living cast of real life crisis players.  That’s Paul Giametti as Ben Bernanke over there on the left.  William Hurt plays Hank Paulson.  Ed Asner plays Warren Buffet. Oh, and Dan Hedaya plays Barney Frank.  Did you ever imagine Hollywood recreating Barney Frank? It’s sort’ve humorous to think of all these Hollywood types playing Wall Street and Washington insiders. Same big Egos.  Same program of you’re only as good as your last deal.

I’m still “reeling” from the idea of Business Week doing a Move Review.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on May 23, follows the same trajectory as Sorkin’s book, from the collapse of Bear Stearns that spring to the rise of TARP in the fall. To the film’s credit, it attempts to make many of these still-horrifying moments pretty funny—and squeezes them all into 98 minutes. While the movie doesn’t shed much new light on the period, it offers one of the few pleasures left unfulfilled by the gusher of nonfiction thrillers, roman à clefs, wrist-slapping documentaries, and Oliver Stone. The bankers and government officials who rose to prominence in those months are depicted in all their glory and disgrace by real Hollywood actors—most of whom are far better-looking versions of the people they’re portraying. (Tim Geithner is pretty handsome, but Billy Crudup? Really?) TARP groupies will delight in the film’s attention to detail. Leon, the coffee cart guy parked outside Lehman’s office building, gets a chance to extend his five minutes of fame. The hideous toupee worn by Matthew Modine—playing Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Officer John Thain—might be the worst fake movie hair since Burt Reynolds’s heyday.

For the uninitiated, director Curtis Hanson—who won an Oscar for writing L.A. Confidential—drops some not-so-subtle hints. A voice-over in an opening scene refers to JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) Jamie Dimon (Bill Pullman) as the “smart” banker; Lloyd Blankfein (Evan Handler) is called the “superstar”; and Citigroup’s (C) Vikram Pandit (Ajay Mehta) is called neither. As Hank Paulson (William Hurt) declares, “No one is sure if he’s running Citi or Citi is running him.” Fuld, played in all his vein-popping glory by James Woods, needs no description at all. Viewers are shown, in no uncertain terms, his ginormous hubris as he screws up a potential deal with Korea Development Bank. After being told by Lehman Chief Operating Officer Bart McDade to stay out of the negotiations, Fuld barges in, scares off the bidders, and blows what could have been a precious lifeline.

Here’s the review from LA Times TV critic Robert Lloyd.

The film’s main argument, really, is that we should look kindly upon Paulson and the best he tried to do; the other characters we rate by whether they help or hinder him. What moral voice there is here mostly comes out of his mouth. “We’ve been late on everything,” he admits, and admits also that no one in power wanted to regulate the financial industry because “We were making too much money.” (That’s about as pointed as the film gets on the subject of corporate greed.) Hurt, who (like his costars) seems to be playing the script rather than imitating the person whose name he bears, is a tall tower of movie-star appeal, and it does not hurt our opinion of Paulson that Kathy Baker plays his wife, although she has not much to do but sympathize.

So, if you’re up for an evening about the masters of the universe played by Hollywood’s elite character actors, you know where to go tonight.  Here’s the trailer with its theme song   Fortunate Song by Credence Clearwater Revival which is a damned good choice and a brief interview with Giametti.  I also put him the HBO back story that’s part of the Opening the Vault series.

This has some of the back story on TARP and the meltdown including interviews with journalists that covered the event and the aftermath.

You can consider this an open thread.  I’m at home still trying to kick my fever with a larger dose of antibiotics.  No beer with the popcorn tonight.  (sigh)  I’m okay but this stuff is just friggin’ persistent.