Adam McKay Explains Pop Culture Cameos In 'The Big Short'

right now I'm focused on The Hollywood Reporter and I didn't think this was going to become the movie. I think this was once this started happening and the books started appearing in the movie. I haven't opted for this one yet, it's too complicated. People have a superficial understanding of what happened in 2008, but when you start to peel back the layers of the fraud, it's incredibly scary. We are going to take an in-depth look at the comedy drama The Big Shore with the actors and the Creative Minds behind the film in this episode we have director Adam McKay and co-writer Michael Lewis, author of the book: Big Short Christian Bale dr.

Michael Burry Steve Carell Mark Baum and Jared Bennett Ryan Gosling you know how angry I am at Americans the big banks are screwing us and I'm getting angrier and angrier it's unbelievable then this guy walks into my office and says there are some shady things are happening some outsiders saw what no one else could see the entire world economy could collapse I'm sure the world's banks have more green ancestry, you're wrong, welcome to The Hollywood Reporter InFocus the Big Short I'm Matt Bellamy, executive editor from The Hollywood Reporter, and I'm pleased to have with us today Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short, Adam McKay, the co-writer and director of The Big Short, and three of the movie stars, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Christian Bale . this is a dramatic work it's a fun movie obviously it's a topical movie but at its core it's to me it seems like a piece of advocacy cinema where that came from and how you got involved in this really what excited me about the book the idea was that you could being brought into this complicated and really elaborate world through these characters, these characters that you identified with, there were Outsiders who were vulnerable and thought differently, so I always saw it as a character piece that took us into a world .

We weren't familiar with it and I'd never read anything like it, so when I read the book I couldn't put it down, it was a mix of, you know, it was entertaining, it was tragic, it was heartbreaking at times and yeah, a little bit. a little bit educational, so you know, to the extent possible, you have a political or political type position. I never really saw it that way. I just saw it as exposing and showing a world and, above all, these characters, but the only difference. from the book is that it's funny, wait a minute, expect a difference in the books, I'm so glad you said it would have been weird if you had said it, but why was that decision made?

Why was this angle satirical? I won't actually agree, I'll actually say. The book was very fun. There were many things in the book that made me laugh. There was always energy and excitement in the story, especially in the first half, where it was almost like card counters who had figured out how to find each other. the casino and you were on his side because we all hate the banks or the casino in your books, did you think this would be one that would fit? My books recently started being made into movies, so when I wrote this, none of The Blind Side had been made, so I didn't do it.

There are people in the movie business who bought my books. I guess they bought them to bury them. I mean, no, I didn't think this was going to be made to move, I think this. It was once this started happening and the books started to become movies. I haven't bet on this yet, it's too complicated. You know, it was a thought that the only way you would do well is to embrace complexity. Anyone has the guts to do that basically, so what were those conversations like? Did you have conversations about how not to explain that he doesn't care about what I think he said?

I'm glad he said it. Yes, I said it. No no. It's really like that. He doesn't care what I think I want to say. I told us you know. I know it absolutely. This is the qualification for the job. It's just that he doesn't care what I believe. Did you ever ask? Yes, it's not true. I definitely tried it. What do we do? Did I contact you? I gave you the script. We talked about my approach. You supported me a lot. You were great. You were like the author of the dream in the sense that you had some input but you didn't know how to fight.

I was doing maybe you were patronizing me the whole time. I realized that no, we were practicing on each other. Oh, it was just because it was a question who was overcoming that. Well, because that was all that was going on because what he had to do was tear it up and remake it, I mean the book is not a movie, it's very different in a lot of ways and I mean, when I heard he was going to do it I thought which was perfect, it's perfect because the only way to get this across to the audience and the only way the book worked is that people thought it was funny.

I mean they were interesting, the cat and the characters were fun. Nobody wants to read about credit default swaps. No, let's do it. I saw a movie about it and I thought if anyone can make this come alive and entertaining it's him, so the connection is because I'm alive instead of dead and that's an inconvenient fact because he has to store a lot of things that don't No let me go around saying he ruined my job, he ruined my job and that's why he was nice to us, we even had lunch and everything else, and I really liked him, but he did it all by himself, I mean, I didn't contribute.

Not good, I'm a big fan too. I read everything he wrote, so it was exciting for me. I mean, the reason I read the book was because I loved your writing, so it was a certain degree of fun to have conversations with it. You and he are also working on a TV show with our composer, who is also a producer, so Michael has some tendrils going in different directions, going back to your original question, it's totally his own. I can't believe how good it is. It really reassured me that someone like him saw that you could think you could do this because the only way it works the way he does is if it's big and popular now you guys play real people, tell us how you approach the consulting you did with the real life guys or non-consulting in my case, he's the character I play and he's loosely based on a real person, but he's also the narrator of the movie, he's kind of a tour guide through this world, so It was interesting, I mean, it was a challenge, because you know, trying to You know, play him, but at the same time you have one foot outside the movie and you're basically almost like a talk show host or something, so You know, we work a lot together and try to find what that tone is.

I talked a lot to the actual person that you know and explained to him that that's what he was doing and that he would have to know what those conversations were like you know they were, that's right, it wouldn't be. Same thing if someone was playing with you, you know you'd be nervous because I would want to know and you feel responsible for that and I mean, I wouldn't want someone to play with me, so you know, unless it was Steve, huh. LRO talks to you like no one is buying CDOs or mortgage bonds anymore and everyone wants wop-wop to stand out among the popular products in the jury, that's good for us Anthony, I heard some of you were homeless, not sorry , then I see that Grover Morgan is choosing. some major losses in the bonus department, maybe it's time to pull out our life jacket.

I mean, seriously, I feel like I'm financially into you or something, okay, I'm Jack, I'm opposed to the dress, well, you're sorry, no, Steve, what about you? with Steve Eisman, I'm sorry that she approached him with complete indifference, you say the exact opposite, oh I mean, yeah, I can't imagine how discouraging it is to see a version of your life on screen if I met him. I had breakfast, I didn't spend much time with him, I read about him, there was nothing, apart from the book, and I was able to find out a lot of things about it, but I'm just trying to get an idea of ​​who he was and what. had happened during this period and why he made the decisions he chose other than changing his name in the film.

What was there something specific he asked you not to include about him or his personality? I think I was kind. right now, yeah, well, for that reason it's a strange question, no, but it's not specific to the secret city, like I might be perceived as an idiot, please, you know, don't go saying no, which was very kind that way and very generous with respect to um. revealing himself and inviting me to his house and I met his wife and I met his kids, so no, there was nothing like that, um, I'm sure there were concerns, you just don't know that he was there on set for a few days watching me.

I think he saw the movie and apparently enjoyed it. He loved it. I can't imagine what it's like to see someone making a version of who you are. You know, he said he had better hair. That was his only comment. It's because he was very very proud of his hair, he said that my wife married me because of my hair. Wow, so he maintained that he thought highly of his hair. He would have a doctor. Michael Berry Michael was very approachable. He came to visit us the set number of times today. hmm uh and he's single you know I have to go and spend the day with him and we sat and you know we had a schedule where now we do this and then we go to lunch and then we looked around and at the end I sat down morning and then it was dark and we hadn't stopped talking, we were just talking, it was like eight or nine hours straight, incredibly charming and wonderful conversationalist.

I became very fond of him, so Mike Burry Guy. that he cuts his hair in Supercuts and doesn't wear shoes he knows more than Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson, yes, dr. Mike Burry, yes, he does. I don't think he's watching the movie yet. I was hoping to sit down and watch it with him last night, but I think he's going to sing it in New York, but I love playing real characters because you create a man, a man, a resume or whatever and the director might question that you have the evidence. Only if the person is on set, call them and chat with them for a while and go see them.

I know it's okay, so you get away with it instead of being completely fictitious. Sometimes it can seem like a kind of ego driven longing gestures that can be quite unique or eccentric, you know? But I really enjoyed meeting Mike immensely and I very much hope that he will tolerate what I have done. The book and the movie both go into detail about the kind of person who does this kind of thing, who bets against conventional wisdom, and who, you know, is watching bad things happen. and betting on that happening, do you consider yourself that type of person?

No, no, very conventional. Actually, the only strange thing about me is where I'm from. I grew up in New Orleans and the rest of the country feels like a strange place to me, that's all, so I have a little bit of that, it dissipated over time because I left, but I remember very strong feelings very early in a delta , the feeling that I was a Martian visiting Earth and that's why I had that vision of America. In life I am interested in these characters, but I don't think that's the case. I talked about the idea that people who take

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positions on Wall Street don't look healthy, like if you see someone who's insured, they're not.

This is true, absolutely true, yes, it actually takes its toll on you because you're betting against hope for the future and a lot of these guys look stooped and pale and it's a tough road and that's what happened to dr. bury yes dr. Burry almost had part of his lower intestine removed, he had a lot of stomach problems and as soon as he uncoiled his position, all the problems disappeared, so it's a really difficult and uncomfortable position to be against the mainstream and, in fact, I think that in some ways that's the core of the movie, there are many cores of the movie, but I think that idea of ​​how difficult it is to step away from the rest and say that you're wrong, nobody wants to do it, that everyone wants to be at the party and They want to be a part of what's happening and when I heard that there were real physical effects on

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people on Wall Street, I thought that's fascinating.

Did you worry in the film that audiences would struggle? time supporting the financial collapse of the country, no, I mean, what I loved about the story book is how complex it is that you're supporting these guys because they're like us, they're outsiders. You know, in a sense, they're doing their job the same way markets are supposed to work: if there's a bad investment, you short it, so they're doing their job and then obviously the story expands. 10 times once they realize that Oh, they're shortening themselves, they're shortening actual reality and then it gets scary and very complicated, so now I always love the fact that the heroes weren't clean, that not everyone wore white hats.

I wanted them to be complex. because I just don't think that's how heroes work. I mean, I look at Gandhi used to joke when he was young and MLK and how complicated people are, how familiar we were with these issues before we read the book, you know what happened. but not the personal stories, no, certainly not, and you know we all have personal stories that relate to that time, but my news of what happened, no, reallyand I found myself choking on a number, you know, which is a phenomenal thing that you know can be achieved on planet Michaels, you talked about the same thing, Mike Goldman, well, I exactly complement you, okay, I'll talk about it.

I thought you were passing a compliment to Mike, no, I definitely liked him and he's going to give me a compliment today, so I can do the police right. If yours was enough, I mean in one of the windows a number ever passed by and when I heard that number I just realized that that also happens when you write the number on the board with that 489 facing up.489 percent right, you're right, it's another emotional, emotional, yeah, that could be a big part of that. The film says that the poor and minorities largely took the blame for this.

What do you mean specifically by that? Well, I think you're seeing it. Now that all of a sudden, instead of talking about trade policy instead of talking about minimum wage, instead of talking about business stimulus, what are we mainly talking about with the old AWOL presidential campaigns building a wall to keep immigrants away and, you know, we had a census not long ago and it actually showed that there are definitely more immigrants leaving than coming in, so it's literally not a problem, but I think what happens is that people don't understand these complex financial structures and instruments, you have no idea what kind of trash people are. shooting and everyone walking around like they're in a fucking Enya video, everyone's screwed, you know, you know what they care about, they care about the ball game or they care about which actress just went to rehab, they know something's wrong and they go .

From what they understand, you see the same thing in Greece, there is a rise in the neo-Nazi movement there and this is always what happens when there is an economic crisis, whether they are immigrants or poor people, what is the only thing that you three did they remove? In this project, something you learned could be an acting lesson or something about the world. What would happen if they didn't learn anything else? Maybe you didn't learn well and it could just be like an experience that just happened, it just happened. You always like something. I mean, you know you can meet, it's a wonderful job in terms of you can have these very strange conversations, in this case, with people that you know in real life and be able to talk to them in a way that normally only a stalker would. to if you tie them together and it's because you can really delve in a way that you just can't in everyday life and then you learn a lot about that character and that's what really, that's probably my fun part.

I think about my job and then I just listen to Adam and Michael and you know I didn't pay attention in school and I left at 16, so it's a learning experience for me, every part of it, you know guys, it was like that . learning I don't think I've ever had a problem learning a script. um, like I did with this because it was like learning a foreign language. I had no prior knowledge of the financial world. I didn't grow up in it. I don't really know the people on it, so it was all new to me too, so I took a crash course to get a feel for what he was saying and be able to do it, and Adam likes to improvise. so having some things in our back pockets that we could then improvise within these characters and in this world that was, I think it was a learning experience, did it inspire you to want to invest?

You know, be more active in the financial market. Don't know. I know you're not, you're not trying to identify your own short circuit in a mattress underneath. I sleep in it every month. The truth is subjective, amazing. The only reason it's interesting is the characters. Yes, the topic itself is absolutely stupid. It made me want to identify places where maybe. I got to see something that no one else is seeing, oh gods, and I know it would never happen, lose all your good, yeah, I said no, your life will become these guys, yeah, I'll make it right, no, it's my, my brother decided, you know what I?

I'm going to start investing and I'm going to dominate the market and he's a six-year-old kid in Orange County. I think it's not going to happen, you know, you're an engineer. and he's a pretty smart guy, but he doesn't have that kind of insight and I don't think it's something you learn overnight, it's not, I don't think it's that intuitive, I think you really need it, you have to do it. . I grew up on this and learned it from scratch. You know it well. I was dumb enough to start thinking short and I was actually talking to a friend of mine.

We were talking about McDonald's. They were as McDonald's as they can be. Don't keep selling this food that they're selling like it's all, you know, everything's getting better, they're going down, so I called my business manager and I told him I wanted a short McDonald's and he said, Luis really knows how much fun it is. this and my boy. He says boy, I think that's a bad idea and he says, let me check with our guys and see what it looks like and it's okay, because I really like Shake Shack and I think McDonald's is over.

I have to go back to a bygone era, he says, yes, my boys have been around for a long time. McDonald's, they actually say it's very strong, they're in a lot of mutual funds, the real estate they have, they're changing their menu, well, maybe I'll wait and then since then McDonald's is up 25 percent and it's just going up. . and up and shake Shack is like trapped where I was my guys saved me from that yeah Ryan what about you what did you learn? um, yeah, I think you know, I think I'm like the audience in this one, you know, I really felt This was something that maybe I thought I understood, but I didn't really understand it and I also felt like on some level it was probably something that I couldn't. understand, but I think what Michael did was just find really fascinating characters.

At the heart of all of this is why you can connect emotionally and therefore you want to understand it because you want to understand these characters and I think what Adam has done is make it accessible and really cast such a wide net in terms of avenues. of understanding, you know, I mean, although you know Marco Robbie and Selena Gomez and all that stuff is fun and they're great and they're great in the movie, it's also another avenue to capture an audience that maybe doesn't necessarily watch the movie or that don't necessarily think they can understand it, so making this movie makes them more cynical or more hopeful.

I didn't differentiate between cynicism and I hope so. It terrified me but I think it's like a horror movie, it's a game until it's not a game and then it's a horror movie and I think it surprises you and surprises you, it's terrifying. Now I know, I'm cynical. Yeah, I'm going to put that on a poster well, I don't know, I don't think there's a book and the movie leaves me feeling optimistic in the sense that it's something that's information that feels like it's in the process of being, you know, you know, spread to the masses and in and like the code was being broken, you know, I guess, I hope, I hope that people liked the movie because it would be great to see more movies like this, you know, I think it's so great that the atom could take such an entertaining approach to the topic like this and I think that could be the way to start the dialogue.

I mean, even you know I've only been to a few screenings, but immediately afterwards you know the conversations after the movie is very different than any other kind of premiere screening I've been to. Know me, I have a lot more hope just because if Mike Burry is a lawyer, it's really unusual for him to go for a short film, that's what he loves. Long's and these are easy, very optimistic man, thank you all very much. I'd like to thank Michael Lewis, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Christian Bale and Adam McKay, thank you, thank you for having us.