A movie about the collapse of the big banks sounds like recipe for a sleeping aid, but get Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, and Brad Pitt to star, and suddenly you have our complete attention. While the latter actor didn’t join director Adam McKay and the rest of the cast for a lengthy roundtable talk with THR, it’s nonetheless an entertaining chat about "The Big Short."
The first question you might be wondering is why the movie is relevant years after the banks nearly took the country over the financial edge? As McKay points out, an election is coming up, and one issue the candidates aren’t talking about is hot to fix the broken system. "I hope that people hook with these characters. Then maybe a few conversations start," he said. "There have been several presidential debates where they don’t even talk about bank reform, which is insanity. It’s a movie; you can’t really expect it to [cause] some giant change. But if it spurred on conversation, I would be delighted. From the focus groups, it’s pretty amazing. We’ve seen 20 people at a mall argue with each other about the banking system."
But rest assured, you don’t need to know the nitty gritty details of how banks operate to feel the drama. Even the cast members reveal they only had a basic understanding of all the mechanics, but when they looked closer, it was then they realized how messed up things were.
"We all have personal stories that relate to that time. The minutiae of what went down…But when you start peeling away the layers of the fraud and the duplicity, it’s incredibly terrifying," Carell said.
"The Big Short" opens on December 11th. Check out the full talk below, plus new TV spots and images.