Interview: Christopher Morris of ‘Four Lions’

Posted on November 5, 2010 at 3:59 pm

One of the most provocative films of the year is the darkest of comedies, “Four Lions.” Imagine that Muslim terrorists behave like the Keystone Kops, and you might begin to get an idea of what this combination of slapstick and acid commentary on politics and the human condition looks like. I spoke with the man behind the film, director Christopher Morris, who co-wrote and conducted much of the research.
Was your intention here to diminish the enemy by making fun of them?
There was a British Intelligence survey that said, “Hey, why don’t we use mockery?” and used this film as an example.” But it’s not a propaganda statement so much as the truth as I found it. Far from being a sort of steely, master-minded terror-type operation, you had to use whoever they threw up at the time from terribly incompetent people to people who could pull it off. But you’re still dealing with that guy thing. Arguments, differences of opinion, different levels of competence — it becomes the perfect seedbed for farce and a comedy of errors.
There was a court case that lasted eight months at the Old Bailey and the antics of these guys in the testimony continue to be hilarious. Everyone who was there unofficially described it as the Keystone Kops. But the papers wrote about the scariest elements. You lost the fact that they were sitting around not knowing the difference between an ant and a leaf. They had the most bizarre conversations I’ve ever heard from people who were not on drugs. One of them came in with a puppy. They didn’t know if a Doberman was a baby Alsatian or whether a rabbit could beat a puppy, very confused conversations. And not what you’d expect from a hard-baked terrorist. They’re really normal. They have normal conversations: What did you see on television last night? Look at my new gadget phone. What do you think is better, this iPhone or the next one?
How does this get started?
Analysts call this the bunch of guys theory. Marc Sageman is a terrorism expert whose book I read early on. He sees in the film what he wrote about in its comic form. It’s like a soccer team organizing a camping trip. Someone’s not going to get it right and the tent is going to blow away in the middle of the night. There was a Canadian cell that got terrified out in the woods that a mouse might come in the tent so that so they slept in the van. And then one of them set himself on fire. They wanted to assassinate the Prime Minister but they forgot his name.
That’s like the “some guy” tag in Fark.com.
You’ll find “some guy” on the police force, in the military. If you read Generation Kill, there are a lot of stories like this in that book.
It’s pretty much part of the fabric of life. I wasn’t expecting to find jokes in this subject when I started reading about it. But you realize that isn’t what’s strange. What’s weird is expunging of that characteristic that’s common to everything else from this particular story. So if you put it back in, you get more clarity.
The general evidence from Britain is a self-start bunch of guys. It’s like being a punk; it’s an off-the-shelf protest package.
Do women behave the same way?
They can be just as bad. We haven’t had female suicide bombers as they have in Chechnya. Though a lot of the girls we spoke to were were very keen to mock the boys for macho posturing.
How did this story develop?
You try to get inside the head of what would take someone to that position. Part of what we thought would be a convincing component for Omar is that he’s the type who always wants to think he has got one over on people. “You don’t know everything that I’ve got inside.” There is some of evidence for that in the grandiosity of people who want to look like significant players.
It started off as reading and then became people that I met. I needed to find out about the evolution of Islam and the way it was hard-baked in some places from the political reality. These kind of ideologies that are constantly shifting. The guys from Yemen are Saudis; they have nothing to do with the British cells because they’re Pakistani. It’s like the heroin trade and the cocaine trade. They are both illegal drugs, but there’s no overlap between “The French Connection” and “Scarface.” I talked to people whose cousins went to Bosnia, a “good war” — Margaret Thatcher recommended British Muslims going off to fight on behalf of Muslims against the Serbs in Bosnia. So they’re safe to tell you about that jihad. And they tell stories about going to training camps and getting in trouble for asking questions. They’re a little bit softer than the Afghan guys or those from harder circumstances and some of the other guys but they ask more questions and get into trouble because questions are the work of the devil. And there’s this conflict between British Pakistanis who think they are superior and Pakistani Pakistanis who see them coming; there’s internal racism, a very complicated cultural picture. The British Pakistanis refer to the natives as “Pakis,” which is a derogatory and racist term. People go to training camp and they’re a fish out of water.
It’s a romantic call to arms. It really lightens up your life if you live in a dull gray town without much prospect. But that’s the low end. The people with higher qualifications go for a more sophisticated reason, part of which is the desire to be a soldier. Your sense of outrage about people being blown up that you identify with. That’s part of it but the self-aggrandizing element is there, too. That little narrative provides a solution for one or two people.
I didn’t want to show a single inciting incident because that’s not how it happens.

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Interview: Matthew Litt of ‘Christmas 1945: The Greatest Celebration in American History’

Posted on November 5, 2010 at 7:36 am

Matthew Litt is the author of the new book, Christmas 1945: The Greatest Celebration in American History. It is the story of the first Christmas following the end of WWII, with the soldiers coming home and President Harry Truman declaring an unprecedented four-day federal holiday.
The U.S. Military launched “Operation Magic Carpet” to get tens of thousands of GI’s in Europe and Asia home for Christmas, and at home, the U.S. Army and Navy launched “Operation Santa Claus” to process those thousands of GI’s for discharge in time for Christmas. The newly-discharged veterans set out for home, clogging rail depots, bus stations and airports creating, at that time, the greatest traffic jam in the nation’s history. Some of the more fortunate were driven thousands of miles home by grateful citizens doing everything they could to show their gratitude and create a happy homecoming.
Across the nation, people reached out to wounded veterans, children who lost fathers,and neighbors who lost sons. Americans in big cities and small shared their renewal of spirit and prayers for peace. Mr. Litt answered my questions about his project.
How did you get started in researching the first post-WWII Christmas celebration?
I didn’t intend this to be a book at first. Back when I started my research in 2004, I was practicing a different type of law – white collar crime / insurance fraud. I was on the good guys’ side, but I was dealing with a disappointing element of human nature on a daily basis. I had trouble leaving my work at the office, and needed something to help me unwind when I rode the subway home at the end of the day. I set out to find the best in human nature, and came up with the idea to research Christmas of 1945. I started printing out newspaper archives from the week of Christmas 1945 for my ride home, and became hooked.
What were your primary sources?
Mostly newspapers from December, 1945. I did everything I could to diversify the sources, drawing from papers from big cities, small towns, the east and west, north and south, etc. I also used Church bulletins from across the country, period magazines and Army and Navy newsletters.
Were you able to conduct interviews with veterans and their families?
I was able to conduct interviews with many veterans and their families thanks to the cooperation of senior communities throughout New York and New Jersey. These were indispensable in giving me an accurate context for Christmas 1945.
How many military were able to make it home?
“Home” is a loaded word relative to Christmas 1945. The military tried to get as many men as possible to their homes, but were overwhelmed by the sheer number. Storms at sea delayed transport ships, and delayed countless thousands. The services did a good job getting men home in the sense that they were on U.S. soil for Christmas, but countless thousands didn’t make it to the family dinner table in time for Christmas. There’s a great quote in the book from a soldier who had just hung up the phone with his mom. He exclaims to the newspaper correspondent that she’s holding Christmas dinner until he gets home; Christmas this year would be whenever he makes it back, whether that was Dec. 25, 26, 27 or beyond. The traffic jams were the worst in history, and there’s no telling how many men made it back to U.S. soil, but celebrated Christmas somewhere in-between their point of debarkation and home.
What led to Truman’s decision to declare a four-day holiday?
The federal employees had earned it. The War meant that new and plentiful jobs were available in Washington, which drew people from all across the country. Every job was viewed as critical during the War, so these people could not be spared during the wartime Christmases for the amount of time it would have taken them to go from Washington to their hometown and back again meaning that it had been as many as 4 years since many of these men and women had been home for a proper Christmas. With the War over, they could finally be spared for a four-day holiday.
How well did public transportation and communications work during this era?
Public transportation worked well, all things considered. They were packed far past capacity which caused fantastic delays. But they figured it out as they went along and plowed through. There were no major incidents.
What did communities do to welcome the soldiers home?
There are stories of communities welcoming their boys home with huge celebrations. But more often than not at Christmas 1945, the winter weather, over-crowding at military separation centers and traffic jams meant that no one knew precisely when their soldier was getting home. I came across many great stories of soldiers who snuck into their homes late at night – their parents found out they were home when they found their coat or shoes on the mat when they woke up the next morning.
Do you have a favorite incident in the book?
My favorite is a story about a young veteran in Philadelphia. He bought an engagement ring and planned to propose to his girlfriend on Christmas Eve, but had an idea for a unique proposal. So he bought a box of chocolate from the local candy store and asked the clerk to wrap the ring box within the box of chocolate. The clerk brought the ring and the chocolate and the box to the basement to be wrapped. She dropped the box, but didn’t realize that the ring had fallen out. No more than 10 minutes later, the clerk’s mom was in the basement and found an engagement ring lying on the floor! The clerk was mortified, but she had no way to find the soldier who had just left the store. She contacted the newspaper, and the paper ran a story with the hope that the soldier would read it and return to the store. The solider didn’t see the multiple articles, but it seemed as if the rest of the city of Philadelphia (and much of the country) had. At a few minutes past midnight on Christmas morning, the soldier proposed. His girlfriend opened the box of chocolates and saw the ring box. With bated breathe she opened it, and it was empty. The commotion that followed woke up the young woman’s little sister who had been reading the stories in the newspaper and explained what happened. The soldier didn’t know what to do, so he called the candy store and, at a few minutes past midnight, the clerk was there and answered the phone! She had resolved to spend Christmas Eve and morning in the store until he called so that she could answer the phone.
What did people in the US have to give up during the wartime Christmases?
Meat, coffee, sugar, gasoline (and other related commodities that limited private auto travel), shoes, rubber goods, canned goods.
What are the most important lessons we can learn from this moment in history?
I love this question. The most important lessons are that there is nothing this country cannot accomplish, and no challenge or divisions so great that we can’t come together to meet it. The domestic challenges facing this country at Christmas 1945 were unprecedented in scope, and nearly as great as the international challenges during the War. After four years of wartime selflessness, America had to deal with labor strife, issues of re-employment and unemployment, extreme housing shortages, clothing shortages and civil rights issues. At Christmas 1945, America was able to put these things aside, if just for four days, and come together as one for a curtain-call of sorts of wartime unity. I don’t want to minimize the domestic issues we face in this country in 2010, they are not insignificant, but they are nothing compared to what the nation faced at the end of 1945. If they could come together, then so can we.

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Books Interview Writers

Interview: Doug Liman of ‘Fair Game’

Posted on November 4, 2010 at 3:53 pm

This isn’t director Doug Liman’s first spy movie. The director of the first “Bourne” film and the movie that brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” is among the best at showing us stunt-filled sagas with chases, explosions, and gunfights. But in this true spy story, Liman makes scenes of two people talking quietly as tense and scary as a shoot-out.
I spoke to Liman at Washington D.C.’s legendary Mayflower Hotel about “Fair Game,” based on the story of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, played in the film by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. I think it is one of the best films of the year.
I have met Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame and I think you and the cast captured them very well.
That’s one of the nice things about talking to the press in Washington. People here really do know Joe. It’s hard to find a reporter here who hasn’t met Joe Wilson. As portrayed in the film, it’s pretty accurate that he was out there. And not universally loved. But I love those people. Even when we’re at the Cannes film festival, Joe and Valerie were there, and people were asking, “Is it really real?” “What’s real and what’s not real?” — and we devoted a lot of effort to making sure that everything you see in the film did happen and is not exaggerated. So we’re at a party on the beach and right on cue you hear some squeal of feedback and Joe Wilson has found a microphone! On the beach! And Joe is giving a speech. People gathered, and “thanks everybody,” and then goes on to talk about how the Bill of Rights is really a Bill of Responsibilities — he is the character you see at the end of the movie.
I loved the way you gave us a spy who is not kick-boxing or attending glamorous events so she can sneak into the bad guy’s office and crack open his safe. She’s not “James Bondette.”
She’s not scaling the side of a building like Angelina Jolie does in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” But she still puts herself in harm’s way, getting into a strange man’s car in Kuala Lumpur. Being driven down remote windy roads with the nephew of an arms dealer. In real life, tht would be terrifying. In movies, we want to see someone hanging off the side of a cliff. But once you ground it in reality, the real-life things people do as spies are really extraordinary.
It’s not all that dissimilar to being a lawyer doing a deposition. You need to know everything about them before you walk into the room. It is preparation. It is methodical, hard work. That’s one of the reasons it was so outrageous what was done to our national security for political reasons. She was at the peak of her career. It takes 20 years to get to put the groundwork in to really accomplish things. The CIA is not like the movies where you get the assignment and an hour later you’re parachuting behind enemy lines. These operations take years and years of development of painstaking relationships and that all evaporate in the blink of an eye.

How do you respond to those who say this is a partisan film?
It’s not anti-Bush. It’s not partisan. I showed the film to one of Scooter Libby’s lawyers. The most villainy of the film is put onto Scooter Libby because we had the most facts about his guilt. I said, “Go ahead and poke holes in it.” I put it through a vetting process before making the film and even in post-production because new information was always coming in. The only hole the lawyer could find in the movie was he said, “You put scary music over Scooter Libby.” But the facts are in fact the facts; they cannot be challenged. Maybe telling this particular story versus telling a different story is an issue, but to me this is a film about an issue that should be unifying us not polarizing us, about the right we have as Americans to speak out and criticize our government without the fear of reprisal. That’s what it is to me to be an American. This is a story about someone speaking out against our government and the White House trying to destroy him.
David Andrews gives an extraordinary performance as Scooter Libby.

Casting is everything. I put a huge amount of work into casting and consistently across my career I am most proud of my bold choices I made in casting. You can’t say casting Sean Penn was a bold choice because he had just won an Oscar for best actor. But I was under a lot of pressure to put a movie star in as Scooter Libby because those are the only scenes without Joe or Valerie. They said, “If you don’t cast a movie star, those scenes won’t survive because people just want to watch movie stars.” I knew that from “The Bourne Identity.” A lot of great scenes ended up on the cutting room floor people Bourne wasn’t in them and people just wanted to follow Matt Damon. David Andrews did such a phenomenal job in his audition, I thought even though Sean Penn has just won the best actor Oscar, this was someone who could go toe-to-toe with him.
How do you maintain suspense when people know what really happened?
People don’t know, for the most part. Most of what’s being told in this movie has never been succinctly reported anywhere. Most people don’t know what Valerie Plame did for a living. And there has been so much intentional mis-information. It was crazy that people bought into it. It was self-referentially hypocritical. They said she was important enough to send him to Niger but not important enough to matter. Nobody was seeing that discrepancy. For me, this is a side of the story that’s never been told, what it felt like from their point of view.
My films are very rooted in specific people’s point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters. My films are more like you’re in the car with Jason Bourne and you only see what he sees. You very rarely cut to see someone else’s point of view. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” — every scene is from those characters’ point of view. They’re in literally every scene, very unusual in a big studio film. In keeping with that philosophy of film I’ve been developing, to see this story play out entirely from Joe’s or Valerie’s point of view, is a side of the story people have not seen before.
What about the other characters?
Because Valerie and Joe were participating, which is a bold move on their part. I’m an outspoken person myself and my films tend to be about anti-heroes, so they knew I was not going to sugarcoat it and show the bad stuff as well as the good stuff, and I’m forever grateful. Nobody in the White House would cooperate with me but because of the various criminal and Justice Department investigations I had an enormous amount of material that could be trusted.
People recounted specific scenes that took place inside the White House but there wasn’t enough material to balance the film the way I would have wanted. So I decided to borrow from Steven Spielberg. Most people know that when he was making “Jaws,” the shark never worked right, so he didn’t have nearly as much footage as he wanted. What he discovered by accident, which made him a superstar director, was that the less you saw of the shark, the scarier it was. So with “Fair Game,” the White House was going to be my broken shark. I wasn’t going to have enough material for inside the White House, but it would be scarier to see less of it. You’re on the outside looking at this monolithic building that houses the most powerful men in the world who are hellbent on destroying you. And you don’t get to see what they are doing. You can just be scared.

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Directors Interview

Interview: Tom Hanks on ‘Toy Story 3’

Posted on October 30, 2010 at 8:00 am

Disney generously shared this interview with Tom Hanks, who plays my favorite “Toy Story 3” character, Woody. It comes out next week on DVD and Blu-Ray with wonderful extras including the fabulous short “Day & Night” and behind-the scenes interviews and storyboards.
Q: The “Toy Story” films are beloved by audiences worldwide. What makes these films classics?
A: The “Toy Story” films accomplish what timeless classics aim for — innocent characters who face an endless trail of adventures. We all know the likes of Woody and Buzz. We wonder who we would be if we were toys. There’s this great logic that John Lasseter and Lee and Darla , and all the writers adhere to that makes moviegoers just kind of relax and let themselves be transported to this magical place and time. When you can do that with a movie, it’s amazing. With “Toy Story 3,” you come back to a lovely, familiar and happy place.
Q: Disney-Pixar is renowned for creating story-driven films with a heart. What can audiences expect from “Toy Story 3?”
A: “Toy Story 3” is a big massive adventure that has you constantly on the edge of your seat. It’s part “Great Escape,” with the same kind of excitement as Dorothy escaping from the Wicked Witch of the West. And yet they take those elements and turn them into something that is very emotional. We’re talking about toy dinosaurs and Mr. Potato Head, and yet you feel for them and don’t want them to get recycled or stuck with the bratty kids. You want them to be together and played with at the end of the movie. You’re worried for their essence. The filmmakers at Pixar always manage to get you right in the heart. The story is as simple as growing up and having a guy go off to college, but it is so profoundly emotional that you can’t help but have tears in your eyes.
Q: This will be your third time playing the pull-string cowboy sheriff Woody. After all these years, how would you describe Woody’s character and what makes him so lovable?
A: Woody is a passionate guy who throws himself into every action. As soon as he has an instinctive thought like “I have to help them,” or “I have to run away,” he does it with 100-percent commitment. You gotta love that about anybody. What’s great is that I get credit for the way the character and the humor come off. I have kids that are now in college come up to me and say, “when you told that neighbor kid to play nice, that really meant a lot to me.”
135_ThrownAway_013.jpg_rgb.jpg Q: How has Woody’s relationship with Buzz evolved over the course of these three films?
A: I love the way the relationship between Woody and Buzz has grown. They started off as pure adversaries and learned how to accept each other’s strengths, forgive each other’s failures, and respect each other as individuals. Opposites definitely attract in this case.
Q: What are some of the obstacles that Woody must face in “Toy Story 3?”
A: There is a huge ground shift in the lives of these toys. In one scene, Woody must watch his buddies get inadvertently thrown in the garbage. It is heart-wrenching for him. Another challenge he must face is when he chooses to walk away from his toy friends because of a temporary difference of perceptions. It is a big, tough decision for him. Without giving too much away, there is this tremendous life-shattering and life-saving adventure.
Q: What other character would you like to play if you could not be Woody?
A: Wow, that’s a very, very good question. Quite frankly, I am of the Slinky dog persuasion. I think Slinky can go places other toys can’t go and he can do things other toys can’t do because of his ability to stretch. I think that would be fun.
Q: “Toy Story” was released in 1995. What are some changes to the animation process that you have experienced over the years?
A: For the first one, we were shown the movie through storyboards mounted on walls. So you walked into a building and about a quarter mile later you understood the movie because they literally walked you through every sequence. This time they did this brilliant thing where they just showed us the entire animatic. An animatic is a process where every voice and every sound effect is added to rough animated drawings and it lasts exactly as long as the final movie. So you actually get to go into a screening room with the rest of the cast and you get to see it all at the same time.
Q: Describe the process of working on animated films.
A: I have been working on a Pixar movie on and off for a long time. It astounds me every time that it takes about four years to create these films. It seems like every two weeks they call you in to record, but it turns out to be about every six months. When I started doing the first “Toy Story” film, I had two kids; I now have four kids.
Q: Disney-Pixar has an amazing track record of creating animated films that achieve critical acclaim. What is the secret to Pixar’s success?
A: The Pixar people continuously amaze me. They come up with something that actually looks as though it takes place in this happy, real-world. Every plot line is not just plausible, but oddly authentic. The stories are full of adventure, humor and love. The characters are written with great human dimension. I don’t know how they do it but they astound me.
Q: What do you think of the technological advances in live-action and animated filmmaking?
A: Motion pictures are just beginning to live up to their true potential of being this immersive experience–going from beyond black and white flickering images to fully immersive 3D color high-definition. You don’t even know where the real world starts and the fake world begins. And yet, none of that’s going to matter unless the story and the emotions that they allow us to become invested in are something that we can recognize. Pixar is able to do this in ways that almost defies speculation. And isn’t it grand that the “Toy Story” films are such a great example of this power to deeply connect with an audience?

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Actors Behind the Scenes Interview

Interview: Charles Ferguson of ‘Inside Job’

Posted on October 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

The scariest — and most infuriating — movie of the year is “Inside Job,” the documentary about the financial meltdown from Charles Ferguson, the director of “No End in Sight.” With just two films, Ferguson, a PhD in political science who made a fortune in software, has become an extraordinarily accomplished director and journalist and an important participant in the conversation about definitional issues of policy. His films are exceptionally well-crafted. He has a true story-teller’s understanding of the material and, as his interviews of the friendly and not-so-friendly subjects of this film demonstrate, a fearless intellect and a gift for getting to the point — all of which made interviewing him a rare treat.

I have done a great deal of research myself on the subprime portion of the financial meltdown and I believe a core problem was that everyone at every stage of the Wall Street conveyor belt, had incentive compensation that was all upside and no downside — they all got paid for success with no risk of loss for failure. Is that what you discovered as well?

These people were rewarded enormously for doing the dangerous things they did and even on a net basis, despite the losses they suffered when their firms collapsed, they made more money then they would have if they behaved ethically. Harvard Law School professor Lucien Bebchuk’s study on executive compensation at Bear Stearns showed that it created incentives for excess risk.

I think it’s unquestionably correct at several different stages and several different levels in the system, beginning with the yield-spread premiums that lenders paid to mortgage brokers which incented mortgage brokers to put people in more expensive and more dangerous loans than they should have going all the way up to the structure of trader and sales and CEO compensation in investment banking, which are all exceptionally dangerous and give people huge incentives to take risks and/or commit fraud, both of which occurred on a gigantic scale. Even the nature of director compensation and corporate governance — the directors are essentially paid to be passive and to not challenge entrenched management.

How would you describe what went wrong?

Large-scale fraud became a core part of the financial system — a combination of deregulation and lack of enforcement of the law.

One of the big differences between the financial crises of the Enron/WorldCom era and the more recent one is that no one seems to be going to jail. Why is that?

The reason that they’re not going to jail is not that they didn’t commit crimes. It’s because there’s been no effort to enforce the law, an even more disturbing phenomenon.

What’s the solution?

The American people have to get angry enough and organized enough to force our political leaders to change. At the moment it doesn’t seem at all likely that it’s going to come from the current administration. It’s been a great disappointment that it’s turned out to be more of the same. And so far the American people have been remarkably quiescent in the face of this, given what’s occurred. I hope that that’s changing. There are good guys but they’re not organized. There’s no Chamber of Commerce for the good guys. That’s what we need, whether it’s a political party or some non-profit/lobbying organization that coordinates — there are a number of organizations but they are very scattered and divided.

How can Washington stand up to Wall Street, given the amount of money they spend on lobbying and campaign contributions?

Wall Street has certainly become very powerful. It’s depressingly the case that politicians are inexpensive to purchase. Three things are critical — changing the role that money plays in elections, paying regulators very well, which some countries do, like Singapore, which gives them no financial incentive to move to or give favors to the private sector, and third is law enforcement. One of the least well covered in media terms developments related to this is the politicization of law enforcement for white collar crimes.

As they say, if you rob a bank with a gun, you go to jail; if you rob a bank with a pen, you get to keep your job and your bonus.

And that’s a change. After the S&L crisis, many people went to jail. Now no one goes to jail.

Who should have gone to jail?

All of the major investment banks artificially concealed their liabilities, most of them inflated the value of their assets for quite a long period of time. We also know all the major investment banks were heavily involved in selling securities they knew to be defective and in many cases designing them to fail so they could bet against them or allow their clients to bet against them. In principle it’s possible to do those things without violating the law but as a practical matter it’s hard to sell hundreds of billions of dollars of those securities without committing fraud. If you’re honest and you don’t lie and you don’t commit fraud, it’s a tough sell. We know that Goldman Sachs executives were referring to these as “s***y deals” at the same time that they were selling them as very safe securities. I suspect that a very high fraction of the senior sales forces, the senior people on the mortgage tests, the senior mortgage traders, the senior management of the investment banking industry should be prosecuted.

What is the hardest part of explaining all of this to frustrated and angry Americans, where so many people feel that the system is unfair but whose eyes glaze over when they hear “credit default swaps?” How do you reach the people you want to get angry?

Keeping the jargon out and getting to the essence of things, not letting the jargon overwhelm you. We wanted to make the film interesting and accessible for the average person. We used good cinematography, cool images, great music, pacing, to make it appeal to the audience. I hope that many, many people will see this film.

You were a serious film fan before you became a film-maker. What are some of your favorites?

There are serious ones and silly ones. I love film noir, “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Big Sleep,” the newer incarnations like “LA Confidential.” I love heist movies. “Inside Man” I thought was great. And serious things, too: “Kagimusha,” “Ran.” My friend Jason Kohn’s movie “Manda Bala” about corruption in Brazil is beautiful, amazing. It’s about crime and corruption in Brazil and it’s gorgeous, really extraordinary. It’s so unusual in the way that it is visually gorgeous. It was made in anamorphic Super 16, 2.7 to 1 so a standard DVD will not do it justice. It’s really breathtaking.

Are documentaries the agent for social change the way Dickens was in the late 19th century and journalists like Upton Sinclair and Rachel Carson were in the 20th century?

It’s not the only place investigative journalism gets done these days but journalism is shrinking, and under a lot of pressure. Documentary film is taking up some of that slack and I hope it will become increasingly prominent.

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Directors Documentary Interview