Article Image

IPFS News Link • Entertainment: Movies

The Big Short Somehow Makes Subprime Mortgages Entertaining

• wired.com

Yet, it works—and even more weirdly, you walk out understanding the fineries of the situation that kicked off the great recession.

That's because director Adam McKay, who adapted his movie from Michael Lewis's book of same name, realized that the economic meltdown happened because people thought they couldn't understand something they easily could have grokked. "Economics is actually fascinating, it's the language of power—but somehow we've been conditioned to treat it like it's boring," McKay says. "I figure if I'm getting into it, and I'm the guy who did Step Brothers, what's going on here?"

Of course, to understand how a bunch of Wall Street whizzes—Michael Burry (Christian Bale), Mark Baum (Steve Carell), Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and their cohorts—found a way to bet against the American economy, you still have to understand how that economy functions (or doesn't).


Free Talk Live