I’ve written several articles skewering HBO for producing political projects destined to air immediately prior to the 2012 election, where the vast majority of the cast and crew are passionate Barack Obama supporters, and where the content is aimed at the Democrat’s two favorite Republican villains: Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. So, when I sat down to watch HBO’s Too Big to Fail, I prepared myself for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the big surprise awaiting me.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail. (more…)

What happened to our leaders?

Like many Americans, on October 3, 2008 my world changed. That afternoon, Congress had passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the Wall Street Bailout.  Like many Americans, I had written Congress, had called the Congressional switchboard, had done everything I could to let my voice be heard. But my government had not listened. I grew up in the 80s, at a time when kids were still taught America was a good idea, because we were a free people with a voice. That Friday I discovered, along with many other Americans, that I no longer had a voice in my government. Somehow, now I was no longer a member of We The People. On paper I was, but in the unwritten evolving “Constitution” of Congressional precedent, Wall Street and special interests were The People who mattered now. Standing there in my kitchen, washing my dishes, watching my kids play in the dwindling daylight, I felt small before the face of my government, and I felt a deep solidarity with all those people who had called the Congressional switchboard with me.

But unlike many Americans, I happen to be a college professor who researches how to understand and model complex systems. My doctoral work dealt with how metaphor and narrative model complexity in economics and neuroscience. All very wonkish to be sure. This work earned me an invitation to research and lecture at the Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk VA, on how military commanders can lead, understand, and model complex operational environments in real time.

It was my days working in development and movie production in Indie Hollywood that first convinced me of the power of narrative. Narrative is not only found in literature books, or movies themselves, but in days on set, in the hundreds of production details, in shot choices, in schedules, in actor issues, and all financial decisions that go into making a feature film. Complex systems are understood through narrative.

During the week that followed the passage of TARP, I reviewed the news coverage of the Bailout and sensed parts of the story were missing. DC and the media all said that TARP was necessary, but was it? Really? Why had TARP encountered so much opposition in the House when all the power brokers supported it? Why had the Bailout failed on the Monday vote? Why did it pass so easily in the Senate? What changed the minds of those who flipped their votes to support it? Who were the people on the inside who were actually fighting the bill? What did the power brokers do to stop them? And why aren’t those who fought the Bailout getting to tell their side of the story?

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Imagine there was a bank — you know, one of those evil fat cat banks the Obama Administration loves to hold up as Economic Bogeyman — that had taken a large piece of financial backing from The Federal Government. Now imagine there was a guy working at that bank for 17 years who was a rising star in the financial world and who landed a big promotion after the bailout of this bank. Then suddenly this rising star isn’t performing so well. The profits in his division are down. He has a contract, but because times are tough and the guy’s falling performance the bank gives him the ax.

So the guy makes a big stink and demands that if he is going to be replaced the bank has to buy out his contract.

The bank offers him 30 million dollars to take a hike.

“That isn’t good enough,” the guy says. Not only does he want his money but since he is being let go a lot of his staff will also lose their jobs. So he demands another 12 million so they all enjoy a soft landing.

The bank says “ok” and pays out the money. (more…)

Well if we can spend millions to protect the salt marsh mouse in San Francisco Bay, we can surely shell out billions to bail out minority broadcasters. It’s good for the economy and after all Congress is on record as saying it needs to save our nation’s newspapers, too.  So, the table is set for government financial intervention of the media.

Minority broadcasters are asking tax-cheat Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for financial assistance.  Sounds like the financial and auto industries, and it is.  These broadcasters, including the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the Inner City Broadcasting Coalition, the Spanish Broadcasting System, and others say they can bounce back because “unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years.”  Has it now? (more…)

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From the USA Today:

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore’s new on-screen enemy.

“The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it’s going to be more like a vampire movie,” the filmmaker jokes. “Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it.”

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The Prez has flown to England and there’s only one thing to do while he’s gone: Let’s get our country back. Okay, it’s not going to be easy, there are a lot of hurdles.  I’m pretty sure I can take Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, and that puffball press secretary Gibbs.  Multiple adversary bash-a-thon!!!   Hai-Yah!!

Barney Frank I ain’t touchin’… I’m not a homophobe; I simply suffer from an irrational childhood fear of Elmer Fudd.

And Nancy Pelosi?  I’m sending my friend Andrew Breitbart in to cross-check her hard into the glass.  (I know he’s been dyin’ to get the go-ahead.)  I am certain that if I confronted her, she would hit me with that death ray from those Neutronium eyeballs of hers…the same ones that hypnotize the Washington press corps into not busting up every time she opens her mouth. (more…)

Something didn’t sound quite right when I listened to Jon Stewart’s set-up for his sarcastic blast of CNBC’s Rick Santelli as a hypocrite who thinks federal bailout money for corporate America is just fine while a helping hand from Uncle Sam (a bailout by another name) for strapped mortgage holders isn’t. So I reverted to the method I’d come to rely on while an investigative reporter when I could not follow what a fast talking con artist was actually saying: I transcribed what he said. And sure enough, the words on paper revealed Stewart’s sophistry that my ears could not pinpoint: (more…)

So you’re bummed about the stimulus bill, AKA the Generational Theft Act of 2009, huh? What sane person isn’t? But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a laugh about it. Ya can’t dwell on the dread and existential horror all day.

If you didn’t grow up in the ’70s watching Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings, this might need a bit of setup:

Catchy, huh? I don’t think they even had the term “brainworm” back then.

And now, with apologies to ABC, legendary vocalist Jack Sheldon, and my childhood: (more…)

Stage Right explains, “There is a problem with the American Theatre.” But American street theatre, if judging from the The Taxpayers Clearing House Prize Patrol, offers no similar cause for concern. No budget? No problem. Conscript Senators Chuck Schumer and Olympia Snowe as unwilling players in your drama. Use AIG’s headquarters and the U.S. Capitol as a set. Rain dollar bills upon the Secretary of the Treasury as if he were a stripper. That’s just what a bunch of twentysomething amateur thesbians did in their hilarious guerrilla theater YouTube short, The Taxpayers Clearing House Prize Patrol.

As you’ve heard, over at National Review Online, we’re going through a list of the best 25 conservative movies of the last 25 years. If you’re a reader of our print edition, you might have seen the full list by now, which includes a list of movies that almost but quite didn’t make it. And here’s my problem.

Well – first – here’s the “Also Rans” list:

Air Force One, Amazing Grace, An American Carol, Barcelona, Bella, Cinderella Man, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hamburger Hill, The Hanoi Hilton, The Hunt for Red October, The Island, Knocked Up, The Last Days of Disco, The Lost City, Miracle, The Patriot, Rocky Balboa, Serenity, Stand and Deliver, Tears of the Sun, Thank You for Smoking, Three Kings, Tin Men, The Truman Show, Witness. (more…)

There is little justice in this world.

Probably because the bad guys have so many apologists.

Taken, on the other hand, is an all-out revenge fantasy in which — finally — the Go-Slow Gang and their Root Causes Orchestra are relegated to playing the music behind somebody else’s movie. Taken is entertainment and catharsis in which the good guys win, the bad guys die (and painfully), and justice is achieved on the basis of what Right and Wrong are to anyone with that rarest of 21st century entities, common sense. (more…)

So it turns out that HR1, Obama’s giant stimulus bill that’s going to save the world, one contraceptive, lawn care company, STD prevention program at a time has a little coin for all us starving artists. Well, probably not all us starving artists. Probably only the ones who are government and NEA approved. You know, all those right-wing expressionist types. However, if you think the currently allocated $50 million just isn’t enough (the cost of camel hair brushes being what they are these days) there’s a handy petition you can click over to (conveniently listed at the bottom of this post, so as not to divert your attention from this scintillating prose) where a group of artist is requesting a meager 1% (that’s $8.19 billion of the current $819 billion dollar behemoth) stimulus bill while simultaneously asking that President Obama appoint a Secretary of the Arts.

Hey, I’m all for it. I mean, there are at least a dozen black-box theaters in the Valley that could use a coat of paint. And it’s imperative that at this time of world-wide crises, where the country is engaged in two wars, we take the time to really bear down and work on a getting top flight Secretary of the Arts. It’s just what we need because… uh… of…uh… you know. I mean, come on people! (more…)