His interest in the global economic meltdown led him to adapt a seemingly impossible-to-adapt book, Michael Lewis' bestseller of the same name, into a film that makes sense of concepts like credit default swaps and sub-prime mortgages in hilarious ways.
The unlikely real star of the movie is US writer-director Adam McKay who comes from a comedy background (The Other Guys, Talladega Nights, Anchorman, Step Brothers). He's an actor who prefers to let his movies do the talking.īut publicising one's film is part of the game, so 35-year-old Canadian heart-throb Ryan Gosling is resigned to granting interviews, a task that has have grown exponentially since The Big Short's Oscar nominations. We did a screening with a bunch of 20-year-olds from a mall, who were really riled up about it. And going to the screenings is neat because afterwards in the Q&A, I've been finding that there is sort of a palpable sense of outrage. I don't want to be pretentious about it and say "yes", this is the beginning of a revolution.īut I think if it starts a little bit of a conversation, it's certainly a step in the right direction. So no bankers went to jail, they were all bailed out by the taxpayers, there was some outrage and then people seem to forget the situation.ĭo you think The Big Short will make a difference? I think it affected more people than most know. We had to learn enough about the world so we could improvise within those characters and feel fairly confident with it.ĭo you know anyone who lost their job or their house? I think I learned just enough to make it viable.Īdam likes to improvise. But I don't pretend to know an awful lot about this. And then I had to read it again because it's so dense and complicated. I read the book (The Big Short is based on) when Adam (McKay) offered me the part. PHOTO: UIPĭid you know much about the financial industry when you started filming? STARS: Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling co-star in The Big Short. They thought it was Armageddon, the end of the world, and they didn't see it coming. What was most frightening about it was when we were doing research and we were talking to analysts and traders, and they were recounting how they felt during that period. I think the last part of the film plays like a horror movie because you see it unspooling, seemingly out of control. I had a cursory knowledge but I didn't understand the intricacies and the downright fraudulent activity that was going on. He added that he's a pretty normal guy who goes home to his actress-wife Nancy Walls and their two children "because ultimately it's my job, as opposed to, I don't want it to just be who I am all the time".ĭid you have an understanding of what happened when the markets crashed? Not one to take his job home with him, he said: "When I'm doing a comedy, it's not wacky time at home." Carell is unassuming in person, not a comic who is always "on".Īt our interview at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills last November, we saw he'd shed the pounds and lost the unkempt look.