We spoke with writers Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo about Pete Davidson and their Reddit meme stock movie Dumb Money for its VOD release.
The Big Picture Dubbed The Big Short for the reddit generation following its premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, Dumb Money is a film with a lot on its mind. On the one hand, it is about the very recent history where a group of everyday retail investors led by the real-life Roaring Kitty AKA Keith Gill came together to try to beat the wealthy at their own game.
REBECCA ANGELO: I think, like, three days before we went into production on this movie we also didn't believe that that was actually going to happen. ANGELO: And also superficial, right? Because what we're looking for is the human connection, the empathic connection to every single character we're putting on screen, and it's just silly to think that those connections can only come from people who look like you and have lived the same or very similar lives that you do.
ANGELO: There’s a fun, subversive quality to that. I mean, I think when we started out in the business, people were like, “Oh, you're girls,” like, “Here's a movie about, like, a bridesmaid who really wants to get married.” And our instincts took us to very, very different stories, I think partly because we have a financial reporting background, but also just because we have that curiosity, and it's just how we're built.
BLUM: But Pete Davidson will never pass as an excellent Door Dasher, so we had to then make him like a bad Door Dasher. But Kevin is a great Door Dasher. Anyway, we found this article about Kevin ran a mile naked in this lightning storm, and it was like legendary on campus, and so we pitched that scene at the end of the movie to Craig, and he was like, “What? Naked run?” And we’re like, “Craig, we’ll break the internet!” Like, if Pete Davidson runs naked in our movie, everyone will go crazy.
ANGELO: But at the same time, it wasn't anomalous. It was like the pandemic heightened all these things that we were experiencing as a civilization in the years leading up to it. I think everybody is lonelier. Social media has both brought us together and kept us apart. We have lost so many of the communal gathering spaces that we used to have. Then, you know, churches were closed, community centers were closed, schools were closed, so that ratcheted the lower grade experience up to an 11.
BLUM: I think that ethos, too, of not cheating. We knew from the outset we wanted to tell a grounded version of the story. Not every screenplay we write is grounded—we're writing Cruella 2—but I think with this story it was so important to us that you can see it in the movie in a few different ways in our approach to the pandemic. We have characters who don't meet, are never going to meet, are never in the same room, we didn't pretend they were.
ANGELO: Exactly. It would have been condescending, and, like, they don't need it. These people did it the best. We don't need to rewrite it. We don't need to put it in our own voice. We can elevate a dorm room TikTok video to the stuff of cinema where it belongs, right alongside a tear-jerk monologue from America Ferrera.
ANGELO: Yeah, we have so much to say on this issue. Yes, we wrote those end titles, and it is the thing that we spent the most time – where do we want to end this story, and what note do we want to end on? So yeah, I think, first of all, the standard is not, “We only tell stories about movements that changed everything forever.
ANGELO: There are analysts at every hedge fund whose job is to monitor and there are apps and services that you can subscribe to now that their entire company is that all they do is monitor.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
The GOP's cash problem: Democrats outspent Republicans in five of six major races on TuesdayMoney, money, money. Money, not abortion, was the deciding factor in the elections this past Tuesday.
Read more »
How to save money on holiday travel by tracking flight prices with GoogleThere is a feature in Google Flights that will notify you when the price of a flight ticket you have tagged dips.
Read more »
How often intra-European migrants send money back homeHow often do European migrants in Switzerland transfer money to their home countries, and how much money do they send? A study by the University of Zurich published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies now shows that people from Portugal tend to send smaller amounts more often, while people from the U.K.
Read more »
Squid Game: The Challenge 2023: Release Date, Prize Money & MoreSquid Game: The Challenge 2023 is a new Netflix reality competition series. The format is similar to the Squid Game movie.
Read more »
2024 Tax Brackets: Inflation Adjustment Could Save Taxpayers MoneyAdjustments for key numbers for income, gift and estate taxes give taxpayers some planning opportunities
Read more »
Biden stands by his demand for Ukraine money alongside Israel fundingThe White House is sticking by its push for a security-funding bill that includes money for Ukraine alongside support for Israel in its fight against Hamas.
Read more »