ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Even for those who don't know a thing about business or finance, that has not stopped Hollywood from trying to teach us what it takes to make millions.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TRADING PLACES")
DAN AYKROYD: (As Louis Winthorpe III) Sell 200 April at 142.
SCHMITZ: That was "Trading Places." And then there's also Gordon Gekko, the inside trader of Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WALL STREET")
MICHAEL DOUGLAS: (As Gordon Gekko) Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
SCHMITZ: And, of course, the cunning investors cashing in on a financial meltdown in Adam McKay's 2015 film "The Big Short."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIG SHORT")
JOHN MAGARO: (As Charlie) Celebrate.
BRAD PITT: (As Ben) You just bet against the American economy. If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs.
SCHMITZ: But how do these movies go down with people who actually cover business and finance for a living? To get into all of this, we've called up two hosts of NPR's podcast The Indicator. They help us make sense of what is actually going on in the economy. Adrian Ma and Wailin Wong, thanks for being here.
WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: Yeah, it's great to be here.
SCHMITZ: So, Wailin, I'm going to start with you. You've covered business, finance and the economy for years, and I hear you are a big movie fan. What are your favorite films in this genre?
WONG: OK, I know everyone's expecting me to say, like, "Trading Places," but I'm going to zag. I'm going to say "The Insider." This is from 1999, Michael Mann movie starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE INSIDER")
AL PACINO: (As Lowell Bergman) Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we going to air it? Of course not.
WONG: It is about corporate whistle blowing. It's about Big Tobacco. It's about journalism and the intersection of big corporate interests, politics and media. And it's a true story. It really happened in the '90s. The other movie I will throw in here is, "It's A Wonderful Life." This is your classic Frank Capra movie about George Bailey.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE")
HENRY TRAVERS: (As Clarence) You see, George, you really had a wonderful life.
WONG: And actually, econ professors talk about this movie in class because George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart - he works at a building and loan, which is similar to a bank, and there's an iconic scene in the movie where there is a classic bank run. So it's one of, like, the most famous depictions of a bank run. And then when George gives that famous speech about, oh, I can't give you your money back because it's in so-and-so's house and so-and-so's house.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE")
JAMES STEWART: (As George Bailey) You're thinking of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house. That's right next to yours.
WONG: He's actually explaining something called fractional reserve banking, which is fundamental about how our financial system works, even if you don't know that's happening to you.
(LAUGHTER)
SCHMITZ: OK. Adrian, let's turn to you.
MA: Well, one of them is definitely "The Big Short," which you mentioned earlier.
WONG: Love "The Big Short."
MA: And for folks who haven't seen it, it's basically a dramatization of the 2008 financial crisis, like, people who are players in it, the dynamics that led to it, the sort of financial chicanery that triggered this whole debacle.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIG SHORT")
STEVE CARELL: (As Mark Baum) You're saying that at 8%, the bonds fail, and we are already at 4%?
RYAN GOSLING: (As Jared Vennett) That's right.
CARELL: (As Mark Baum) If they go to eight, it's Armageddon.
GOSLING: (As Jared Vennett) Yeah, that's right.
MA: And the sort of nondramatized counterpart that I would pair with it is "Inside Job," which is a documentary about the 2008 financial crisis.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "INSIDE JOB")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers - they knew what was happening.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: What do you think about...
MA: And what I love about both of these movies is they take something that was just so horrendously complex - you know, the financial regulations and the mortgage bubble and mortgage-backed securities.
WONG: Collateralized debt obligations.
MA: Credit default swaps - all this sort of, like, jumble of financial jargon, and they actually make it make sense.
SCHMITZ: Oh, my gosh, you guys are giving me flashbacks. This is like PTSD.
MA: (Laughter).
SCHMITZ: You know, we're naming all of our favorite films in this genre. What are some of the common threads from these films that makes them so good?
MA: I think there's a lot of news and entertainment that's either, like, we're going to be nerdy or we're going to be fun. But somehow they manage to do both. And it kind of reminds me of a thing that, like, the Planet Money executive producer Alex Goldmark has said about Planet Money, which is, like, our show is basically two facts plus jazz hands.
WONG: (Laughter) Yeah.
MA: Right? And these movies - "The Big Short," "Inside Job" - are so factual and so nerdy, but then it's like, jazz hands, you know? And they just, like - they make you laugh. They surprise you, and they keep you engrossed in the action.
SCHMITZ: Wailin, how about for you?
WONG: I think that a lot of the way that money works, especially today, is the opposite of cinematic, right? We no longer have open pit trading where people are running around a trading floor, yelling and waving their arms around and, you know, throwing ticker tape around hysterically. And so now that it's just a bunch of people sitting at their computers or at a Bloomberg terminal clicking around, that's actually incredibly boring, and...
MA: It's pretty boring.
WONG: It's just not visually interesting. So I think that the best movies about money don't sweat the details so much about the technical nuances of exactly how trading works. So I think you really have to focus in on characters and on some more kind of fundamental human stuff that makes a movie tick.
SCHMITZ: If you're going to tell someone who thinks, hey, I'm just not interested in business stories or Wall Street or any of this stuff, what movies would you point them to get them maybe into these types of topics? Wailin?
WONG: OK, I have, like, a nonserious suggestion and then a serious suggestion.
SCHMITZ: OK.
WONG: My serious suggestion is the movie "Dumb Money," which came out just a few years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DUMB MONEY")
PAUL DANO: (As Keith Gill) Yo, what up, everybody? Roaring Kitty here. I'm going to pick a stock and talk about why I think it's interesting, and that stock is GameStop.
WONG: It's about the whole GameStop situation...
SCHMITZ: Oh, right.
WONG: ...When you had all these people on r/wallstreetbets, the Reddit subreddit, you know, trying to bring down a bunch of hedge funds that were going short on the company GameStop. My...
SCHMITZ: Wait, that's your serious film?
WONG: That's, like, my serious answer 'cause it's actually about...
SCHMITZ: OK.
WONG: ...You know (laughter), like, a business and Wall Street.
SCHMITZ: It doesn't actually sound that serious. OK, so what is your fun...
WONG: (Laughter) OK.
SCHMITZ: What is your fun film?
WONG: My nonserious suggestion is "Die Hard With A Vengeance."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE")
BRUCE WILLIS: (As John McClane) I should have seen it coming a mile away. This was never about revenge. It's about a damn heist.
WONG: Jeremy Irons is trying to steal the gold from the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City because did you know that foreign governments store their gold reserves at the Federal Reserve? So that's an economics movie.
SCHMITZ: Excellent. Wow. Thank you so much.
(LAUGHTER)
SCHMITZ: Jeremy Irons, stealing everyone's gold - OK, Adrian, how about you?
MA: I guess I'll follow Wailin's example and do a nonserious example.
WONG: (Laughter).
MA: My nonserious suggestion is this documentary "Brandy Hellville"...
WONG: Oh, man.
MA: ...Which is about a fast fashion brand.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "BRANDY HELLVILLE & THE CULT OF FAST FASHION")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I heard about Brandy first when I was in seventh grade. Everyone was wearing it at school. I walked into the store and I bought the star necklace. I felt so cool and accepted.
MA: I am not a fashionable person, and I am not, like, the age demographic of the Brandy Melville brand, but it really opened my eyes to just how kind of bent the fast fashion industry is in terms of its economic and environmental impact. The other one I'm going to say is a documentary called "American Factory," which is...
SCHMITZ: Yes, I've seen that. That's...
MA: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: ...Fantastic.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "AMERICAN FACTORY")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: They refer to us as the foreigners. People just want - they want to feel like they're in America working, not like when they walk in the door that they've left America and they're now in China.
MA: It's about a factory that used to be a General Motors plant. It closed down in 2008, and then a couple of years later, a Chinese company called Fuyao, which makes glass, buys the facility. They open it back up, and now it's a facility run with Chinese managers and American assembly line workers. And it's a really fascinating portrait into the people at different levels of the company, how they are dealing with this change, the sort of conflicting feelings of, like, well, some are glad to have a job, but there's some cultural clash. And I think both of these movies - they sort of get at the idea that business is more than just money and numbers. It is, like, literally the fabric of our lives and livelihoods.
SCHMITZ: That is NPR's Adrian Ma and Wailin Wong, and they are doing jazz hands every single day over in our economy podcast The Indicator From Planet Money. Thanks, guys.
WONG: And now we'll be vaudeville caned off the stage.
MA: Ta-da. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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