In the late seventies banking was not a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a good stable profession like selling insurance or accounting. And if banking was boring then the bond department at a bank was downright comatose. We all know about bonds, give em to your nephew when he turns 16 and then we he’s thirty he makes a hundred dollars. Yawn. Bonds were for losers. That is, until Lewis Ranieri came on the scene at Solomon Brothers...
The Big Short (2015)
MODERN TRADER
A screenplay character in The Big Short (2015).
- lines
- 8
- words
- 375
- scenes
- 4
- dialogue
- 2.6%
- avg words / line
- 47
- shortest / longest
- 11 / 85
Sample dialogue
In the late seventies banking was not a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a good stable profession like selling insurance or accounting. And if banking was boring then the bond department at a bank was downright comatose. We all know about bonds, give em to your nephew when he turns 16 and then we he’s thirty he makes a hundred dollars. Yawn. Bonds were for losers. That is, until Lewis Ranieri came on the scene at Solomon Brothers...
scene 1 — OPEN ON: INT. SOLOMON BROTHERS - 1979 - DAYalmost thirty years later... in 2008... It all came crashing down.
scene 4 — EXT. SKYLINE OF MANHATTAN - DUSKLewis and his band of foul mouthed bond traders took a sleepy department and made it the most profitable on Wall Street. Pretty soon stocks and savings were almost inconsequential to the big banks. They were doing 50, 100, 200 billion in mortgage bonds and dozens of other securities a year.
scene 3 — INT. STRIP CLUB - 1979 - NIGHTBut there were some who saw it coming... While the whole world was having a big ol’ party, a few outsiders and weirdos saw what no one else could. Not me, I’m not a weirdo. I’m pretty cool. We’ll meet later. These outsiders saw the giant lie at the heart of the economy. And they saw it by doing something the rest of the suckers never thought to do: they looked.
scene 4 — EXT. SKYLINE OF MANHATTAN - DUSKIn the end Lewis Ranieri’s Mortgage Backed Security mutated into a monstrosity that collapsed the whole world economy. And none of the experts or leaders or talking heads had a clue it was coming. I’m guessing most of you still don’t really know what happened. Yeah, you got a sound bite you repeat so you don’t sound dumb but come on...
scene 4 — EXT. SKYLINE OF MANHATTAN - DUSK
Bookends
Mortgage backed securities, subprime loans, tranches... Pretty confusing right? Does it make you feel bored? Or stupid? Well, it’s supposed to. Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do. Or even better, for you to leave them the fuck alone. So here’s Scarlett Johansson under a water falls to explain...