Movie Movie Podcast

Andrew Dunn:

Last week I had some fun with the opaque language/culture of Wall
Street, and I wanted to continue with that theme. A few weeks ago
Zach had a great romantic comedy set at Occupy Wall Street (which we
all know will happen for real at some point), well, I think Occupy
Wall Street is due for some good old fashion exploitation:

Catching a Falling Knife

We open on a life feed of a ‘Mad Money’ type show. Stephen Tobolowsky
plays the host and on his panel is Adam (played by Billy Crudup) who
is the CFO of one of the major banks, and Philip (played by Anthony
Mackie) a representative of Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street
has stunned the world with their announcement that they had taken
steps to become a corporation and are just about to be listed on the
New York Stock Exchange. The overly animated and baffled host asks
Philip how his organization could possibly “sell out” and join Wall
Street when their whole point of existence is to protest the abuses of
Wall Street.

Philip: “I understand people’s trepidation, the people I represent
have been some of the biggest opponents of this action, but allow me
to explain myself. Stephen Colbert’s Super Pac was hugely influential
to my thought process. It was one of the smartest bits of satire
ever–he was able to explain what what is wrong with Political Action
Committees brilliantly by creating one himself and taking his audience
along for the ride. Our thinking is similar: this is a bit of an
experiment admittedly, but we pledge to be completely transparent in
every action we take on this journey, and hope to give a view of Wall
Street from the inside, warts and all, as a public service. The
purpose, in a word is ‘Education’ not ‘Profit’ as I’ve heard some
conspiracy nuts say.”

Adam: “This might seem strange, and I’m sure I’ll get some looks at
the country club” *everyone laughs* “But I’m actually in favor of
Occupy Wall Street in this instance. I believe in the efficiency of
markets, so the marketplace will determine the worth of Occupy Wall
Street. I have my own biases, but I let’s let the market decide.”

It is a few weeks later, and Zuccotti Park is in hysterics. Late in
the night one of the tenants was brutally murdered: he had been
stabbed to death, and a piece of his flesh, exactly 1% of his body
weight, was removed and placed in the scales of a statue of Lady
Justice. It is here where we meet/ are reintroduced to our cast:

Philip (Anthony Mackie) – A community organizer who saw the predatory
loans that the lower class were getting, and did many media
appearances denouncing the greed of wall street leading up to the
financial crisis.

Justin (Dev Patel) – a former Goldman Sachs employee who became
disillusioned and gave up his high salary to fight the injustices he
witnessed.

Bob (Leo Fitzpatrick) – a sketchy looking guy who many suspect might
just be in this so he doesn’t have to pay rent and can flirt with
young idealistic co-eds, but he is so personable that most still like
him, and he has been invaluable in community relations.

Lisa (Emma Stone) – speaking of young idealistic co-eds, she is
currently working on her Masters in journalism and wants to change the
world.

Our cast are the highest ranking members or Occupy Wall Street, and
they are trying to get things under control, but things aren’t helped
by Philip, about whom people were wary of before because of how much
he had changed things, but now people are outright hostile. As it
gets dark, It is finally decided that they will continue the
occupation, but would take turns as lookouts and each person would
make sure to keep track of others, as they expected no help from the
police. With a plan in place things seem to calm down until someone
makes a particularly offensive comment at Philip, who throws his hands
up in disgust and walks off into the night.

Bob runs after him into the largely abandoned streets of Manhattan,
but quickly loses him. As he turns back, we have our first jump scare
as he runs right into someone in a suit wearing a burlap sack over
their head. The sack has a green ‘$’ symbol on it, and they are
brandishing a meat cleaver. Bob is paralyzed with fright and the
killer cleanly slices his head off.

People get a glimpse of the killer and become paranoid, each trying to
remember who was with them at the time. It is clear that they are
being targeted, and they believe the killer must be someone that they
know. Our remaining cast (Philip, Justin and Lisa) stick together
until Lisa finds a suit in Justin’s things.

The suit and the fact that they can’t remember if he was with them
when Bob was killed is enough to make Justin a red herring, and our
heroes back slowly away from him. Justin starts crying and pours his
heart out. He says his student loans were crushing him and he had
been secretly interviewing for finance jobs, saying he knew no one
would approve but he couldn’t go bankrupt at such a young age
(especially because student loans aren’t forgiven in bankruptcy).

Just as Philip and Lisa seem to believe him and inch closer, the blade
of the meat cleaver pushes out of Justin’s chest. There is
pandemonium as the killer, in a run, hacks and slashes his way through
the Occupiers and escapes.

The Occupiers lash out at Philip, more sure than ever that he must be
the reason for what has befallen them. Things get violent as people
start to throw bottles at him. Philip grabs Lisa’s hand and they run
off. With nowhere to go, Philip remembers that he has Adam’s business
card. They had hit it off after the show and Adam wrote his cell and
told Philip to call him anytime. On his frantic call with Adam, Adam
gives them his home address and says he will help in anyway he can.

Adam’s penthouse apartment is huge, it is filled with exotic
taxidermied animals and overlooks Zuccotti Park. Adam says that he is
glad that they called and says to make themselves at home, but that he
had just been to the gym and had to wash up.

As they explore, Philip examines Adam’s very expensive looking
telescope. He tries to look through it at the moon but realizes that
it is actually a digital camera attached to a high powered lense. He
looks through the pictures and freaks out when he sees that they are
all pictures of them in Zuccotti Park.

They try to leave but accidentally open on of the apartments many
closets instead of the door and find a bloody suit and the money bag
mask. Adam is behind them and knocks them out with a bat.

Lisa awakes first but is tied up and can’t free herself. Adam has the
unconscious Philip on an industrial strength scale and is checking his
weight. Lisa yells at him him, asking what does any of this prove.
This prompts Adam to monologue (it’s not enough that there is a much
higher percentage of psychopaths in very high positions of power,
especially in the financial industry).

We see a flashback of a young Adam his his father on a hunt of big
game in Africa. His father give a long speech about how lions are at
the top of their food chain, and they don’t feel sad when they eat
lower animals, and that humans are lions only predators. Moreover,
with the power and money that their family had, they were on the top
of the food chain, and should feel no empathy for those below them,
including fellow humans.

Lisa tries to keep him talking by bringing up the fact that he only
started murdering when they went public. Adam annoyed, kicks Philip
off the scale and makes some calculates on his phone. Lisa starts to
stroke his ego by saying he must be brilliant to know that when the
murders started that the Occupy stock price would rise because people
felt sorry and saw it as a way to help them. This totally works, and
Adam says that was his brilliance, that no one could have predicted
that, and in fact he hadn’t, he thought the price would go down, but
it didn’t matter, because he just had to take a position where he bet
that the volatility of the stock would increase, meaning the stock was
moving moving a lot more in either direction, which he was certain he
would when he started killing people. “Like this” he screamed as he
cuts into Philips chest and removes his heart. Lisa screams and Adams
places the heart on the scale. “Damn, less than a pound, I thought it
would be more than that…”

Lisa yells, “Why! Why did you have to kill him! You are so close to
being defeated!”
Adam: “Ha! Defeated by whom? You?”
Lisa: “No, CNN. You forgot to take my cell phone. I made a call to
my buddy at CNN and you’ve been live on air this whole time. I’m a
journalism major bitch!”

Adam looks frightened and turns on the TV to see that she was telling
the truth and that the police were surrounding his apartment building.
Adam, knowing that all the money and power he had has just
evaporated, knows he is now no better than the 99% and also knows what
he has to do. He stabs himself in the stomach pulls out a handful of
flesh and places it on the scale.

Philip looking at the reading on the scale: “Close enough….”