Or with a film like Margin Call, not do what is an easy thing to do, which is to label all bankers as horrible, greedy, monstrous people. But to humanize and understand from the perspective, at least of the character that I played, who was not a big CEO, not somebody making gazillions of dollars, but [somebody who was] was taking orders.
I tried to bring some level of personal accountability about what happens to people as individuals when either faced with, “Oh, I can make this decision, and this is a good decision, or I can make this decision, and it’s a bad decision.” Or those people like Abramoff, who maybe didn’t really even see what he was doing because he was living in a culture and a climate where it seemed to be happening everywhere. As he says in the film, at some point, justifiably, you know, “Everyone is selling access on K Street. That’s what they’re accusing me of doing, that’s what everybody does.”Well, yeah, he’s probably right. But again, here’s a character who was vilified, who was unceremoniously thrown under not just a bus, but probably a train, who was labeled as the most greedy, devil incarnate, worst human being that ever walked the face of the Earth, which is lazy journalism.
“But again, here’s a character who was vilified, who was unceremoniously thrown under not just a bus, but probably a train, who was labeled as the most greedy, devil incarnate, worst human being that ever walked the face of the Earth, which is lazy journalism.“