Whos going to make it and not going to make it but you also dont have an idea about just the tension that can be involved in navigating these various crises points. Whatever tone, whatever genre, every movie has to be a suspense movie. Thats what ive discovered making apollo 13. I think this. [ heartbeat ] is kind of a cousin [ heartbeat ] icousin in thee sea. Is a cousin. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose the big short is the new film from director and n adaptation of Michael Lewis 2010 book of the same name, follows a group of outsiders in the world of finance who bet against the credit and Housing Market in the years leading up to the 2007 crisis. Heres the trailer for the film. phone ringing michael, how are you . I found something really interesting. The whole Housing Market is propped up on these bad loans. They will fail. The Housing Market is rock solid. Its a time bomb. Mike who gets his haircut at supercuts and doesnt wear shoes knows more than Alan Greenspan . Dr. Mike, yes, he does. Imed off, American People getting screwed by the big banks. Im getting madder and marred and this guy walks into my office and said there is some shady stuff going down. A lot of banks are having a big old party. A few outsiders saw what no one else could. The whole World Economy might collapse. Im sure the worlds banks have more incentive than greed. Youre wrong. No ones paying attention. The banks got greedy, and we can profit off their stupidity. You want to bet against the banks is this. I think were either high or having a stroke. Fraud is never going to work. Eventually things go south. When the hell did we forget all that . How can the banks let this happened . Fueled by stupidity. Thats not stupidity, thats fraud. Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and ill have my wifes brother arrested. laughter do you have any idea what you just did . You just bet against the american economy. If youre wrong, you can lose it all. The banks defrauded the American People. Now we can kick em in the teeth. Okay, here we go if you target strippers with bad loans. You wont be able to refinance. On all my loans . What do you mean all your loans . I have five houses and a condo. Rose joining me is adam mckay and one of the as far as stephesteve carell. Pleased to have them both here. Hollywood occupies wall street. There you are. Of course, the other stars are here, too. Yeah, how did you do that . I still cannot figure it out. Rose is this a comedy or tragedy . Its both. You know, its a true story, so we knew from the very beginning it would never adhere to one strict genre. You know, when these guys, the real people that steve plays and Christian Bale and all these great actors, when they found out there was a bubble and no one else knew about it, they were very excited. It was exciting times. They had a lot of energy and then it changed and became tragic. So its both. Rose you really wanted to make this movie a movie about wall street and the crash. Yeah, i read this book and i really felt like Michael Lewis book was one of the books of our times. I really felt like it dealt with a lot of issues. Rose why . I think it dealt with culture, it dealt with character and then it dealt with information. And you dont often see those three things intertwined so brilliantly. And by the time i was done reading it, i felt like i had really looked behind the curtain of wall street to some degree. I know its more complicated than that. So we decided with this movie we were going to try to go through it all. We were going to try to explain it, have great characters and go for the whole thing lewis pulled off with his book. Rose its different than anchor man 1 and 2, isnt it . Can you explain . I did. laughter Character Development was very similar. And would be at the monitor adam like to work, has a microphone. Rose a mega phone . He has a microphone, its amplified. Its actually that loud. 3 laughter and he barks orders. He, you know, gives us im very german when i direct. I want exactness, i want marks to be hit. laughter it was actually similar in a way to anchor man, except the things we were talking about. Rose how was it similar . It was similar in the sense you had complete freedom to fail and you knew adam would protect you and if you stunk, he wouldnt put it in the movie. Its a great protection. Its great as an actor to be able to do that. Rose so tell me who this is that you portray, stephen iseman. The character in the movie is mark baum. Mr. Iseman showed up the second day i was shooting and was instructed to lay low, dont hang out at the monitor, sort of be a fly on the wall. Within minutes, he was giving adam notes, walking on the set giving me instructions. laughter they were good. The guys a smart guy. I went to him and said, steve, great to have you here, but throughout the movie, when you see the movie, youre aware of carell doing mark baum is constantly getting phone calls in the middle of conversations and walking up to people. So i went to the real guy and said, steve, you cant come behind the monitor in the middle, he got a phone call and walked away. Yet hes always trying to tell you what to do. Hes definitely on the side of the angels, hes a good guy. Rose did you talk to him about portraying the role . Yeah, but its sort of creepy doing that. Rose creepy . Creepy. Rose i thought thats what great actors did. Well, its weird because you dont want to feel like youre stealing their soul. You know, you dont want to feel like youre examining them, theyre some sort of science project. When youre sitting across from them in a diner on the upper east side, ooh, look what he did with his hafnltd thats weird. Youre doing it, but you dont want to feel like youre you know, youre taking advantage in any way. I just wanted to be respectful and to pay respect to him as a person in the portrayal. Rose its hard to say, after your last performance, that it or the last one that was nominated for an oscar that anything is a turn growr because youve already made the turn. laughter that could be interpreted so many different ways. Rose you know what i meant, dont you . Adam is going through the same sort of thing because hes known for anchor man. Rose sure. Ive known adam since 1990. Anyone who knows him knows this is not a big surprise. Rose the fact that he would want to make this kind of film . And that he would do it so elegantly. I mean, hes so smart and so passionate, its a perfect fit. Rose somebody said in writing, in reading this piece and other pieces about him and weve talked about it with will before, that in the group of comedians, hes the funniest guy in the room though youve never seen him on the screen. Definitely. Hes the guy at the microphone, at the monitor lobbying everyones favorite lines out, who are the favorite lines in the movie, and its your guy to say it without laughing and without ruining his delivery. So he is the funniest person there. Rose why no room for will farrell here. I discussed it with him and said there are some cameos here. He said, no, youre on your own. But god bless will. He came and visited the set. He had no other reason to be there other than to support the guy he works with. We had a great time. Hes been amazing. Rose people who watch this show heard me interview michael ten times including about the the big short. Tell me the story that you tell in the film. Obviously Michael Lewis is an amazing writer, so the book is a book everyone should read, but what i loved about it was he really burrows down on these four or five outsiders who, despite the numbers being cartoonishly obvious that there was a housing bubble, for some reason this little group of guys are the ones. Right away, i was, like, what does that say about our culture. On top of that, hes got humor, rhythm, storytelling and most of all information. So by the time i was done reading the book, i felt like i had a pretty good shape of what led to the 2008 collapse, yet i had been completely engaged with these characters that are so amazingly played by these actors. But i just never read a book that did that much where i was learning, where i was engaged, where it was dramatic, tragic, funny, and the way lewis writes, its all so effortless. Rose i assume you knew all the stuff about derivatives and all the financial youre correct, and thats why adam called laughter rose he knew you knew. He knew it would be so easy for me to improvise in that world. Its hard because adam likes to improvise. To improvise a language you dont speak is trickiaged you have to throw things in your back pocket and bone up a little bit. Rose how to pronounce them . Learn them phonetically. laughter but some days some of the actors were better. Jeer my strong who plays vinny was really articulate. I didnt know much about it and i read the book and the script and learned as much as i could before we started. Rose did you learn something about the financial industry because of it . I did. Its terrifying. Rose terrifying how it could have happened . Nobody smart saw it coming. Yeah. Rose but they knew something about the Housing Market. Its terrifying it could happen again and nothing has really changed. Well, at the very beginning to have the movie, we say all they did was look. Thats it. Its terrifying a whole society can be looking to the right when the information is to the left. I think the total amount of people that really caught this were, like, 20, 22 people. Obviously, we focus on these four or five. But its just amazing that billions of people can be looking in one direction. Rose where michael found them, too. Thats lewis. Rose all of a sund knew where he was and because he was looking for a way to tell the story and then he found a few guys who got it and bet on their own. And then picked the characters that would make the best story, too. Like he really found the true outsiders. I mean, if you look at some of the other people at bat, the Christian Bale character, dr. Michael burry, he listens to speed metal, and when i talked to him is one of the most honest, decent people youve ever met in your life. Rose isnt it something that we can see the range. Comedy is really hard and there is so many talented actors in comedy and there is a limited group of about 20 of them who can do what they do and no one else can do it. So its fun to see a guy like steve who weve known for years is brilliant. Hes so tactical and works so hard. He almost has a method approach to comedy and to see him put it towards drama is really cool. Rose do you have a method approach to comedy . I dont know what im doing. Rose you know its true. Yeah. Too bad. Deal with it. laughter rose dont share it. Thats all right. Have you been to his house . Rose no, i havent been invited. And there is a reason, too. laughter its on a mountaintop. Rose yes, it is. He has several not wives, that would be creepy but he has several attendants, he calls hem. Rose what do they do . Theyre beautiful and they make him relaxed. He has 17 kids and a lot of fans. laughter i didnt know that about steve carell. Rose you have to go do another show somewhere. I do. Rose well miss you. Well continue this talk. Well spend the rest of the program talking about you. Please dont, youre going to lose your audience. Rose are you making another movie . Im making a movie with emma stone in the spring directed by dayton and farris who directed little miss sunshine and independents about the bat of the sexes and im playing bob by riggs and shes playing billie jean king. Rose are you involved in this. Yes, producing it. No, not at all. Rose lets go to the first scene where steves character is talking to his wife. Hey excuse me hi, honey. The therapist called. You did it again. There were no cabs. What was i supposed to do . Youre running around like you have to right every wrong in the world. You sound sin so angry. Fine. Im a mean guy and ime ssed of. People care about the ball game or what actresses went into rehab. I think you should try medication. No, no, we agreed, it interfered with work. Maybe its time to quit. I love my job. You hate your job. I love my job. Youre miserable. I love my job. I love my job, honey. Mark cynthia, im okay. I really am. Hey, hey, hey no, thats my cap. Thats my cap. That is my cab. Ill call you later. laughter rose tell me about him as an actor and the portrayal he gives you of this character hes obviously so humble, i knew he would be good. Ive worked with him in two other coldies, in chicago doing theerkts second city, and what i saw in this movie was this hunger for the moment, this tenacious i wont quit until i know its true, and it was a completely different experience working with him because i felt like we were both chasing down a stray cat rose but iseman is a larger than life character yes rose and you say he found a way to get inside that didnt do impressions of the larger than life character absolutely. If you meet the real steve iseman, hes mark baum in this movie, hes very funny and reads comic books and he brought the vulnerability and you can see the anger and betrayal by the world in every scene he plays thats so perfect. And he got a seat on the ground with a character and would have been a very easy character to go super big with, but steve just has amazing instincts. He came in knowing he has a big speech moment in the end of the movie that could have easily been hollywood strings, this is the moralistic moment, and all steve did was to say i dont want it to be that. Im, like, i dont want it to be that either so we both fought against that to make it as real as it could with having it be steve. He has great instincts. He knows whats for real and what he wants to see and works and pushes to get there. The other guy he reminded me of was Christian Bale. I thought the two were similar in their approach as actors yeah. As far as huge amounts of preparation and an amazing nose for the truth. I thought the two of them were sinned of similar rose kinsinned the twe kind of similar rose actors do that as a director you encourage them. I told steve before the movie, i said, i would love for you to have put on some weight because isemans got some weight. So steve showed up 20 pounds heavier and i was, like, oh, i didnt know you would put on that much weight. The same thing with christian. I said, id love you to spend time with the guy. He spends a day and a half with the guy, gets his clothes, learns to play drums like the real guy rose learns to play drums . Yes rose dont do that overnight, do you . No, and especially not the kind he had to play. Especially speed metal. Its the hardest drums. And in three weeks he learned this song with doublekick drums and played it nonstop. You realize a lot of these guys think of these guys as big movie stars, oh, Christian Bale, and theyre really good rose was it a hard book to make into a film . You know, for me, ive always been looking for this chance to mess with the form. Ive always known that, you know, film has been around for a long time and ive seen some movies that i really liked, like 24 Hour Party People by michael winterbottom, american splen tore with paul giomatti, where they played with play breaking the fourth wall and i always felt audiences could handle that. 30 years ago . No. So when i read this book, yes, its difficult, but i knew if i played with the fourth wall, i could pull it off, and there could be a different kind of Kinetic Energy to it, so thats exactly what drew me to it rose what does brad play . He plays a great character. Hes the mentor to the two sort of green horns. Hes the old gun slinger who hung up his guns and hated wall street so much and now hes become an end times prepper. He really thinks the whole world is going down. Its based on a true guy. These young guys convince him to come out of retirement to help them so they can trade these bigtime options heres what the new yorker magazine said. Said, lately before mckay goes to bed hes been talking about Climate Change particularly the paper from stanford he read about the sixth mass extinction. He said hes thinking about doing a movie about it, it will be real but with cool stuff. Hes thinking about immigration narrative. Do you think there is a way to do a movie about immigration where people that are antiimmigration will watch it and have some degree of enjoyment . This is true we kind of did that. I wonder if there is a way to do this thats not condescending or judgmental, like, were all in this and trying to figure it out. Can you do a movie where guys protect our border, these sort of hapless characters and end up crossing over into new mexico and have to get back in, i dont know. Rose but do you as a writer and director have a keen sense of interest in Public Affairs . You know, i just think we live an incredibly unusual times right now and i think there are a lot of things happening now that have never happened in the history of man kind. I mean, the giant media machine that we have in the United States with thousands of tv channels. Rose thats why you made anchor man about the basic cable industry. Exactly. And i think we have, you know, obviously this interconnectedness going on with our Financial System and the internet. There are so many things happening. Then we have Climate Change which possibly could be the biggest threat to mankind ever. So i think to ignore these subjects would be foolish. I think were living rose and you can find absurdity in all of them . Theyre comedy and insight as well. Exactly. Theyre all crazy absurd. Rose whats the relationship between you and will . Right now we just have this crazy partnership, started back at saturday night live. Rose you were the head writer at the time . Yes. He comes from a divorced family, his dad is a musician. Im from a divorced faly, my dad is a musician. Were basically the same age and laugh at the same things. What i like about will is he doesnt believe any of the hype. He is in no way full of himself. Both of us believe in no drama and both of us sort of constantly laugh about the fact that people are stressing out about movies, whereas in 40 years were not going to be watching movies anymore. Were watching 4d Virtual Reality disks. , so yeah, its been an amazing relationship. And hes got a great sort of view of the world. Hes politically social yet not strident, has an amazing sense of humor. Rose are you interest