Earlier this week got here the announcement that A24 and Apple are creating a film about Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX cryptocurrency founder who was convicted of fraud in 2023. Lena Dunham is connected to write down the script, based mostly on the Michael Lewis non-fiction ebook “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon.”
My elementary query is at all times this: Past offering a showy function for an actor hoping for an awards marketing campaign, why adapt an already extensively reported story? What unexplored insights are there to be mined?
I used to be within the minority two years in the past after I stated we didn’t want “The Dropout,” Hulu’s status collection about Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos rip-off, and I’m in all probability within the minority saying the identical about this challenge too.
Hollywood executives by no means appear to tire of this trope, churning out a quartet of collection in 2022 that have been a variation on the identical theme, together with the one about Holmes, one other concerning the con artist Anna Delvey, yet one more concerning the rise and fall of WeWork executives Adam and Rebekah Neumann, plus yet one more about Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, who resigned from the corporate after a collection of regarding allegations.
It’s unclear what we, as audiences, are supposed to get from these tasks. Possibly some viewers discover some leisure worth, however to me, these reveals come throughout as empty re-enactments that are typically shrugging of their “welp, corruption!” sensibility.
All that apart, waiting for the proposed Bankman-Fried film, I’m undecided Lewis’ ebook is the very best supply materials. Based on U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams, Bankman-Fried “orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers’ money.” He was sentenced to 25 years in jail and ordered to forfeit $11 billion.
Regardless of these information, Lewis has been criticized for creating a “misguided soft spot for the fallen crypto king,” per The Guardian, leading to a ebook that’s unable to “disguise the fact that Lewis can’t bear to think ill of his subject.”
A 1997 profile of Lewis in Self-importance Truthful famous that his work “raises the question of how heavily he may be placing his thumb on the scales when he weighs the ingredients of his dashing dispatches” and his “history suggests that he may be particularly susceptible to the lure of a shapely, larger-than-life narrative.”
These are regarding traits in a non-fiction author, however sarcastically, prized abilities in Hollywood. Is Dunham, most well-known for capturing millennial angst in her TV collection “Girls,” the fitting individual to sort out any of this with a transparent eye? Time will inform.
As a critic, I’m at all times curious why sure forms of tasks get green-lit. A cynical learn may be this: These tales don’t provoke audiences to demand extra scrutiny of corruption, however as a substitute ship a false however reassuring message that the system works as a result of every now and then, a strong determine falls from their lofty perch.
Hollywood has at all times had an affinity for schemers and perhaps that’s as a result of present enterprise is run by related varieties: Excessive on their very own provide of overconfidence and fast-talking obfuscation. In 2022, when all these status collection got here out, I wrote a couple of completely different and much more attention-grabbing strategy to the scammer style:
1993’s “Six Degrees of Separation” starring Will Smith (and based mostly on the John Guare play, which was impressed by actual occasions) is an effective level of comparability. It’s a film that’s fascinated about greater than the mere reality of the swindle, however why it labored: Smith’s character has an innate understanding of human nature and, regardless of the con, a real want and wish to attach with individuals. And the self-congratulatory swells taken in by his lies are actually simply projecting onto him all their neuroses and biases. Maybe that’s as a result of Guare (who additionally wrote the screenplay) wasn’t aiming to recreate a scandal, however as a substitute used a real story to encourage his creativeness and poking across the nooks and crannies of human nature.
”Six Levels of Separation” … feels wealthy and sophisticated as a result of it additionally contemplates the way in which concepts about race, and the smug assurance that solely different white individuals are racist, performs into the sport Smith’s character is operating. That’s notably lacking from the aforementioned tasks. Whether or not it’s Anna Delvey or Elizabeth Holmes, their whiteness is so clearly key to affording them the good thing about the doubt and getting them by doorways. And but the reveals about them aren’t fascinated about exploring this in any depth.
I’m holding out hope there are screenwriters with deeper issues to say concerning the ethical rot that has formed company America. Whether or not there are media executives and financiers prepared to again them is the more durable query.
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.
Initially Printed: November 15, 2024 at 12:03 PM PST
