Craig Gillespie

0:04Hello and welcome to the Monocle Weekly, I'm Laura Kramer. On today's show I speak to Craig Gillespie, the director of the new dark comedy Dumb Money. It's the retelling of a true story of a YouTuber who took on Wall Street with the GameStop stock craze. Craig explains his personal connection to the subject, why he keeps being drawn to biographical storytelling, and what it's like to promote a film without its stars due to the Hollywood strikes. But first, Craig explains the premise of the film.

0:38This is a, I guess you could say it's a David and Goliath story. It's about the little person going up against the one percenters. In this case, it's Wall Street. And hitting them where it hurts, which is the wallet. It's this wild ride where a lot of people made a lot of money and a lot of people lost a lot of money. It's unusual for me that in the past I've done a lot of needle drops. I, Tanya, and Cruella, they both have about 50 songs in them. This one, it has some really strong songs in it, but there's maybe like, you know, eight. And there's about an hour of score, which I don't usually do.

1:13But there's such a pressure cooker to this. It's such an intense ride that I really wanted a score that could do that. I loved it. Megadeth Stallion, Cardi B. So good. So fun. Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar. That's right. It's really fun. Now, this is a very ensemble cast. How did you kind of navigate that? Because it's not like they have very many scenes together. but when they do, you've got these big stars. How do you balance star power and also letting each person have their own space? It was not the intention to have the amazing cast that we were so lucky to get. It just started methodically.

1:51We started with Keith Gill, who's the main character in this, and Paul Danner was the first person I thought of. He's such a versatile actor. There's this vulnerability to him and this intelligence that we really needed for that character. Seth Rogen I called I just had done Pam and Tommy with him and we had the opportunity to play him against type which is always fun he plays Gabe Locke and the hedge fund guy you wouldn't think necessarily Seth Rogen is the hedge fund guy and that was amazing Pete Davidson I've been trying to do a project with we were attached to a film we almost did together I got to call him and he jumped right in so it just kept Sebastian Stan who I've done several projects with he jumped in And I got incredibly fortunate.

2:37And I think partly, too, because we're jumping around between so many characters, it helps that they're recognizable in a way so you can keep track of them. America Ferreira was not on my radar, but she really championed for it. And Mary Vanu, our casting director, put us together and made such a great conversation. And she has such an integrity and a fierceness in that character that was so necessary. area. It was a hard character for us to cast because she carries so much weight in the film. And she did such a beautiful job with it. She really did. I loved her in it. And I thought it was so powerful to be, first of all, brought back to the pandemic days, the deep pandemic days.

3:17And you touched on so many important issues. It was such an intense moment, COVID. And it profoundly changed, I think, our whole society. And it was aware that people were forced to have a pause on life. They had to really reevaluate their priorities, the balance of work and, you know, life, the intensity of losing loved ones, of losing jobs, small businesses, the lack of government aid that was happening. And there was this incredible awareness of disparity of wealth that's going on in America and like everywhere, really. And that frustration all managed to channel itself into the stock. It's like it could have been something else.

3:58there were other things going on at the time. I think the next month was the Black Lives Matter movement, which, again, is such a social protest and such an advocate of change. And this was another way that people were trying to do this. And it's the frustration at a system that feels like rigged inherently against the every person. That's what they went after. And to be able to hit Wall Street where it hurts, which is their wallets, and also make money on the side was just such a win-win for everyone. And it changed Wall Street ever since going forward. It has, and it's like we want to be careful too.

4:37It's like there were winners and losers on both sides of this. It was a complicated emotional journey, but it really has made an impact on Wall Street. There's a line at the end of the film, which I love, which used to be considered a fringe movement, the Reddit users, and now it's like they've shown they have the power to move markets and they have to be taken seriously. 85 % of hedge funds now watch social platforms to see what's happening with their shorts. So it's definitely impacted in that way. The thing that didn't make an impact, unfortunately, was at Congress. And the hope was to show some of that outrage and frustration in this film that it hopefully activates more change.

5:19Why do you think that you keep being drawn to biographical films and things that have happened? What is it about this? It's not something I'm looking for. It's something maybe I should do some therapy on. It definitely feels... Unpack that. Yeah, unpack that. There's now a theme going on. I can see as I look back, it always seems to be the outsider, somebody that's marginalized, the underdog, and wanting to affect change in a strong way. So I guess now the material is coming more to me in a sense. But it's really, it's just finding things that I'm responding to, and it's not something that I'm trying to find deliberately.

6:04It's just, in this case, it was something that was happening in our house. My son was actually involved in GameStop and buying options and involved in this whole roller coaster, so I lived it at the time. What did you think then? It was an intense experience, and he very much had the trajectory of the college students in this film. He timed it perfectly. He got out that morning when it spiked at 400. The next morning was when Robinhood, which was the app they were all using, put a freeze on the buy option and it created the stock. And just that anger and that frustration, he was keeping me abreast of all of that.

6:44And so all of that journey, that emotional weight that was happening, I got to put into the film. That's so fascinating. This was such an intense moment. And I think being able to explore so quickly after the event, it makes it more relevant in a way. But it's also this conversation that is going on right now that started during COVID, which is this wealth disparity that's happening. And it's happening right now in Hollywood, SAG, and with the WGA. And so it's part of that conversation. And that was another reason we really wanted to get it out into the world and activate that. it's hard not having the actors here to work on this and be a part of it and enjoy it.

7:29But I appreciate that the message of this film is partly of what that is and this disparity of wealth going on, this accountability and this transparency that is not there right now. And that's what this is about, this frustration that people want to be heard. And it's a collective. Well, since the cast isn't here indeed, if Paul, for example, would have been here, I would have asked him, how many videos of Keith did you watch? What do you know about his preparation process? Unbelievable. I think with the podcast that the actual Keith Gill did, he would do these seven-hour podcasts once a week for about a year.

8:08I'm pretty sure Paul listened to all of them. He's so methodical with his work. He was such the gatekeeper of it. I mean, literally that first podcast that we have in the film is almost verbatim what the actual first podcast was. How old do you think I am? Grandpa and all that. It's like from the actual podcast. And there were absolutely moments during the film where Paul would be like, hey, I heard him say this in a podcast. Maybe we can weave that in. Or he didn't say it exactly like this. Can we switch that? And he really became that gatekeeper. And also as we sat down, he was invaluable with Paul.

8:44As we were going through the film, it'd be like, okay, so he just got subpoenaed. He just lost his job. and he'd be like, great, these are the real milestones in his journey, and we'd call the writers and be like, can you write a scene about this? Can you write a scene when you have lost$30 million in 24 hours? And so it really evolved. It was really such a collaboration. And I've been fascinated about this idea about chemistry, especially as a director. What do you look for when you're casting two actors together? to what is that unspeakable thing that's there? I think, I don't know, it's such a hard thing to articulate because it really becomes like sort of an intuitive thing in a way.

9:28And casting is everything. It's like I've been on a set in my early days where I've maybe not made the right choice, and there's no going back. Like you cannot fix it in the edit. So I'm very, very methodical with the casting. It's like I angst over it. I think about it very hard. It's not like a flip thing for me in any way. And I play these scenes out in my head and I look at the work, like, you know, when we're talking about Shailene, look at her work and make sure that I think that that's going to work. It's like knowing, having met with Pete and hadn't like even actually even auditioned for me at times over the years.

10:06I was very familiar with Pete and his energy. And that just like that and Paul together just excited me. It's like, I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, hang on a second, how are they in the same movie? But having worked with Paul as we were developing this, Pete came in a little bit later. I was just so excited to see what would happen in the room with such different approaches to the material. And just to wrap up, what's next? The next biography. No, it's like, well, it's always, we're still working on Corella 2. We'd love to get that up and running. But of course, with the strike, everything's up in the air right now.

10:42And there's a couple of other projects we're trying to figure out. That was Craig Gillespie. Dumb Money is out now. The show was edited by Sammy Susi. And I am Laura Kramer. Thank you for listening to The Monocle Weekly.