American Casino -- deserves a wider release

I wish they had interviewed me.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/09/02/american-casino-director-leslie-cockburn-on-shooting-the-financial-crisis/

Director/journalist Leslie Cockburn has filmed in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. But for her documentary “American Casino” — an informative and emotional look at the origins of the U.S. financial crisis — she encountered a different sort of villain: the greedy corporate banker. Setting up her first shoot in January 2008, Cockburn — along with husband Andrew, who served as the film’s co-writer and co-producer — spent the next year capturing both the financial players who had no qualms about selling complex securities to “idiots,” as well as the families and individuals affected by their decisions. We recently spoke to Leslie Cockburn about her documentary.

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Did you get a sense that these finance executives were contrite about what they did?

I think that they live in a world where they’re not in touch with the high school teachers in Baltimore and I think that when some of them came to the film, they were very thoughtful about the link between what they were doing and what was actually happening. It’s a very enclosed world on Wall Street. As one of the execs says, if we’d all gotten in a car and seen for ourselves what was going on Florida, or California, or wherever, we might have viewed things differently.

<snip>

I call bullshit on that exec's. You would never have viewed anything in any other light than through the lens of your annual bonus. Even if you saw human babies being tossed in meat grinders.

They showed some excerpts and I'd like to say that just when I think that the human race has reached its' nadir and can't possibly slink any lower, I'm proven wrong. AGAIN! Although to be fair, I don't think that very many of the banking insiders and politicians that allowed this to happen are actually human. They don't and never will care one damn bit about anyone besides themselves and their circle of enablers. I think that it might be just about time that we gather our torches and pitchforks and somehow put an end to this avaricious addiction of theirs.