Bailout The Movie - Official Film Trailer
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“Bailout” to Screen at Derby City Film Festival in February
Guest Post By Film Creator John Titus
Bailout: an unemployed Chicago lawyer (moi) stops paying his mortgage and enlists four friends (also unemployed) to join him on a trip in a Winnebago to Las Vegas, where we plan to tear a page out of Wall Street’s book and piss away other people’s money gambling, etc.
Along the way we interview Americans adversely affected by the financial crisis, principally through foreclosures. In between these interviews and the action in the Winnebago, a handful of bloggers and journalists walk viewers through several financial frauds that have robbed—and continue to rob—Americans from top to bottom.
The names in this latter group will be familiar even to casual readers of economics and financial blogs like Daily Bail. In addition to Megremis, we explore the crisis with Karl Denninger, Dylan Ratigan, Yves Smith, and Christopher Whalen. They do an absolutely dynamite job of explaining the causes of the crisis to mom and pop.
Viewers also hear from Tom Dart, the Cook County Illinois sheriff who’s stood up to the banks by thwarting various foreclosure efforts more than once, as well as from linguistics professor Noam Chomsky and journalist Chris Hedges.
So let it not be said that we cover only one side of the old guard political spectrum; indeed that absurdly false and misleading divide is depicted in the film for what it is—the butt of a bad joke that’s overdue for a richly deserved death. Thus viewers see a “leftist” like Chomsky bashing Barack Obama and while witnessing beat downs of George Bush and Hank Paulson by free market capitalists.
Bailout includes archival footage of the usual suspects on Wall Street and Washington, D.C. But personally, after months of watching reel upon reel of these cretins nearly perjure themselves (when not answering questions that were never put to them), Director Sean Fahey and I had to replace three of them with puppets. Yeah, puppets and Jose Cuervo were the only things that kept us sane.
The crazy layer cake that is Bailout is held together by the narration of stand-up comedian John Fox, who mans the Winnebago through the streets of Vegas, where he has a week-long gig at the Tropicana’s comedy club. Foxy’s wild man antics are legendary among funnymen.
“I tell fuck jokes for a living,” Fox growls in a baritone rasp. He’s got that voice.
Fox lived a half-block down my street for 10 years before moving to California to be closer to his family. He was actually a canary in the coalmine of the financial crisis, as comedy clubs closed and downsized throughout 2006-07 and Fox’s income dropped 75%.
That collapse was the first of many signs that our economy was dying of certain causes—never explored or even acknowledged in the media—that drove me to blogs, where the truth is important enough for actual discussion. It also meant Foxy stayed in our neighborhood a lot more often, and we became as close as brothers as a result. I’ll have more to say about Foxy in a later post.
What resulted from all of this is a documentary about the financial crisis like no other. Bailout has several angles that distinguish it from many outstanding predecessors. First, the TARP bailout is not only decried, but roundly debunked as a total sham. To this day, TARP remains Congress’s costliest outrage and is arguably its greatest slap ever to the face to middle America, which overwhelmingly—and correctly—opposed the legislation that transformed our political landscape forever.
Second, Bailout focuses on unchecked criminal fraud that lies at the root of the crisis. Not greed. Not deregulation. Not free markets. Not income inequality. Not threadbare left-right politics. No. Fraud—and the official refusal to punish fraud or indeed to uphold the rule of law at all—lies at the root of our ills. Bailout describes several frauds in granular detail that you just don’t see anywhere else.
Third, Bailout relies a lot less on its narrator for evidence and a lot more on its witnesses. By way of comparison, the narration in Bailout accounts for less than 14% (by word count) of the movie; Matt Damon’s narration of Inside Job more than doubles that figure. In Bailout, there are more and longer uninterrupted sequences of financial experts going back and forth on a given topic; our goal was to let viewers listen in on conversations among people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Finally, Bailout is a call to action. Too many documentaries to count have done a great job of royally pissing us off while at the same time leaving me shaking our heads: what in the Sam Hill should we do with our outrage? Not Bailout, amigos.
Sep 17, 2012 at 7:43 PM
Reader Comments (82)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YG8GNenGcM
Enjoy your first flight Dar!
Can't wait to see this flick. Cheyenne, will the usual suspects (Denninger, Yves Smith, et al.) be promoting the DVD on their sites? Lots of readers, and probably plenty of buyers -- I would expect.
Thanks for posting the article, John.
As for the United Police State of America, I can report "alive and well:"
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/chicago-police-arrest-beat-nato-protesters-with-batons-arrest-other-protesters-who-were-in-possession-of-beer-making-equipment.html
This woman worked with the JPMorgan in an effort to do something that would have been beneficial to the investors and herself.
But no, despite making her payments she got t-boned and foreclosed. This was just uploaded on Friday and I'm surprised it didn't get knocked down. None of the banks want anybody to see this.
California Homeowner and Vietnam Widow Testifies before Legislative Committee on Foreclosure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JnllepA5f8&feature=youtu.be
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Temple-Federal-Reserve-Country/dp/0671675567
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/banking-malfeasance/bailout-dylan-ratigan-interviews-the-movie-makers.html
this is from the guys at Brasscheck TV ........... "Brasscheck TV" <news@brasschecktv.com>
"Its Working"................will the Sheep wake up, well, maby NOT, But the people will....
You keep "Rockin" thAre Chey, I'll keep drivin the Bus Forward down the Frickkin Hiway.......!
Must See Film: Michael Moore Meets Hunter S. Thompson
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
Happy Memorial Day everybody.
Must See Film: Michael Moore Meets Hunter S. Thompson
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
Nice find Tex! The movie was top of the fold on Zero Hedge a while ago. I can't wait to see this and I'm going to lobby hard for an autographed copy of the DVD. LOL!
Must See Film: Michael Moore Meets Hunter S. Thompson
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
Nice find Tex! The movie was top of the fold on Zero Hedge a while ago. I can't wait to see this and I'm going to lobby hard for an autographed copy of the DVD. LOL!
Must See Film: Michael Moore Meets Hunter S. Thompson
Search that on ZH and Happy Memorial Day everybody.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/must-see-film-michael-moore-meets-hunter-s-thompson
Thanks again for all your hard work and look forward to more!
Trust Me, Chunga, I know in my hart, you are a "DB Family Member'.............You R On the List.......Just think of the FUN, they could of had if Dar drove the bus.........I know the best truck stops, with the most'es "Lot Lizzer'ed's"...........
You know they have the best Breakfast's in the mornning.........Ohhhhh, Yea ?
While many of us have been following the cast and crew of the film BAILOUT, it is with a heavy heart that I have learned of the passing of John Fox. I wish to extend my deepest sympathies to the friends and family of John, and the cast and crew of BAILOUT who were fortunate enough to work with him.
John Fox's Black Swan Song
http://usabailout.com/content/john-foxs-black-swan-song
[snip]
Legendary stand-up comic John Fox has died of cancer at age 59. Fox was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in October 2011 while working on what may be the last thing his fellow comedians would have expected—narrating a documentary about the financial crisis.
Fox’s entertainment career began in the 1970s and included stints as a writer for TV shows such as “Laverne and Shirley” and “Happy Days.”
In the 1980s, Fox mastered his stand-up act and became a favorite of Rodney Dangerfield, whose Las Vegas Tropicana show featured Fox as the opening act for eight years. In addition to appearing in two Dangerfield comedy specials, Fox made roughly 10 appearances on the “Tonight Show.” Over the decades, Fox was also a reliable personality on "The Bob and Tom Show," on which he appeared innumerably as a guest.
As Fox’s stand-up career continued in the 1990s and beyond, his reputation for wild road antics spread to the point of inspiring fellow comedian Pat Godwin to write a song, “The Legend of John Fox." In the song, Godwin knows his notorious counterpart only by the lurid array of detritus strewn across comedy club condos freshly vacated by Fox, much like Jack McGee's futile efforts to directly witness the Incredible Hulk in action.
Seemingly every comedian has a John Fox story.
“Foxy and I had adjacent motel rooms one gig,” actor Jeff Garlin recalled at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago not long ago. “Sunday morning I hear Fox snoring, so I tip-toe out. Then someone yells ‘Garlin!’ and I turn around and there’s John Fox waving at me in the parking lot, completely naked.”
“I didn’t want to be rude and not say goodbye,” Fox said.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-06-10/its-all-about-fraud-silence-buy-side
[snip]
Over the weekend, I met with John Titus, Executive Producer of the new documentary film "Bailout: The Dukes of Moral Hazard," which tells the story of individual Americans affected by the financial bust. Myself, Yves Smith and other members of the blogerati are featured in the film.
We talked about why the film seems to connect with people at a viseral level. Our conclusion is that the clarity and hilarity comes from the choice of our late friend John Fox as narrator.
http://thecomicscomic.com/2012/05/31/r-i-p-john-fox-1957-2012/
The next screening of "Bailout" will be in Philadelphia later this month:
http://usabailout.com/content/screening-philadelphia-june-20-and-june-23
The subject matter of "Bailout" had to pass through the keen, irreverant perspective that John Fox, a veteran television writer and later stand up commedian, brought to all of his work. When the man who opened for Rodney Dangerfield for eight years tells you about the subprime crisis, it somehow makes sense.
But even though Bailout Director Sean Patrick Fahey vividly presents the impact of the crisis on home owners, there is another part of the story that remains untold, namely the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses borne by investors. Incredibly, the vast majority of the losses on residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) and toxic derivatives like collateralized debt obligations (CDO) have been left on the table.
When Goverment hurts them, you hurt everybody. They can no longer do the simple things in life. Go out to eat...Go to a show....Go to a country music show......Go to town and buy a Mo. worth of food, then you hurt everyone in the end......
The more that see this film, the more Sheeple we have woke up, to whats "Realy Going On"....................!
thAre was a time when Co. were out to better them self's and the product they put out. Competeters tryed to out do each other. Building a better mouse trap. Dont matter what it was, somebody out did the other Co. and sold id for $.99 "Less"............
"WTF Happen'ed".........in the 90's something changed, Dident It....? No More "New & Improved" Cool-Wipp, or anything else.
Today, the "Crap" we get is Cheeper, and Cheeper, and Cheeper Yeat. So the New & Improved, has gone a 180* and we nolonger get a better product. Today we get "Fuc**ing Ju*k"........Every 6mo. its now cheeper, full of poision, GMO, E-Coli, Worless-Crap, and the stores have no choice, but to sell this Crap to us.
I wonder how many Sheeple know what the hell went wrong, and why were stuck with the Useless Crap we have to chose from today..................................................................................................?
How did I do on that one Chey.? My PCB fan club yeat today use's my "New & Improved Cool- Wipp", saying, but they have no clue why its gone for ever.
We can thank our own goverment, for running out of our money and having to "Cheet" on everything to maintain their life style, at our expance.................."Im Just Sayin".......................!
http://usabailout.com/content/decadent-and-depraved-kentucky-derby-spells-d-o-o-m-market
[snip]
--by John Titus
Since Wall Street's rigged casino has blow-torched unsuspecting investors and traders alike with high-frequency computers, which account not only for entire calendar quarters of profitable trading days by multiple mega-banks but also for 84% of all stock trades generally , it's high time to ponder one low-frequency forward-looking market indicator that has thus far avoided detection in the house of mirrors that is the financial industry.
Fittingly, the best indicator of massively downward stock market action lies but a short distance from the personal casino of Jamie Dimon et al--at the race track. I speak of the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown.
It's good to see all of you. I've missed this place.
And Chunga, you were not on suspension of course...it's the horrible captcha system for comments...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZESqQOctsXA
Cue to 13:24 and to 15:00 for two film clips, in both of which we find the Bail's proprietor batting leadoff.
The interview itself was skyped from a hotel room on 31st Street in Manhattan during a cement mixer convoy. I do not recommend these circumstances for one's first experience with skype.
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I thought it was a good interview. I watched it when you sent the link by text a few weeks ago.
Bailout 2 (The Sequel) - European Treason ?
The Bailout TV show is an idea whose time has come as well. There's even a game show treatment floating around somewhere based on the three segments of the "Wall Street Wheel of Fraud" in the movie, the third of which features the work of one WilliamBanzai7 (who was also critical in getting us over a case of writers block, so to speak).
At this point, it seems pretty clear that Bailout will remain a franchise-able product until the financial system collapses into dust. Moreover, since bailouts are in large part a means of covering up the massive frauds that have occurred and that will drive us well past the Great Depression, it's not unreasonable to wonder if Bailout might be viable after the inevitable collapse, perhaps as a flashlight for coroners interested in what killed the U.S.
This was a crime that was carefully planned and executed.
I'm sad to say there is so much fraud going on right now there are certain blog sites out there are not what they appear to be.
They purport to be on our side but run flak for the banks.
Be careful out there.
http://usabailout.com/content/why-did-jamie-dimon-lie-congress-about-jp-morgan’s-bailouts
--by M.F. Quintilianus
[snip]
If I said it once, I said it a thousand times: Mendacem oportet esse memoram. For people like Jamie Dimon who thought they were cool sleeping through their Latin classes, it means: A liar must be good at remembering.
Jamie Dimon blacked out during that lesson, and when he got flustered before Congress during the London Whale hearings, he forgot his earlier lies. As we shall see, flustered witnesses are menaces to the party line since they’ll cough up all sorts of crazy shit. And that’s exactly what the head of JP Morgan did.
Dimon’s temper tantrum in the Senate—the product of arrogance that he wore literally on his sleeve—produced a spasm of lies so astounding that I found myself wondering if the Casino Emperor is demented.
Dimon’s performance has been widely discussed. The most interesting comment came, as it often does, from Matt Taibbi, who observed the following about JP Morgan’s CEO, Chairman of the Board, and President:
"He particularly kept swallowing the word 'granular,' which repeatedly came out as 'granyer.' The phrase, 'CIO, particularly the synthetic credit portfolio, should have gotten more scrutiny,' came out like CIO partick-ler the synth-por-shoulda more scrooney. I don’t mention this to pick on the guy’s public presentation, but more because it seemed like Dimon’s speech got more manic and incoherent the more he dissembled and covered up."
Aside from establishing Taibbi as the odds-on favorite to win the 2012 Tom Wolfe Phonetic Dialogue Award, that passage encapsulates perfectly how just how sloppy JP Morgan’s Gambler-in-Chief got before the Senate.
The question that made Jamie Dimon unravel like a split-open golf ball came from Jeff Merkley, one of the half-dozen Banking Committee Members who’s not on JP Morgan’s payroll.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/quelle-surprise-fed-economists-side-firmly-with-bank-criminality-over-the-rule-of-law.html
[snip]
The way Big Lies get sold is by dint of relentless repetition. In the wake of the heinous mortgage settlement, foreclosure fatigue has set in. A lot of policy people want to move on because the topic has no upside for them. Nothing got fixed, the negotiation process took a lot of political capital (meaning, as we pointed out, it forestalls any large national initiatives in the near-to-medium term), and Good Dems don’t want to dwell on a crass Obama sellout (not that that should be a surprise by now). But the fact that this issue, which ought to be front burner given its importance both to individuals and the economy, is being relegated to background status creates the perfect setting for hammering away at bank-friendly memes. When people are less engaged, they read stories in a cursory fashion, or just glance at the headline, and don’t bother to think whether the storyline makes sense or the claims are substantiated.
Just look at the headline: “Evidence suggests anti-foreclosure laws may backfire.” First, it says there are such things as “anti-foreclosure laws.” In fact, the laws under discussion are more accurately called “Foreclose legally, damnit” laws. Servicers and their foreclosure mill arms and legs have so flagrantly violated long-standing real estate laws in how they execute foreclosures that some states have decided to up the ante in terms of penalties to get the miscreants to cut it out. As Dayen points out:
No state law in this country disallows legal foreclosures. If the banks cannot substantiate ownership of the property, why is the finger pointed at the state laws that force that substantiation, and not the banks themselves? Nobody told them to lose ownership of mortgages, prompting them to falsify documents in an attempt to foreclose.
Here is a photo of Bill Clinton signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
http://dailybail.com/home/john-boehners-1998-glass-steagall-flashback-would-you-like-a.html
Glass Stegall was repealed in 1999. Since 2000 this firm bundled over a trillion in mortgages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/01legal.html
Mukasey Declines to Create a U.S. Task Force to Investigate Mortgage Fraud
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/06justice.html
Regarding Mr. Nelson at Mckee and Nelson. He worked for the Treasury Department and IRS. And we wonder why these guys get away with the shit they do.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/08/mckee-nelson-th.html
Ratigan celebrates the 10th birthday of the Gramm -Leach-Bliley Act
http://dailybail.com/home/ratigan-goes-nuts-for-the-10th-birthday-of-gramm-leach-blile.html
Moving along, all you need to do is check out the headlines here to see why we (and most of the world) are in this disaster.
http://www.deadwrongfilms.com