Interview (Written): Charles Randolph (“The Big Short”)

A Creative Screenwriting interview with Charles Randolph, co-writer of Oscar nominated movie The Big Short, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay:

What made you want to adapt Michael Lewis’s book for the screen?

I loved Plan B. I am always happy to work with them. Michael is the best American nonfiction writer. What Michael does is he is capable of being very generous to his characters while being very critical of the world they live. And he takes them at their word. He views them through the lens of what they want, and he takes what they want seriously. He believes in it. He also has inherent cinematic characters, people whose desires are very clear to us.

A man riding through the desert isn’t a story, but a man riding through the desert who is hungry becomes a story because we are no longer looking down on him but through his eyes because we know what he wants. And he is generous about his characters, they kind of hang themselves, so they have emotional complexity. He isn’t judging them at the beginning of his book.

The second thing he does is he does a very good job of casting his book. Of going into a world figuring out who are the most interesting, crazy human beings of that world and then telling about that world through those people. Inherently, they were very rich characters. So that is what Michael has.

What The Big Short, specifically has, is a very unique, emotional character in Baum (Steve Carrell), who is the guy who becomes the very thing he procures. And I thought that was the best character response to the 2008 crisis, because the 2008 crisis is us realizing we are all guilty.

I loved the idea of this man betting against the system because he believes it to be corrupt and incompetent only to win and he wakes up and realizes, “Oh, if I’m right then the system is corrupt and incompetent.” And of course no pessimist wants to believe they’re right.

The whole thing about being a pessimist is that you’re not right. So because he’s one of those guys who don’t want to be as pessimistic as he is, he is sort of bummed out and realizes there is this huge price to pay and he is part of that problem and not part of the solution. So that was interesting to me, I thought that was an interesting take on our collective culpability.

The Big Short

What was the process of adapting the book like, and how long did that take?

It took about three months to write it down, and another three months to reduce its complexity. So, six months, a little longer than usual.

There was some research to do too, although Michael had done most of it. Things like finances, that whole Florida thing, understanding how mortgage brokers thought at the time, what they were doing, understanding how strippers were owning five houses and a condo, that kind of thing.

I usually start with the characters. I try to see what defines and makes them specific and unique. I usually give them each a quirk and measure everything against that quirk. I try to arrive at that right tone.

I wrote the Florida section first because it wasn’t in the book and that’s when I realized it was more comedic than I thought. At that time, it was more satirical and more character-driven humour. And then Adam McKay came along and sort of made it more into farce, which made it work better because there is so much abstract and complex information to communicate.

In general it was trying to find the right tone that was slightly funnier than your average Milos Forman comedy, which is all grounded character-based but not so satirical where you got “Wag the Dog.” Somewhere between there was what I was shooting for.

Once I got the tone down, then I went through the plot. The market’s movements provided you with an underlying plot. You make your short deal, then the bank is trying to squeeze you out, and then it all breaks loose. So that was pretty easy, and it provided character arcs against that.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

You may download the script for The Big Short here.