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HBO's "Too Big To Fail" Premiere at MOMA

Published: May 17, 2011

 Finance       

Last night, at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the film adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin's best-selling book Too Big To Fail premiered before a Hollywood- and Wall Street-star-studded audience. On hand were many of the actors in the film (William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Ed Asner, and others) along with some real-life Wall Streeters who were (or weren't) inhabited during filming (Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Meredith Whitney, among others).

ed asner and warren buffettIf you weren't lucky enough to score a ticket to last night's screening and have to wait five days for your fill of behind-the-scenes at the beginning of the great financial crisis -- HBO airs the film this Sunday night -- here's a well-worth-your-time review from Dealbreaker in which you'll learn who of the real-life financial crisis players in "Too Big To Fail" the movie will like their on-screen portrayals, and who won't; here's a taste: "If the (unintentionally hilariously) bad toupee on Matthew Modine doesn't do it, the fact that he's pointedly made to look like the world’s biggest *^ick in every scene he appears might do it (Thain is portrayed as 'selfish' (Paulson/Hurt's words), conniving and greedy, and arguably comes off worse than Fuld)."

And from Business Insider, here are some equally fascinating first-person accounts by actors interviewed at the MOMA premiere about the difficulty and/or fun they experienced trying to bring their Wall Street roles to life; for example, here's the always-great-at-playing-sinister James Woods: "It's the only part I ever took in my life without reading the script. When I heard they wanted me to play Dick Fuld, I just said yes. And I told Curtis [Hanson, the director], 'I wanna play this as a conflicted Shakespearean hero, like Hamlet.'"

Indeed, to fail or not to fail, that is (or, rather, was) the question.

(Dealbreaker: DB at the Movies: Too Big To Fail)

(Business Insider: The Stars Of HBO's "Too Big To Fail" On Their Real-Life Wall Street Counterparts)

(Related: HBO's "Too Big To Fail" Is "Too Complicated and Too Simple")

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