Calvin Coolidge once noted that the chief business of the American people is business. And now Hollywood is getting with the program in a big way–with story lines built around evil megacorporations, the booming stock market and the lust for overnight riches. Coming to a small screen near you: two TV series set in the world of high finance, Fox’s “The $treet” and TNT’s “Bull.” The movie pipeline is filled with more business sagas, including two projects inspired by Bill Gates: “Anti-Trust” and “20 Billion.” They’ll build on an already busy year for business in film. In “Battlefield Earth,” for example, John Travolta’s evil character, Terl, hails from a corporation whose moral compass is set only to profitability. Julia Roberts, in “Erin Brockovich,” is a scantily clad David taking on a utility-company Goliath. In a recent version of “Hamlet,” Denmark becomes a menacing corporation, not a country. And Woody Allen’s latest comedy, “Small Time Crooks,” is crammed with enough management insights to fill a B-school course.
Hollywood has always taken its cues from the fears and fascinations of the moment. These days Americans are enthralled by business and money as never before. More than half the population is invested in the market now, and high-flying stocks have made overnight millions seem within everybody’s easy reach. In “Boiler Room” the central character, played by Giovanni Ribisi, explains the widely shared money lust: “I didn’t want to be an innovator. I just wanted to make the quick and easy buck.” Even John Rocker said recently that he’s pondering a second career as a stockbroker. Forget baseball. “The stock market is now America’s pastime,” says Michael Chernuchin, an executive producer of the upcoming “Bull.”
Business also answers Hollywood’s need for new bad guys–rogue Russian spies, Colombian drug lords and wicked U.S. government officials… been there, done that. With companies under intense pressure to report ever-higher profits, who really knows what evil lurks behind boardroom doors? Hollywood has explored the gray areas of corporate America before, in movies from the late 1950s and early 1960s like “Executive Suite,” “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” and “The Apartment.” In those films the corporate world comes off as impersonal and bereft of any purpose or meaning. In Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” it was the dealmakers and investment bankers who were singled out as villains. These days corporate America is portrayed as almost uniformly wicked, with “evil megacorporation” becoming a redundant phrase in film circles.
Even an auteur director like Woody Allen is obsessed with business at the moment. Despite the feather-light tone of his “Small Time Crooks,” it also contains some damning messages about today’s money culture. Allen and Tracey Ullman, who plays his wife, set out to rob a bank. But they wind up making more than they dreamed of when the cookie shop that Ullman sets up as a front explodes into a national cookie powerhouse with the help of some easy venture-capital funding. Allen and his wife are bumbling incompetents, but that’s the point. “The message is that literally any idiot can make a fortune in this economy,” says Nell Minow, a respected corporate watchdog who is also a film critic. Allen and Ullman’s sudden wealth disappears just as quickly, though, thanks to the real crooks of this movie: the accountants. “This movie is definitely a reflection of the times,” Minow says.
More reflections are on the way. Darren Star, who’s become a leading indicator of cultural trends with his success in producing “Melrose Place” and “Sex and the City,” has turned his attention to the world of Wall Street for his new series, “The $treet.” In this world, sex isn’t the most basic instinct. In the opening scene of the pilot, a broker lies in bed watching early-market news on TV. He isn’t alone, and confronts the choice of sex or work. We’re not told which he chooses–the camera cuts away–but the fact that it’s a close call is precisely the point. Sex and money “both are powerful motivators,” Star says. “There’s a lot to explore there.” And in the best tradition of American business, he has some competition. “Bull,” set to start in August, follows the story of a team of investment bankers and traders who rock Wall Street when they break from an established firm for the risky path of starting their own company.
Bill Gates has enough public-relations problems already, but more may be on the way. One movie project in the works is “Anti-Trust,” about a Gates-like figure who recruits a new employee who in turn learns about the dark side of the mega-enterprise. Another film, currently stuck in development limbo, is “20 Billion.” It’s about the world’s wealthiest man, who learns how the world will end but, rather than trying to prevent the apocalypse, tries to save only himself and 20 other supermoguls.
“Anti-Trust” and “20 Billion” will undoubtedly include lots of references to stock options. And why not? Robert Towne, the acclaimed screenwriter who wrote the latest “Mission: Impossible” script, says that options are the perfect device for capturing today’s particular brand of money lust. “You don’t just want a set amount of money,” Towne says. “You want ever-expanding wealth that’s always somehow magically making money for you.” Right now that kind of sentiment goes great with a bucket of popcorn.
