Goldman Sachs: The movie
The financial crisis is coming to the movies. The BBC is chronicling the collapse of Lehman Brothers in a television drama this fall, while film maker Michael Moore is taking on American International Group in a movie set for release next month.
The mighty Goldman Sachs, meantime, is being lampooned by a former corporate lawyer turned aspiring stand-up comic, who has released a spoof about the Wall Street firm on YouTube and whose mom is doing the publicity for the film.
Matthew Rittberg, 30 years old, has written and directed an amateur video that pokes fun at Goldman’s profiteering amid the sub-prime bust. The clip satirises a recent warning by chief executive Lloyd Blankfein that Goldman employees should refrain from lavish spending to avoid drawing any more public outrage.
Rittberg depicts the Goldman’s chiefs warning like the scene in the movie Goodfellas, in which mafia boss Robert De Niro warns his crew not to spend money after they pull off the Lufthunsa cargo heist at JFK airport in the late 70s.
“What did I tell you,’’ says the Blankfein character. “With all that’s going on and you go out and buy a Mercedes 350.”
“It’s a Bamitzvah gift,’’ explains Ira, a pudgy managing director at Goldman, who is accompanied by his slim girlfriend.
“They are calling us vampire squids. The SEC and Geithner are on our backs and you go out and buy a $90,000 (€62,789) car?” asks the Blankfein character, trying his best to impersonate a mafia don.
Next, Tony, another Goldman managing director, shows up with his girlfriend, who is wearing a mink coat and a fake diamond ring the size of a tennis ball.
The Blankfein character unleashes another lashing: “What are you stupid. I say nothing big. One guy comes in with a Mercedes and the other with a $20,000 mink.”
“I’ll return it. I can get store credit at Neiman Marcus,” says Tony.
It’s a clever comparison to Goodfellas. But at times, the video’s dialogue drags and there’s only one real punch-line.
Rittberg says he took some heat from one newspaper editor he pitched the film to, who thought it was anti-semitic. (“I keep kosher,’’ says Rittberg, who is Jewish. “There is no way this is anti-semitic).
Rittberg says he hopes the film will boost notoriety for his stand up act. Since leaving his job as a lawyer in the private equity practice at Kirkland & Ellis six months ago, he’s been living off his savings and earning some income by writing pieces for the blog Bitter Lawyer
Rittberg also hopes the clip will raise awareness that “while regular people are suffering, on Wall Street it’s like Christmas, especially at Goldman,’’ he wrote in an email to Deal Journal.
- By Michael Corkery
Deal Journal - an up-to-the-minute take on deals and deal makers http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/
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