Talk:The Big Short (film)

Basis in reality?

This movie claims to be based on truth. Also, it is derived from a nonfiction book. Can we get some perspective on what is truth and what is creative license?

I think this type of info needs to be part of every article on a work which is based on actual events. Is there a WP policy on this? Can someone point me to it? Davidlark (talk) 08:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

..link to the book !! possible academy award !!

The Big Short describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The book also highlights the eccentric nature of the type of person who bets against the market or goes against the grain.

The work follows people who believed the bubble was going to burst, like Meredith Whitney, who predicted the demise of Citigroup and Bear Stearns; Steve Eisman, an outspoken hedge fund manager; Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader; Eugene Xu, a quantitative analyst who created the first CDO market by matching buyers and sellers; the founders of Cornwall Capital, who started a hedge fund in their garage with $110,000 and built it into $120 million when the market crashed; and Dr. Michael Burry, an ex-neurologist who created Scion Capital despite suffering from blindness in one eye and Asperger's syndrome.

The book also highlights some people involved in the biggest losses created by the market crash: like Merrill's $300 million mezzanine CDO manager Wing Chau; Howie Hubler, infamously known as the person who lost $9 billion in one trade, the largest single loss in history; and Joseph Cassano's AIG Financial Products, which suffered over $99 billion in losses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brooks Brothers HFT NYC DOWNTOWN (talk • contribs) 17:41, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Name Changes?

Were names changed for the movie? The two hedge-fund people from Boulder Colorado were not from "Cornwall Capital" in the movie. This should be looked into. 66.241.130.86 (talk) 16:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite needed

The summaries need a rewrite. It is a mess of a summary and someoen needs to step up to do it. The Winter of Steppes (talk) 02:10, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Cast section

I've suspended the cast section here (put it inside an edit note), as I've no idea what to make of it, and it looks very much like a breach of BLP.
For instance, the first entry says "Steve Carell as Mark Baum – Based on Steve Eisman, the temperamental and outspoken manager of Wall Street hedge fund FrontPoint Capital, who fancies himself as a moral crusader (source)"
So, are we saying Steve Eisman is “temperamental and outspoken” or that the character, Mark Baum, is? Or that Eisman “fancies himself as a moral crusader.” (which isn't said anywhere in the source quoted about either)? Those would be clear BLP violations unless we are going to prove them. The rest of the entries are similarly confused.
The simplest thing would be to bracket off the “based on Steve Eisman” comment (same for the rest) and let the description apply to the character, but I haven't seen the film, so I've no idea if they would be correct even then. We need to separate fact from fiction, here. Swanny18 (talk) 14:53, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I have added your note here. — | Gareth Griffith-Jones |The WelshBuzzard| — 09:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

As there have been a couple of dozen edits on this section over the past few days, without much discussion, and without addressing the concerns raised here, I've had a bash at fixing it. The statements made in the cast section should be about the characters, not the people they are supposed to represent (I've no idea if they do that, now, but at least we wont be offending the BLP guideline) and all statements that a character is based on someone in real life have to be backed up by a source; the one used in most cases (“Deadlinecast”) merely gave the names of who was in it, not who they played, nor who they were based on. If sources aren't forthcoming, those assertions will need to be deleted. We can probably give it a week or so... Swanny18 (talk) 23:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I concur. Thank you for dealing with this matter. — | Gareth Griffith-Jones |The WelshBuzzard| — 10:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Can we would like to add “Rudy Eisenzopf as Lewis Ranieri, ‘father’ of of mortgage-backed securities”?--Einar Moses Wohltun (talk) 09:28, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Labelled as 'comedy' ?!

I had to double check, first visiting the IMdb site, that this wiki entry was not of a completely different movie. Where is it suggested as a serious consensus that this lable is appropriate? There is no citation that refers and the content of the article does not substantiate the idea. I have changed it to: drama. That there is humour in the movie doesn't make it in any sense of the term a comedy-drama.

LookingGlass (talk) 15:25, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

As of Dec 2019 it was still being called a 'comedy' - I changed that! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robfwoods (talk • contribs) 03:12, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Policy on linking something/one just the first time?

I noticed that someone recently wiki-linked Brad Pitt's name in two places it had previously been unlinked. This included one spot that previously had the comment: <!--DON'T LINK; already linked above-->. I have to admit, I'm not sure the wikipedia policy on linking to other articles (just the first use in an article?), nor the history of editors linking and unlinking names in this article. Anyone know what should be done? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onlynone (talk • contribs) 15:31, 1 November 2016 (UTC)