As one of the pillars of the financial sector, New York City has seen plenty of economic lows over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, corporations played a big role in those crashes, just as they did in those supposed booms. Economics can be a tricky thing for the average person to understand — no matter how educated – and the new film Boom Bust Boom hopes to change that.
In Boom Bust Boom, filmmakers Ben Timlett and Bill Jones not only investigate the worldwide economic crash of 2008, but try to explain how to avoid another one in the future. Beyond featuring top economists, journalists and Nobel Prize winners as talking heads, the documentary includes commentary from actor and activist John Cusack, in addition to it being presented by Monty Python’s Terry Jones. Altogether, Boom Bust Boom is a mix of live action, animation, puppetry and song, adding humor to a topic that few would ever seek out for entertainment purposes.
In advance of the film’s Mar. 11 opening at Village East -– it goes onto VOD outlets as of Mar. 15 – Ben and Bill spoke to Downtown about the who, what, where, why, when and how of Boom Bust Boom. While the movie’s trailer can be streamed below, more info can be found via the official website, Twitter, and Facebook pages.
How did you get Terry Jones involved with this movie?
Ben Timlett: We have worked with Terry quite a bit over the years, making the Monty Python 40th anniversary doco series Almost The Truth and the animated film Liar’s Autobiography, which was an adaptation of Graham Chapman’s book, so really all Python-related. But this one sort of came from left field. The originator of the idea was actually our co-writer and executive producer Theo Kocken. Theo had become a friend of all of ours and has a company called Cardano who work in the realm of advising on risk management primarily for massive pension funds. Let’s just say that he has become increasingly-angry with how the financial system is run and designed.
He was invited to be professor at the Rotterdam University and had to do some sort of inauguration speech. So he wrote his speech about a lot of the issues that nobody has been listening to him about, which are in our film, such as bubbles, warnings to learn from financial crashes of the past, Minsky’s theories, the complete failure and uselessness of mainstream approaches to economics – basically thats what all the other professors teach, it’s called Neo-Classical Economics — human nature and our incomprehension of real risk, etc. He happened to send this to Terry to read, and Terry got very excited and quite angry — as he does — and said this should be a film…he then called us. Actually, when Theo showed Boom Bust Boom to the university and the other economics professors, they sent an official letter to the chancellor asking Theo to be sacked…somehow he’s still there.
The trailer to your movie relies on animation and puppets heavily. When the film was first conceived, did you know that there would be humorous elements to such a serious topic?
Bill Jones: Straight from the off, we all knew that the film needed to somehow find the right mix of funny, entertaining and that horrible thing people in the mainstream film and broadcast world hate…educational. We wanted to make a film that anyone could watch and stick with, and let’s face it, economics as a subject matter is probably the driest you could ever possibly conceive. We have done a lot with animation in our previous docs, we love to mix styles – which Terry has always supported — and enjoyed but he immediately came up with puppets as well. I can’t remember who we were pitching it to, but one of us said the film is like “the history of financial crashes but with puppets, animation and song,” and that immediately got us over the hump.
Prior to making this film, who was the first person that made economics seem interesting and relate-able to you?
Ben: There isn’t one, making the film was our first foray into economics. Neither of us studied it.
What was the biggest obstacle in getting this film made? Getting permission to use footage? Getting people to go on-record?
Bill: I think the hardest part of making the film was the edit. Getting across the complex ideas and theories was incredibly tough. Economists, even very good and clear speakers talk in jargon…and some of them have different types of jargon for the same meaning, understanding that alone was a hell of a task. Jargon is a great tool to keep the people at arms length and bemused.
Is there a message that you want viewers of Boom Bust Boom to walk away with after seeing the movie?
Ben: Change the way this stuff is taught at the undergraduate to PHD level. It’s not a science like physics. The economy should not be run by pure maths or one mainstream overriding all encompassing theory which at its core states that crashes are impossible! Our students coming into finance and politics need to have an education which helps them relate to the real world.
Is there another field or sector that you think is bound to crash as the financial sector did?
Bill: The sub-prime bubble was caused by junk mortgages being repackaged up as assets and given triple-a ratings, and then all sold on between the banks, loaning each other money to buy them. The financial industry is desperately looking for new assets – as others take a nose dive — to bundle up like this and sell onto each other, the next lot being bundled up seems to be student loans.
But the main worry for me is the interconnectivity of these massive financial institutions, all their balance sheets are intrinsically-linked as they all loan to each other to invest in this stuff. This still remains the same today even after the massive tax payer bailouts in 2008. One goes down, they all go down. Not clever for us, maybe for them.
When it comes to your own money, how do you choose to invest it? Is there a way of investing money that you don’t find to be so speculative?
Ben: Like most middle class people living in London, it’s all about the house. As house prices continue to rocket – it has to end at some point — the government has a massive housing crisis on its hands in London. You just can’t afford to buy a new larger one, that’s if you’re lucky to even own one. So we just do up the house, basically. Otherwise we invest in developing our own film projects, but that’s rather speculative!
Aside from seeing this movie, what’s the best way that the average person can try to make a difference in making sure that future economic busts don’t happen?
Bill: Petition the mainstream universities to change the education system, let politicians know that this can’t go on and the whole financial system needs redesigning. Quite a bit then.
What was your first paying job within the film world?
Ben: Bill and I started as editors, running one of the first digital editing machines called an Avid. So probably the first job was trying to edit some poor actress’ showreel very badly.
What’s ahead for Bill & Ben Productions once this movie has hit theaters?
Bill: We are working on a documentary called Narcotics Inc. about the U.S.’s failed “War On Drugs,” but looking at it from the horrendous economic and social impact on the whole country and the world. We are also directing and producing a family animated feature film called Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Missing Santa Claus, so that’s quite different.
Finally, any last words for the kids?
Ben: Tell all your puppet friends, this is their chance to be taken seriously.
Boom Bust Boom Trailer from BoomBustClick on Vimeo.
-by Darren Paltrowitz
