Thursday, August 12, 2010

'The Other Guys' Credits

'The Other Guys' End Credits: Giving a Silly Comedy a Serious Message

You wouldn't expect a goofy Will Ferrell comedy to be the place where you'd get a mini-seminar on the financial chicanery that's fattened Wall Streeters' and CEOs' bonus checks in recent years while impoverishing the rest of us. But that's what viewers of 'The Other Guys,' which opened at No. 1 at the box office this past weekend, got if they stayed through to the end.

The movie may be a silly farce about New York cops who stumble upon a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme that threatens to defraud billions from city workers. But buried in the comedy is a serious point about what really constitutes grand theft these days, a point illustrated over the closing credits by a PowerPoint-like presentation full of jazzy infographics and serious statistics outlining just how much Wall Street and corporate leaders have enriched themselves at the expense of American workers and taxpayers. (All this while agit-pop rockers Rage Against the Machine cover Bob Dylan's anti-corporate anthem 'Maggie's Farm' on the soundtrack.) Even for moviegoers who are connoisseurs of end-credit sequences, this one stands out as unique.

It's a fascinating sequence, both from a design perspective and from the unlikely prospect of seeing a major corporation (in this case, Sony) release a mass-entertainment movie that also wants to educate moviegoers about the legalized wealth-grab that's benefiting major corporations. Moviefone spoke to the artists who designed the sequence to learn how it came to be, where its facts came from, and whether or not such serious info-nuggets can have any real impact when embedded in a splashy Hollywood comedy.




The rest of the article here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

does it list the actors' salaries?
xoxox