Crash of the Titans

If you could bottle the testosterone in Margin Call, the suspenseful financial crisis drama by first-time feature film-maker JC Chandor, you’d have a product that would shake the energy drinks market to its core. Sharply dressed bankers prowl their boiler room environments, scowling through meetings and disembowelling each other with looks over the course of 24 nerve-shredding hours as an investment bank hurtles towards the abyss. 

Yet even though machismo rises like steam from a first-class ensemble cast that boasts Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, and Star Trek’s Zachary Quinto – Demi Moore as the sole female executive, for the record, is as tough as they come – the prevailing sense is one of anxiety. Dread drips through the tightly woven script and laps at the shores of every scene as traders, analysts and their bosses hunch over terminals in thrall to a numerical jeremiad that screams of dark days to come.

The story behind Margin Call is rooted in fear. That it landed a prestigious world premiere slot at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah back in January 2011 before screening a month later in Berlin and proceeding to entertain audiences at other international festivals is impressive. It’s a testament not only to the drama’s quality but also to the tenacity of its creator, who at time of writing was counting down the days to the US release through Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate on 21 October with the UK launch – through Stealth Media Group – following early in the new year.

But first, let’s revisit the fear. In 2005, Chandor, then a 31-year-old documentary producer and commercials director, was preparing to shoot a self-penned drama that he’d developed over eight years when out of the blue his private backer got the jitters and withdrew. It was six days before the start of filming.

“That threw me into a bit of a spot,” says the engagingly understated Chandor, whose lazy charm and sing-song cadence belie a hair-raising ride through independent film-making. “I’d taken eight or nine months off to put [the project] together and our child was about to turn one, so I needed to get a job.”

Chandor corralled several partners and invested in a piece of commercial real estate in Lower Manhattan in 2006, a time when he says the banks were virtually giving money away. The small consortium sold the property a year later on the advice of a partner’s godfather, just as the market started to skyrocket. “18 months after we sold, the world started to come apart and I asked myself what was it this guy saw while the rest of New York was paying $2,500 per sq ft,” Chandor says. “At that time, I hadn’t written anything for three years and I was in LA driving around and the allure of the film business started seeping into me and I thought maybe there was one more shot as a writer. I sat down and it came out of me like nothing ever had.”

Margin Call, Chandor says, was inspired by a confluence of events and ideas, among them the wise counsel of the godfather; the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the gathering sub-prime mortgage storm; and the film-maker’s memory of living in London as a teen while his father, then a banker with Merrill Lynch, weathered Black Monday in 1987. Chandor didn’t tell anyone, including his father, he was writing again. There wouldn’t have been much time to do so anyway, because four days later he had his 81-page first draft, a zippy accomplishment made all the more impressive by the fact it subsequently went through very few revisions.

“I gave the script to two friends,” Chandor says. “One was the director of photography at Washington Square Films where I’d directed commercials for a few years and the other was Joe Jenckes, who gave it to Neal Dodson, Zachary Quinto’s producing partner at Before The Door Pictures. A few weeks later Zach signed up.”

This was Margin Call’s first major coup. Though Star Trek had not yet opened in theatres, Quinto was known for the hit series Heroes and many in Hollywood believed he was about to pop. 

With the actor-producer on board, the project started to gain traction. Hollywood agency CAA’s film finance department took the script to potential financiers and cast; the game plan was to shoot in summer 2009 and configure the project as a smart $2m ensemble piece. 

Quinto would play Peter Sullivan, the young analyst who sketches out a hunch by a veteran trader who has been laid off and discovers the bank where he works will implode unless it implements a fire sale of highly volatile, potentially worthless assets. The rest of the cast took shape quickly, because once a movie business titan like CAA gets hold of a decent script, let alone a thrilling one, its zeal and influence in attaching talent cannot be underestimated.

Famous names were circling. Sir Ben Kingsley was attached to play John Tuld, the bank’s darkly regal CEO whose arrival midway through the story ratchets up the tension, to say the least. Billy Crudup signed, as did Tim Robbins and Carla Cugino. Then Chandor experienced another trying moment of independent film-making calamity.

“We put together an amazing cast but we couldn’t raise the money,” he says, laughing at the irony. “The movie was about the financial crisis, and there was a financial crisis going on at the time, and we couldn’t raise a dime, so a lot of the cast ended up not being in the movie. Sir Ben was doing Hugo with Martin Scorsese and when we finally got the money for the project he had to leave.”

Tom Wilkinson replaced Kingsley and when he also had to drop out owing to prior commitments, the part eventually landed at the feet of Jeremy Irons. He infuses Tuld with a delicious inscrutability and transforms him into one of the highlights of the film. Production delays and actors’ ubiquitous scheduling conflicts forced Robbins, Crudup and Cugino to leave as well, leaving Chandor and the producers with the task of rebuilding the project. 

“It took us a full year to scrape the money together and by 2010 we had enough interest from financiers and we were shooting by June,” Chandor says. A young financier called Michael Benaroya who hails from a dynasty of wealthy North-west American realtors, had become the sole equity financier on the project after he bought out the other backers and boosted the budget to around $3.5m. He would also serve as producer alongside Robert Ogden Barnum, Corey Moosa and the aforementioned participants. 

Santa Monica-based sales and financing company Myriad Pictures would handle international pre-sales, a mainstay of independent film financing that allows film-makers to cash flow sales estimates on territory distribution rights before the film is made.

The film-making landscape is strewn with what-ifs and while the early cast choices demonstrated the goodwill that many felt towards Margin Call, the final talent roster that coalesced once financing fell into place proved to be pitch-perfect. Bettany plays the cynical, jockish trading manager Will Emerson, Simon Baker is Jared Cohen, Tuld’s baby-faced chief lieutenant (“He’s a fucking killer,” Emerson tells Sullivan at one point), while Moore holds her own as Sarah Robertson, the company’s chief risk management officer with a highly developed instinct for self-preservation.

However, it was Spacey’s involvement that helped galvanise the project and encourage others to join. He signed up shortly before the Cannes International Film Festival and even travelled to the Cote d’Azur to talk up the project to international buyers. 

“He was a driving force,” Chandor said. “Other actors read the script knowing the Spacey character was there – that helped.” Spacey delivers arguably his best work in years as Sam Rogers, the head of the trading floor who wants out and secretly pines for his dying dog (and therefore, in time-honoured cinematic grammar, must be a good egg). Watch out for him during the Oscar race.

They shot over 17 days in June and July in Manhattan on the floor of a skyscraper that had been occupied previously by a hedge fund. “The whole idea of trapping the cast on one floor,” Chandor says, “came from restrictions I placed on myself so the budget would stay low, but it also served to heighten the drama and sense of claustrophobia.” 

Margin Call plays like a verbal action movie as rapid-fire exchanges ricochet off the screen like gunfire and the bank’s bosses work out how to divest themselves of toxic assets and live to fight another day. The fact the bank is fictitious and the action takes place at an unspecified time may have leant the story an enduring topicality. Only time will tell. For now, Chandor, who is lining up his second independent feature and has a contract
to write two features for Warner Bros, is excited about the upcoming releases in the US, UK and elsewhere. Sales agent Myriad has sold out all territories. 

“Margin Call explores the scenario of when do you know to sell,” says the film-maker, who lives with his wife and two children in New York State. “It’s an ethical dilemma but I don’t think the people in this piece are criminals; they’re not Bernie Madoff. It’s entirely legal for them to have sold off this stuff… but they panicked. Some people made a lot of money during the financial crisis, while others were panicking. I’m not saying there wasn’t fraud going on; it’s just that that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.
This movie is all about the grey area.” 

Margin Call is out in January 2012