I’m a deeply committed devotee of the movies. I taught film criticism at the University of New Hampshire, wrote film reviews for a seacoast New Hampshire arts weekly for years and had a film review show on the radio for many more. And I’ve been leading film discussions at The Music Hall in Portsmouth for going on 17 years.
But in the years I’ve been watching movies, I can think of only a few in which investors come off as anything other than villains and sleazes.
The biggest sleaze of all, of course, would have to be Gordon Gekko, the ultimate power-shirt, power-tie, power-suspenders villain of Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street.” Gekko, with his slicked-back hair and imperious attitude, was (and may still be) a role model for aspiring Wall Street moguls in the same way that Tony Montana, Al Pacino’s drug lord in “Scarface,” has been taken as a model by drug pushers.
There’s actually one movie in which big-time investing looks pretty good, and that’s “Working Girl,” in which a secretary played by Melanie Griffith teams up with an investment banker (Harrison Ford) to pull off a high-stakes deal to fend off a takeover bid.
Generally speaking, the movies favor the little people and those who’ve lost it all schemes over moguls and those who have it all.
But if I’m not mistaken, there has been a recent, high-profile appearance by a tremendously successful investor in a hugely popular movie, although it’s a stealthy one. If you put a picture of Carl Frederickson, the 78-year-old hero of Pixar’s animated feature “Up” next to a picture of Warren Buffett, I think you’ll see what I mean.
The movies may not like rich people in general, and investors in particular, but everyone likes Warren. I’m cool with that.