Tessa—with the NYT crossword on one hand—gave me a passionate hug and there was nowhere else he wanted to be and David, Tessa's husband, gave l his congratulations for his newfound success. The living room was crowded but strangely neat. I noticed a pile of magazines scattered across the marble kitchen top, each one stamped with his face on the cover—IndieWire: Rising Actor debuts in Wall Street Thriller, Deadline: 20 year-old Newcomer Lands Second Feature with Rian Johnson, and his favorite, Hollywood Life: Conan and Ryan make Jordan blush!
From the kitchen, there were patches of snow that clinged to life while the neighbors were cleaning their cars.
"You miss the LA sun?" Tessa cleared her throat while David sat down.
"No, not one bit".
"I saw Margin Call last week in the city." David had trouble with his next words. He grinned, "Very, very good job"
l looked at the snow, his finger twitching to the neighbors outside. "Thanks. I filmed it in the city. One Penn Plaza, near where you work"
"Right, l know a lot of Seth's". They both laugh and the rest of the conversation at a comfortable pace.
The next two weeks until Thanksgiving Day were the complete opposite of the days on set: predictable and warm. We watched soccer games like Barcelona thrashing Zaragoza 4-0 at the Camp Nou, with Messi getting on the scoresheet before halftime, went apple picking at Soons Orchards—l tripped in the mud—and drank hot cocoa while preparing the alcohol and decorations since Tessa wanted to host.
The guest came in like a potluck line and congratulated me as they drifted towards the smell of the barbecue. Eventually, there was a small gathering of the younger adults behind a small trampoline and l was alone with Tyson—a cousin from David's side.
"So, did this movie bring in a lot of mula. Ha. Theatre is so much better. " His voice slowed with each word.
"Enough" He giggled
"Here l am at this celebration for....family. And l am getting treated differently." He laughed.
There was a long pause.
"Taking a bit cocaine and meth at those parties"
"I wish. I need to use the bathroom." l looked away towards Tessa.
He grabbed my shoulder, "Hey, what? What? Now you have this new role" He laughed louder. The people around us looked their way, the sunset was bright pink.
"Hey, man. I'm just gonna go" l said.
"No. Na. Man. Whats the rush? Since your playing this fag you should come and blow me" He screeched like brakes falling apart.
I grabbed his collar, "Get the fuck out or l make sure your career stops in shitty off broadway theatres where you belong" Everyone in the patio looked our way.
He looked dazed and completely sober. He stumbled away to his Uber.
Mark rushed up, "What happened?"
"No it was nothing. What's the score?"
"Boring game. 14 Ravens to 49ers. Only one touchdown."
"Thats what you get with the 49ers."
I could see Mark's face concern—my face matched the sunset color—but l gave him a bright smile to show him my attitude.
As the guests left one by one with the same questions or obvious requests ( l would love to go to a premiere), the house felt relieved to have strangers leave its space. And the next month was making sure my Italian and piano skills were at a satisfactory level.
I received news that Margin Call finished its box office run with a 25 million dollar run against a low 3.5 million production budget. One of the reviews caught my attention as l looked at the writer:
"A Brilliant Wall Street Nightmare Undone by its Weakest Performance"
IndieWire, Camilia Parker
As Margin Call finished its amazing run, there is a lot to say about the buzz surrounding Ryan Stone with his next film coming out Sundance but his debut is as expected for a newcomer; mediocre. The rest of the cast is at the top of their game: Spacey plays Sam Rogers, the boss of trading, who has been at the firm for more than three decades, and it shows. His dog is dying, and he'd rather be at home with her. But he's needed at the office to rally the troops in the morning after 80 percent of his staff get downsized and marched off the premises.
They include senior risk analyst Eric Dale (the invaluable Stanley Tucci), whose severance package includes the company's "transition plan": a magazine with a sailboat on the cover, under the words "Looking Ahead." It's one of the film's excruciatingly on-target depictions of the corporate mind-set, which has established its nest in that cavity where our country's conscience and soul once resided.
Here's the bad news for the firm: Dale has been running some numbers and graphs and sees that the company's long-term reliance on subprime assets is about to blow up. Like, now. This news gets passed along to junior analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), who finds himself in the unenviable position of telling all the suits above him that the party is over. Big time. There's poetic justice in knowing that employees who smugly survived the morning's reaping are about to suffer a much harsher 24 hours than their colleagues who got pink-slipped. And there's fun to be had in watching the players — including Paul Bettany, Simon Baker and Demi Moore — put on their steeliest game faces as they try to save their jobs, or at least score a shiny golden parachute.
Arriving in theaters when economic frustration has spilled onto Wall Street's sidewalks and around the world, "Margin Call" couldn't be timelier. It's also more nuanced than you might expect from a first-time filmmaker like Chandor. His most radical approach to this story is what distinguishes art from easy polemic: he individualizes these people and tries to grant them the dignity of their convictions — or at least their self-justifications.
It would be easy to demonize these characters as ruthless snake oil salesmen. But "Margin Call" shows that some are motivated by loyalty, or an entrenched work ethic (and the need to pay the vet's bills), or the thrill of playing what is essentially a computer-screen video game, where winning means big bonuses and losing means catastrophe — but only for the suckers who don't realize the game is rigged.
Perhaps the most representative character is the company's youngest employee, Seth. Half playboy, half puppy, he spends the movie's long night trying to guess how much money the executives take home per year. But the performance is one note when trying to portray to the audience that he is about to lose his own job. "Shit, this is really gonna affect people," he says. "I mean, real real people."
Because every tale of a great fall needs its Satan, "Margin Call" provides one in a CEO named John Tuld (as opposed to real-life Lehman CEO Richard Fuld). Jeremy Irons, in the role, arrives by helicopter and channels the sinister silkiness that earned him an Oscar for playing Claus von Bulow. "It's just money, it's made up," he says near the end, in the dismissive tones that come only from those who have enough of the stuff to speak of it in theoretical terms. As if foreseeing the government bailout, Tuld views the global economic disaster simply as a new opportunity to make more money from different sources.
Written with both economy and verbal pungency, "Margin Call" has the knack of scoring its points and delivering valuable perspectives in dialogue that avoids the artificial sound of speechmaking. (It helps to have such a skilled bunch of actors except the newcomers delivering the lines.) At times, the movie has the hushed intrigue of stripped-down Shakespeare — the politely barbed give-and-take of negotiations unfolding in chambers behind the throne room. That probably oversells "Margin Call." It's no masterpiece, but it's an impressive, limpidly dramatized account of recent events that have changed our bank accounts, and the way we all move forward into the future.
I scrolled at the bottom of the page:
LucasBigFried: Lol, does the reporter have a vendetta against the actor
JasmineV: l thought when he cried at the stall was the best part of the film
Evening_Elephant_427: Ryan out-acted Kevin in some scenes
↪am_Snowie: Not to much on the Oscar Best Actor
The rest of the comments were defending me as if they were my friends but guilt clogged up inside my throat.
Damn, should l call Camilia. I do feel guilty.
I decided not to do anything as l felt still felt no ill will towards Camilia and the encouragement she gave me in the past
Three weeks later l called Emma for her New Year's plan.
"Hello. Just finished my heavenly shower" l heard water dripping.
"I missed you." l said with a grin.
"Me too"