4. ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘Chop Shop’ | Mission Accomplished

Summary

Podcast Summary: ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘Chop Shop’ | Mission Accomplished

Podcast: The Big Picture
Host: The Ringer
Episode Date: August 22, 2025
Host/Narrator: Brian Raftery
Guests: Tony Gilroy (writer/director of Michael Clayton), Ramin Bahrani (writer/director of Chop Shop)

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Overview

This episode of The Big Picture situates Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton and Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop within the economic and cultural turmoil of the 2000s, specifically the Bush years and their aftershocks. Host Brian Raftery explores how both films—though very different in scale and style—offer piercing commentaries on survival, compromise, and the American Dream during a decade defined by corporate greed, political scandal, and widening inequality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Economic and Political Landscape of the 2000s

• Rise and Crash: The episode opens by recapping the excitement and optimism of the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the Clinton administration touting historic economic expansion, followed by the cracking of the dot-com bubble, collapses like Pets.com, and then the corporate scandals of Enron and WorldCom.
  • “Greed had always been one of the country's biggest vices. But when you combine rampant greed, rampant corporate crime, and rampant shitty leadership, clearly things had gone awry and nobody would escape unscathed.” (03:12)
• The Great Recession: By Bush’s second term, America was reeling, unsure how to move forward, and movies began to reflect this deeper malaise and suspicion about success, survival, and moral compromise.
  • “It didn't seem like you could actually thrive in America anymore. The best you could do was just survive.” (03:52)

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2. Michael Clayton: Conception and Production

• Tony Gilroy’s Inspiration:
  • Gilroy started the story in the mid-1990s, inspired by seeing the “back of the house” of New York law firms and imagining a “fixer” who handles the ugliest side of corporate legal work. He was fascinated by the concept of a “bad document”—the kind of evidence that could topple billion-dollar cases.
    • “No one's done a movie about the back of the house...That seemed really cool.” (08:34)
    • "She used the word ‘bad document’ twice. And I go, what's a bad document?" (09:02)
  • Gilroy drew inspiration from the paranoid, morally ambiguous political thrillers of the 1970s, like The Parallax View and Save the Tiger.
    • “It confirms what you're already starting to think and then you think more about it. And they were... accurate.” (10:48)
• The George Clooney Factor:
  • The film needed a bankable star to get financed. Gilroy wanted Clooney, who initially declined out of concern about working with a first-time director but was eventually persuaded after discussions about the film’s real-life basis in corporate crime.
    • “The actual memo that our film is based on is based on a case...They determined that it was cheaper to pay off the death benefits than to repair the problem.” (16:32)
  • Clooney agreed to a low up-front fee, effectively betting on the film’s success.
    • “The movie cost what George was getting for his huge commercial films. That was the budget of the movie. And he waives his fee...it’s a good bet.” (17:33)
• Topicality:
  • The Bush administration’s scandals, the war in Iraq, and national crises like Katrina set the backdrop of social anger and disillusionment that shaped the film.
    • “The government's response to Katrina was seen by many as incompetent, even callous.” (18:36)

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3. Chop Shop: A View from the Margins

• Ramin Bahrani’s Perspective:
  • Bahrani, whose experiences straddled Iran and post-9/11 America, brought a unique lens to stories about immigrants and strivers in New York City. His films, starting with Man Push Cart, captured the suspicion and challenges faced by Middle Eastern and South Asian communities.
    • “There's an undercurrent in that entire film of the war on terror and what it meant to be in New York...to be of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent at that time.” (25:32)
  • Chop Shop centers on Ale and Izzy, orphaned siblings hustling in the auto shop district of Queens, fighting for their dreams amid crushing poverty.
    • “Their houses were the auto body shops or the cars, trying to just piece together a living. While the public perception was...hyper capitalism and everybody is successful.” (27:12)
  • Casting was difficult—in part because real kids living in Willits Point were often undocumented, so Bahrani found unknowns from the Lower East Side, training them for months.
    • “Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzalez...Despite having no on screen experience, their performances felt remarkably real.” (29:51)
  • The approach was deeply improvisational and documentary-like.
    • “They would never read lines. I would just tell them what the scene was about...they would improvise in their own language...” (30:24)
  • The heartbreak of the siblings’ struggles speaks to systematized hopelessness, but also youthful resilience.
    • “They don't seem to even understand how difficult their life is. And I found that inspiring...” (28:18)

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4. Parallels: Two Worlds, Same City

• Shared Themes:
  • Both films, though vastly different in style and scale, explore the cost of survival in New York City during the Bush era, focusing on strivers who have “given up too much for too little.”
    • “The characters in Michael Clayton and Chop Shop live in the same city...But both films are about strivers who've given up too much for too little, a feeling a lot of people could relate to in the 2000s and...also today.” (05:08)
• Contrasting Approaches:
  • Michael Clayton is a sharply scripted legal thriller centered on the moral decay of the corporate elite, while Chop Shop is a raw, semi-improvised indie about marginalized youth chasing scraps of the American Dream.

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5. Michael Clayton: Plot and That Legendary Ending

• Arthur’s Monologue (Tom Wilkinson):
  • The film opens with a powerful voiceover declaring disillusionment with the “vast and powerful law firm” that is, in truth, “the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison...to destroy the miracle of humanity.” (34:23)
• Michael’s Dilemma:
  • Michael’s boss articulates the ethos of compromise:
    • “This case reeked from day one. Fifteen years in. I gotta tell you how we pay the rent.” (35:46)
  • Faced with a bribe to cover up a murder, Michael refuses to sell out and exposes the truth, sacrificing his career.
    • “I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy you buy. Are you so fucking blind you don't even see what I am?” (36:37)
• Final Scene:
  • Michael silently riding in a taxi. The wordless two-minute close-up was inspired by films like The Graduate, capturing a man unsure of his future but determined not to compromise further—even if that means escaping without a plan.
    • “And he goes, I'm replaying the movie in my head.” (38:53)

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6. Release & Reception: A Vanishing Kind of Film

• Michael Clayton (Warner Bros., October 2007):
  • Became a moderate box office hit ($50 million), earned Tilda Swinton an Oscar, and stood out as a rare original adult drama in an era tilting toward franchises.
    • “Sometimes you bet big and you take the house.” (41:18)
  • Faced studio pushback for its dark, quiet ending—Gilroy fought for its integrity.
    • “Could we change the ending?...And you know, that's your job. They pay you to be passionate about it.” (39:37)
• Chop Shop (Art House Release, early 2008):
  • Small theatrical release, acclaimed by critics, and gained a following over time. The movie’s themes became tragically timely as the Great Recession deepened.
    • “In 2008, a phrase like ‘make dreams happen’ seemed less like a promise and more like a taunt.” (32:33)
• 2007: An Exceptional Year for Grown-Up Movies:
  • Films like There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and No Country for Old Men created a milieu of American malaise and reckoning.
    • “These were movies with big stars and big ideas about the state of America. They were entertaining, provocative, and they gave a shit.” (41:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the grim lessons of the 2000s:
  • “By the end of Bush's second term, people were feeling defeated and exhausted. It didn't seem like you could actually thrive in America anymore. The best you could do was just survive.” (03:52)
• Tony Gilroy on 1970s films:
  • “A really weird mix of new ideas, young filmmakers and drugs and paranoia...But then you had all the muscularity of this really well established filmmaking community. So it's old Hollywood at its best that meets this new insane application.” (11:04)
• On fighting for the film’s ending:
  • “Could we do some things? Can we put a happy ending? Some things that they suggested as happy endings were, like, the most depressing thing ever...But that's the kind of monkey business that happens. And, you know, it depends on how hard you fight for things.” (39:16–39:54)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Highlight | |-----------|------------------| | 00:03 | Setting the 2000s’ economic optimism and its unraveling | | 04:46 | Introduction to Michael Clayton and Chop Shop as paradigmatic films | | 07:10 | Tony Gilroy on the “sound wave” of movie creation | | 09:02 | The story of the “bad document” | | 12:07 | 9/11’s impact on Michael Clayton’s conception | | 16:32 | The real-life GM memo inspiring the film’s plot | | 29:51 | How Chop Shop’s young cast was chosen and prepared | | 34:23 | Opening monologue of Michael Clayton (Arthur’s voiceover) | | 36:37 | Michael’s climactic refusal to be bought | | 37:24 | Iconic taxi scene ending; “Give me $50 worth. Just drive.” | | 41:18 | Michael Clayton’s commercial and critical success | | 43:59 | The shifting landscape of Hollywood post-2007 |

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Final Thoughts

Both Michael Clayton and Chop Shop capture the exhaustion and quiet rage of a decade when the promise of the American Dream felt ever further out of reach. As the podcast deftly shows, these movies speak across divides of class and style, united by their refusal to offer easy answers and their quietly radical insistence on integrity, struggle, and defiance in the face of systemic rot.

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For further listening, seek out earlier episodes in the Mission Accomplished series and watch the films discussed to experience firsthand their resonance and relevance.

Transcript

[A]

Let's go back real quickly to the year 2000. Remember Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention that year?

[B]

Today, after seven and a half years.

[A]

Of hard effort, we're in the midst.

[C]

Of the longest economic expansion in history.

[A]

As the decade began, the economy was America's big success story. That's why Al Gore, who was Clinton's vice president, made it such a big part of his own presidential campaign. Here's gore during a 2000 debate with George W. Bush, promising even more growth ahead.

[D]

22 million new jobs and the greatest prosperity ever. But it's not good enough. And my attitude is you ain't seen nothing yet.

[A]

But the truth is that even then, the economy was starting to show some cracks. In early 2000, the NASDAQ had taken a nosedive, and on Wall street, investors were trying not to panic. Though some of them couldn't hide their frustration from reporters.

[B]

Bad day. Bad day for you.

[A]

Another one?

[B]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

Too many in a row. The free fall was especially bad for tech startups, including Pets.com. the company had become famous for its talking dog sock puppet mascot.

[B]

Did you know that Pets.com delivers food.

[A]

Treats and toys now? Pets.com had a wild ride. It was launched in 1998 and soon raised more than $80 million. The company was so successful, at least on paper, that in 2000, pets.com could afford to buy its own super bowl ad. But as 2000 went on and the dot com bubble burst, the company ran out of cash. By the fall, Pets.com had shut down altogether. There were more signs of financial trouble to come in the early 2000s, like when Enron, a billion dollar energy company, filed the largest bankruptcy in history. The news was deeply upsetting for President Bush.

[B]

My concern, of course, is for the shareholders of Enron.

[A]

That's bush in late 2001. And don't worry, Enron employees. He talks about how much he cares about you too, in a very human, very convincing way.

[B]

I have great concern for the stories, for those I read about in the stories who put their life savings aside.

[A]

Thousands of Enron employees lost their jobs and the company's chief executives would later be convicted on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. The scandal was so big, Enron even gets a shout out in Edward Norton's rant in 25th hour.

[B]

Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break.

[A]

That line had some people cheering in the theaters. A few months after Enron collapsed a second billion dollar company WorldCom also filed for bankruptcy over bad accounting. Those meltdowns were proof that the economy wasn't as stable as it had seemed a few years earlier. But nothing could prepare the country for what would happen down the road. Americans had long suspected that there was something wrong on Wall Street. And during Bush's last full year in office, those suspicions were confirmed.

[B]

The signs were everywhere.

[A]

But now it's official. We are in a recession. That's Katie couric in late 2008. You can tell by her tone that she wasn't too surprised. Everyone had been feeling the squeeze of a recession, but no one wanted to admit it out loud. The recession actually started a year ago, but the question now when will it end? The Great Recession, which started in 2007, was the strongest sign yet that something had gone terribly wrong in America. Greed had always been one of the country's biggest vices. But when you combine rampant greed, rampant corporate crime, and rampant shitty leadership, clearly things had gone awry and nobody would escape unscathed. According to one report, more than 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008, the biggest decline since 1945. By the end of Bush's second term, people were feeling defeated and exhausted. It didn't seem like you could actually thrive in America anymore. The best you could do was just survive. And even that required the kinds of compromises that would have seemed impossible a few years earlier. How far were you willing to go just to keep going? That question will be raised by two of the best dramas of that decade. Both took place in New York City and both gave viewers a behind the scenes glimpse at worlds people usually never get to see. One was an Oscar winning big studio film starring George Clooney. He plays a mid level Manhattan attorney who helps keep the rich and powerful out of trouble. Even if they deserve to be in trouble.

[B]

I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor.

[A]

I know I don't have to tell you this, but that's Michael Clayton.

[B]

The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up.

[A]

The other movie was a low budget indie drama about a kid hustling and scheming to make it on the streets of Queens.

[B]

Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the interruption.

[A]

It was called Chop Shop.

[B]

We are not gonna lie to you. We are not here selling candy funnel school basketball team. In fact, I don't even go to school. And if you want me to though.

[A]

The characters in Michael Clayton and Chop Shop live in the same city in many ways, they're worlds apart from one another. But both films are about strivers who've given up too much for too little, a feeling a lot of people could relate to in the 2000s and, you know, also today. And the movies arrived when a lot of Americans were unsure how they felt about the country and about themselves.

[B]

I'm not the enemy.

[C]

Then who are you?

[A]

From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftery and this is mission accomplished. Episode 4 Michael Clayton and Chop Shot.

[D]

This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth. From creator Noah Holly and executive producer Ridley Scott comes the first television series inspired by the legendary Alien film franchise. A spaceship crash lands on Earth, bringing five unique and deadly species more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined. And a technological advancement marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. FX's alien Earth all new Tuesdays on FX and Hulu. This episode is brought to you by MGM from executive producer Stephen King and an executive producer of from comes the Institute, a chilling new original series from mgm. It stars Emmy winner Mary Louise Parker Ben Barnes and introduces Joe Freeman as Luke Ellis, a 14 year old genius abducted and locked inside a hidden facility with other children who have powerful psychic abilities. As dark secrets unravel and the experiment grows crueler, they the kids must rally together to escape the institute. Premiering July 13th on MGM.

[A]

If there's one thing we've learned in this series, it's that movies don't just show up overnight. They take years to conceive, shoot and release. During that time, they evolve in ways that even their creators couldn't predict.

[B]

And every film has a different gestation period.

[A]

That's Tony Gilroy, the writer director of Michael Clayton.

[B]

There is a delay, so you have to look. When did the first sound wave start across the lake before I heard it?

[A]

For Gilroy, the process of making Michael Clayton began in the mid-1990s. Back then he was a screenwriter, best known for hits like the Cutting Edge and Dolores Claiborne. And he'd just written a movie about New York City's most well connected power broker, the Devil. I'm here on the ground with my.

[B]

Nose in it since the whole thing began.

[A]

God likes to watch.

[B]

He's an absentee landlord.

[A]

The that's Devil's Advocate, the 1997 thriller directed by Taylor Hackford. It stars Al Pacino, obviously as the head of a Manhattan law firm who's also the devil. Great movie. Lots of Big Al speeches in this one. Anyway, before production on Devil's Advocate began Gilroy and the rest of the filmmaking team did some research.

[B]

We went all over the place and saw a whole bunch of New York law firms.

[A]

Sometimes Gilroy would wander off from the rest of the tour group. That's when he noticed that the firms had these fancy wood paneled conference rooms and that they were usually empty.

[B]

You realize that law firms are, you know, two thirds of the businesses. Behind the wall is in the kitchen.

[A]

He realized this is where the real work happens. The kind of work that people in the firm usually don't brag about over time.

[B]

I thought, no one's done a movie about the back of the house. And I thought, that's really kind of fascinating. And I'm always, you know, you're like a truffle pig. You're trying to look for truffles all the time. And that's like a. That seemed really cool.

[A]

Gilroy began kicking around a new idea for a movie. It was a thriller set in the back of the house at a prestigious law firm. To gather intel, Gilroy took high powered attorneys to lunch to talk about their work. During one of those meetings, a lawyer used a term that Gilroy had never heard before.

[B]

She used the word bad document twice. And I go, what's a bad document?

[A]

The lawyer gave an example. It was about a billion dollar case that a firm had been working on for years. Late one night, while going through some paperwork, a young associate found a document that had been misplaced. A document that threatened the firm's entire case.

[B]

I said, okay, so what happens? She said, well, two things happened. One, that associate was the youngest associate that ever made partner in our firm. And that document didn't make it to sunrise. Gone. I go, okay, that's pretty fascinating.

[A]

While meeting with these lawyers, Gilroy would sometimes pitch them the character he was thinking about. He was a fixer. A guy who works behind the scenes in a big law firm, dealing with everyone else's secrets and making things go away.

[B]

One attorney said to me, well, we don't have anybody at our firm like that, but boy, I wish we did.

[A]

Gilroy's idea was partly inspired by the tough, dark, very grown up films that the big studios made in the 1970s. Like the parallax View with Warren Beatty as a reporter who investigates a series of political assassinations.

[B]

Whoever's behind this is in the business of recruiting assassins. I think I got some of their entrance exams.

[A]

Or Save the Tiger with Jack Lemmon as a middle aged business owner who's $300,000 in debt and rethinking his Life.

[C]

Harry Stoner American first the buffalo went, then the Indian went. Now Harry Stoner is the last of an endangered species.

[A]

Those dramas were released at a time of political and economic upheaval. And they capture a sense of disorientation that something wrong is going on. When Gilroy watched those films in the 1970s, he saw them as mirrors, but.

[B]

It'S also an intensifying mirror. It confirms what you're already starting to think and then you think more about it. And they were sad to say, they were accurate.

[A]

And that's not the only thing that made those 70s films so exciting.

[B]

You had this really weird mix of new ideas, young filmmakers and drugs and paranoia and really activated imaginations. But then you had all the muscularity of this really well established filmmaking community. So it's old Hollywood at its best that meets this new insane application that.

[A]

Anything goes attitude was gone from Hollywood by the late 1990s, the time Gilroy was pitching his fixer idea. Still, the major studios and production companies were looking for new ideas and for new filmmakers. The indie movement had exploded. Proving that audiences were willing to take a chance when they headed to the theater, Gilroy eventually landed a deal for his fixer movie. He'd even get to direct it, so long as he kept a few promises.

[B]

I'll keep the budget down, I'll write a movie star part, someone will die. And they gave me carte blanche to go off and do that.

[A]

Over the next few years, Gilroy got interrupted with work on movies like Proof of Life and the Bourne Identity. He was just about to get back to his legal thriller when the September 11 attacks happened.

[B]

There was just no way to incorporate something that huge into the behavioral fabric of your characters. It just was impossible.

[A]

By the time Gilroy returned to the idea, George W. Bush was a few years into his first term. At that point, things had changed. The country was heading toward war in Iraq.

[B]

I think there's few things that made me angrier in my life than the invasion of Iraq. I just was so. I was really bereft and really, really angry. And I was also extremely angry that, that it was going down as if there was no and being perceived as if there was no pushback on it.

[A]

Gilroy did push back. He attended one of the massive anti war protests I told you about a few episodes ago. They were held around the world and in cities around the country drawing huge swarms of people. And they were impossible to ignore.

[B]

Loud and large protests against the attack on Iraq.

[A]

Thousands swarmed the streets of Boston, calling for an end to military action. It was during this period of frustration and protest that Gilroy doubled down on the movie that would become Michael Clayton.

[B]

I just was so apoplectic about it and I really, I stopped reading the newspapers for a year and a half and just really opted out. And that's when I wrote the script, that's when I pushed on it. And it's, there's a lot of anger in it, quiet anger in it.

[A]

There was also a lot of Gilroy's research in the script from Michael Clayton. It focused on a mid level attorney at a giant Manhattan law firm. The guy who cleans up everyone else's messes. And when a billion dollar case is threatened by a damaging memo, it's up to Michael to handle the fallout. That's not the only source of stress in Michael's life. He's got a gambling problem and he lost most of his money in a bad investment. Plus he's never made partner at the firm and he never will. He's stuck. Gilroy got a little stuck too while trying to get Michael Clayton made.

[B]

I cannot even tell you the many versions of this film that there were and the many places that it went.

[A]

At one point, Alec Baldwin was going to star in a super low budget version of Michael Clayton. Denzel Washington was also up for the part, but he was nervous about working with a first time director. And Michael Clayton was the kind of movie that needed a big star. Throughout the 2000s, the major studios would become even more reliant on franchises. Harry Potter, Spider man, the Fockers. To get a tough original drama like Michael Clayton greenlit at a major studio and with a decent budget required an A list actor on the poster. That had always been the case, of course, but the number of stars who could actually make executives and audiences happy were was getting smaller. One of those stars was an actor that Gilroy had long wanted for the part. George Clooney. He'd become famous playing guys who may have been down on their luck, but who never gave up.

[B]

Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big and then you take the house.

[A]

Look, I realize that playing a scene from Ocean's Eleven will just make you want to turn off this podcast and watch Ocean's Eleven. Which is a totally logical response. But just stay with me if you can. As the 2000s went on, Clooney's film choices started getting more downbeat and more reflective of the times. Syriana, Goodnight and good luck Solaris. And he was in his late 40s, a great age to play a lawyer, having a midlife crisis of conscience. But Clooney wasn't interested in Michael Clayton, at least not at first.

[B]

Yeah, he passed on it two years earlier because he didn't want anything to do with me, a first time director. And then he was really reluctant later, but I switched agencies and the agency put the arm on him and said, you gotta read this and really think about it seriously. And he said, okay, have him come up.

[A]

Gilroy met Clooney at the actor's house. They talked about some of those 1970s movies, movies they'd loved when they were younger.

[B]

You know, we're about the same age, we watched all the same shit.

[A]

They also talked about the thing that all guys talk about when they're hanging out, corporate malfeasance.

[B]

The actual memo that our film is based on is based on a case, a GM case, where they blew up. These cars were blowing up and eight, nine people had been killed. And this engineer says, oh well, we could fix it, but it's going to. You have to retool the whole line and change everything. It's going to cost this huge amount of thing and I can't, this is way above my pay grade to figure out what this cost to fix. And they determined that it was cheaper to pay off the death benefits than to repair the problem.

[A]

That memo had been written in 1973, and GM had spent decades trying to keep it out of court. A class action suit against the automaker wound up dragging on throughout the early 2000s.

[B]

That document was literally the bad document.

[A]

Right at their meeting, Gilroy and Clooney talked all day. And by the time they were through, the actor had committed to Michael Clayton. The film would be released by Warner Brothers. This would be a low budget movie with a big star. So the math on this was simple.

[B]

The movie cost what George was getting for his huge commercial films. That was the budget of the movie. And he waives his fee and I'm not making any money. And so, wow, it's a good bet.

[A]

Instead of getting a big check, Clooney opted to bet on the movie. If Michael Clayton succeeded at the box office, he'd do okay. What was most important was that it got made at all. The cast and crew of Michael Clayton headed to Manhattan to begin filming in the winter of 2006. A lot had happened in the years since Gilroy originally wrote his script. A lot to get very angry about. At the time, the country was reeling from the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. The storm had overwhelmed the levees of New Orleans, leaving nearly 4/5 of the city underwater. Here's a Fox News report from the early days of the storm. They're seeing block by block suddenly become submerged in some degree of water.

[D]

Whether it's 1 inch or 3 inches.

[A]

Or more than a foot at this point.

[C]

And everyone's starting to wonder how high.

[A]

Is it going to get?

[B]

And nobody.

[A]

The government's response to Katrina was seen by many as incompetent, incompetent, even callous. And the fallout sent Bush's approval ratings to new lows. His second term was going terribly. The war in Iraq looked like it was never going to end. Gas prices were crushing consumers. And there'd been a series of high profile political blow ups. In late 2005, Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was forced to resign after being indicted on charges of money laundering. Around the same time, a well connected GOP lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who had close ties to the Bush White House, was charged with fraud. Abramoff had been a movie producer. At one point in the 1980s, he made a Dolph Lundgren action flick titled Red Scorpion. That's a pretty kick ass name for what was actually a pretty lame ass movie.

[B]

They think they control him. Let's kicks up. Think again.

[A]

No one remembers the Jack Abramoff thing now, but it caused a huge outrage at the time. In fact, Clooney, who was very outspoken during the Bush years, annoyed some people when he joked about the scandal at the Golden Globes.

[B]

I want to thank Jack Abramoff, you know, just because.

[A]

During the Bush years, the news had become so reliably scandalous that at a certain point all you could do was laugh. It seemed like everybody was breaking the rules just to make a buck and not caring who got hurt along the way.

[B]

When people know they're doing something wrong and they do it anyway, as sophisticated and cynical and old and wise as I am, I'm like a golden retriever. I like staring at a moving car. Every time I see that, I'm like, how can people do that?

[A]

He wasn't the only filmmaker asking questions about where America was going. Not long after Michael Clayton came together in Manhattan, a very different Bush years drama began shooting in Queens. This film had a much lower budget and took place in a much smaller world. But it had a lot to say about the trickle down effects of the 2000s.

[D]

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[A]

Ramin Bahrani was born and raised in North Carolina and went to film school in New York City. But when the September 11 attacks happened he was in his parents home country of Iran.

[C]

I had never visited as a child. I went as an adult as a 2324 year old and I had lived there for 34 years.

[A]

Being in Iran during 9 11, Bahrani says, was quote, a unique experience.

[C]

There was a decent wave of support. There were candlelight vigils mainly by young people. I mean the same way that Americans don't necessarily want to be associated with the certain government policies. Most Iranians that I know don't want to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its leaders.

[A]

He also sensed a lot of underlying anxiety then.

[C]

If you're Iranian, there's just an immediate terror of, I hope the people who did this are not going to come back as being from Iran.

[A]

Afterward, things got tense and Bahrani decided to leave Iran.

[C]

So without really any plan and no income, I went to France. And at that time, still the world was in total shock about what had happened.

[A]

That sense of shock would continue in the weeks and months ahead. Bharrani was living in Paris when the US began bombing Afghanistan.

[C]

And I remember watching Afghans sitting around television watching the news, and they were watching their country being bombed. You know, people being pulled out of rubble, dead, alive. And I imagine they must be searching in these images to see if their family members are being hauled out of the rubble.

[A]

Nine, eleven, the war on terror. These were some of the most seismic moments of the early 21st century. And they got Bahrani thinking about his home country.

[C]

Without those experiences, I never would have been able to see America the way that I've revealed them in my films.

[A]

Bahrani would see that reaction up close when he returned to New York City, where he began making a series of low budget, highly entertaining dramas about life in the city. The first was called Man Push Cart, about a Pakistani immigrant who lugs his coffee cart around the city making whatever dollar he can find. During production of Man Push Cart, there were two separate instances in which someone approached Bahrani and the film's lead actor, accusing them of being terrorists.

[C]

One of them, in fact, absurdly said, are you funding a bin Laden training camp?

[A]

Bahrani took the man aside and we.

[C]

Ended up talking for a while. I never forget this guy. He was second generation Italian. And I said, what do you think your parents and grandparents must have suffered through when they came here with the Irish immigrants and were treated just as you're treating me and my friend?

[A]

The guy was so taken aback, he actually apologized.

[C]

And so there's an undercurrent in that entire film of the war on terror and what it meant to be in New York at that time and to be of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent at that time.

[A]

Man Push Cart got ridiculously good reviews when it hit theaters in 2006. Roger Ebert even put it on his top 10 of the year list. The indie film ecosystem that had exploded in the 1990s was still thriving. Even a movie like Man Push Cart, which was made with non professional actors and cost less than $80,000, could get lots of attention. By that point, Bahrani was already working on his follow up, a film called Chop Shop. It would also deal with underseen, overworked New Yorkers. This time in the industrial neighborhood of Willits Point, Queens. It was an area full of auto shops, junkyards and factories.

[C]

There were many people, typically migrants, who lived in the garages or lived in the abandoned cars on the side of the gravelly road there. So if you went there at 6am you would see men, you know, yawning as they stumbled out of an abandoned car.

[A]

Nearby was a massive billboard for a bank. It read, make dreams happen.

[C]

And I thought to myself, how ironic that a bank is going to tell us how to have a dream. When I felt it's the banks that are going to be destroying us all.

[A]

When Bahrani began work on his new movie, the economic crash hadn't happened yet. Yet when he looked around Willits Point, it was clear many people were having a hard time getting by in the 2000s and that they'd do anything they could to survive.

[C]

Their houses were the auto body shops or the cars trying to just piece together a living. While the public perception was all gears are roaring and hyper capitalism and everybody.

[A]

Is successful, these are the people who become the stars of Chop Shop. The movie is about a 12 year old orphan named Ollie. He lives in a cramped room above an industrial garage with his teenage sister Izzy. They want to make their dreams happen, so they hustle to save up $4,500 to buy their own food van with the goal of one day working for themselves. Ale sells bootleg DVDs and helps out at a garage while Izzy gets a job selling food for a demanding boss. In Chop Shop, Ale and Izzy nag each other, tease each other, encourage each other and drive each other nuts.

[B]

It's only the first day things are gonna start getting better. Ale. All she does is complain and bitch at me all the time. Come on now, she ain't all that bad. I'm gonna work this shit out. Don't worry about it.

[C]

They're young, so they're full of hope. Dreams, right? We talked about that billboard that I was so taken with. They have dreams still, they have hopes. And I found that energy could be really powerful because their life is so difficult, yet they don't seem to even understand how difficult their life is. And I found that inspiring and I found the contrast really compelling.

[A]

And Bahrani would need lots of inspiration to get Chop Shop going.

[C]

There was no money to make the film. In fact, I didn't even have a place to live. I was sleeping on a friend's sofa. I had no money. I would go to Europe, collect the prize for Man, Push Cart, land at jfk, and call two or three friends to see where I could crash for the week to keep trying to cast Chop Shop.

[A]

After Barani got to New York, he set out to find two young actors to play the leads of Chop Shop. The search would take months.

[C]

Well, the first thing I did was try to get the kids that were working and living in the location and, and that didn't work out. I could tell there was a resistance because they were undocumented. And if their parents or whoever their guardian was, uncle, aunt, grandma, they were like, no way.

[A]

He began visiting schools in New York City, almost a hundred of them. Bahrani eventually found two Lower east side kids who'd never acted. Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzalez. They'd star as the film's hard working young characters who would ultimately be named after the actors themselves, Ale and Izzy. Despite having no on screen experience, their performances felt remarkably real.

[B]

My name goes on the van and you picked the color and I hold the money because you don't know how to count. What are you talking about? You never even finished school.

[D]

At least I finished seventh grade.

[B]

You didn't go to school.

[A]

To get ready for filming, Alejandro or Ale spent six months learning how to work in a real auto shop. He even got to drive.

[C]

It was like adventure and camp for him.

[A]

Chop Shop was about as DIY as you could get. No professional actors, no soundstages, and no giant crew. During rehearsals, the kid actors didn't even get a script.

[C]

They would never read lines. I would just tell them what the scene was about and I would give them the hints of what the dialogues were and then they would forget. So they would start to improvise in their own language and I would have to guide these improvisations when they went haywire.

[A]

As a result, sometimes when you're watching Chop Chop, it feels like you're watching a documentary, which is what makes it so heartbreaking. When things start to go wrong for the kids. Ollie discovers his sister has taken on sex work to make more money. Then after the siblings have finally saved up enough cash to buy the food van, a friend tells them they've been ripped off and that the van isn't even usable. Still, the kids remain defiant. They believe that somehow they can still make this work.

[B]

You know, look, there's no Vents here. There's holes everywhere. It's rusted everywhere.

[A]

This is.

[B]

Come on, stop exaggerating. We could clean that off.

[A]

Come on, Ale. Man. It's devastating to watch. Now Izzy and Ale will need even more money. Ale gets angry and then he gets desperate. Stealing a woman's handbag and trying to sell her phone. But even that doesn't work. He'll just have to keep on hustling. If that all makes Chop Shop sound like a bummer, well, it's really not. It's a beautiful movie that just kind of flies by and it ends in a way that's not totally feel good, but that definitely feels real. You get the sense that no matter what, these kids are going to find a way to survive. I mean, what other choice do they have? Chop Chop didn't hit theaters until early 2008. By then, the so called Great Recession was already underway.

[B]

The past seven years the system has absorbed shocks. Recession, corporate scandals, terrorist attacks, global war.

[A]

That's President bush in early 2008. A few weeks before Chop Shop's release, Congress had just passed a $168 billion stimulus plan to help get America's economic system back on track.

[B]

Yet the genius of our system is that it can absorb such shocks and emerge even stronger.

[A]

Yeah, that didn't happen. Instead, over the next few months, things only got worse. Brokerage firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapsed. The government started bailing out. Huge corporations like General Motors and the Dow took a nosedive that made the economic desperation in Chop Shop feel especially well timed. In 2008, a phrase like make dreams happen seemed less like a promise and more like a taunt. Still, Chop Shop wasn't intended as a rip from the headlines kind of film. And neither was Man Pushkart. Instead, they were addressing issues that had been going on in the US for years.

[C]

Those films didn't come out of the economic crisis. I think they were germinating because of what was happening. America's response to 9 11. So you have one strike of tragedy in America, but then there was just, just sat. Brutal, brutal reaction.

[A]

Chop Shop was a low budget, largely improvised production made in a way that let Bahrani change things on the fly. That approach wouldn't work for Michael Clayton. Gilroy's script was very talky, which makes sense. I mean it's a movie about lawyers. The film starts with a 2 1/2 minute voiceover from one of Michael's co workers, a brilliant older attorney named Arthur, played by Tom Wilkinson. Arthur has spent years defending an agricultural Company accused of killing hundreds of people. And he's discovered a bad document, one that shows that company executives knew what they were doing all along. As a result, Arthur has a manic episode, though he calls it a stunning moment of clarity. He says that he's realized something. That when he walked out of his office, he wasn't walking out of, quote, a vast and powerful law firm, but.

[C]

From the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison, the ammo, the defonian necessary for other larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best.

[A]

Part of my life. A few of you, maybe too many of you, can fill in the rest. This is one of the most quotable film monologues of all time. That's partly due to the fact that Wilkinson's just so good. You can really hear Arthur's excitement as he catalogs the big truths about his life. But what really powers the moment is Arthur's realization that he's deluded himself. That he's been coated in that patina of shit. And that in his struggle for success, he'd gotten lost in a bigger, greedier machine. Again, very relatable stuff back then, especially for Michael Clayton. His job is to keep Arthur stable so the firm doesn't lose its billion dollar case. But Michael, who's always done what the firm asks him to do, knows something's off. And he's also started questioning his life's work. He takes his concerns to his boss, played by Sidney Pollack, who doesn't want to hear about Michael's sudden epiphany about right versus wrong. You can hear the disbelief in Pollock's voice. He can't grasp that Michael's only now realizing how compromised they all are.

[B]

This case reeked from day one. Fifteen years in. I gotta tell you how we pay the rent.

[A]

Michael can't afford to just leave the firm. He's $80,000 in debt, thanks to a bad restaurant investment. So Michael's bosses offer a deal. If he keeps Arthur in line so that the case can be won, they'll bail him out and keep his career going. But then an agricultural company executive played by Tilda Swinton, has Arthur killed. And Michael barely survives an attempt on his own life. He realizes that he's been coated in shit too. So at the film's climax, he confronts Swinton's character and threatens to go public. They work out a deal where she'll pay him millions to keep quiet. Michael points out that all they had to do was throw money at him to make him go away. I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy that you buy. Are you so fucking blind you don't.

[B]

Even see what I am? I'm the easiest part of your whole goddamn problem and you're gonna kill me?

[A]

I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy you buy. I know a lot of big picture listeners are very young, but trust me, you're gonna reach a time in your life or career. Where you realize you've traded away some of your integrity just to make a buck. You didn't want to cave in, but he had no choice. By the way, if you'd like to hear more of my thoughts about selling out. My venmo is patinafshit2025. But Michael doesn't sell out. He refuses to take the bribe. Instead, he secretly records her confession, sinking the firm's big lawsuit. And probably his own career along the way. The movie's ending is somber. Michael gets in a taxi and gives the cabbie some cash.

[B]

Give me $50 worth. Just drive.

[A]

Then the camera just stays on Michael for two minutes in silence. It's a remarkable conclusion. You don't know where Michael's going, and neither does he. It just feels like an escape. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine Michael Clayton finishing any other way. But that final scene came together at the last minute.

[B]

I did not have an ending. I did not have that. I didn't know what to do when he came out of the hotel.

[A]

Gilroy thought of movies like the Graduate, the Piano Teacher, and the Long Good Friday. Films had ended with a close up of the characters faces as they quietly accepted or questioned their own fate.

[B]

And I'm like, you know what? What's more fascinating than George?

[A]

Still taking over the streets of midtown Manhattan would require a little bit of star power.

[B]

We have no permits. We have no permits. What we do have is we have George Clooney. And George Clooney, on several occasions, several important occasions, you know, could get cops to do things, get air traffic control people to do things. Could get people to do things for us that you normally would never get.

[A]

They worked out a deal allowing them to try a few takes. At one point, after Clooney had just shot another take of him sitting quietly in the cab, Gilroy asked, what are you thinking as we shoot this?

[B]

And he goes, I'm replaying the movie in my head.

[A]

Michael Clayton finished shooting in the spring of 2006. The film would take a long time to hit theaters. There were already a couple of big Clooney movies on the Runway.

[B]

We were like, oh, my God, we have to sit on it for a year. It was. It was. I was bereft.

[A]

In the meantime, Gilroy had to get support from executives at Warner Bros. Early test screenings of Michael Clayton hadn't gone well.

[B]

There were some people there that were really unhappy with it. Really unhappy. Could we change the ending? Could we do some things? Can we put a happy ending? And some things that they suggested as happy endings were, like, the most depressing thing ever.

[A]

One of those suggestions was that Michael should get together at the end with a woman he was dating in the office. Gilroy fought back, and the long, quiet ending remained.

[B]

But that's the kind of monkey business that happens. And, you know, it depends on how hard you fight for things. And, you know, that's your job. You know, they pay you to be passionate about it.

[A]

But Michael Clayton did have fans at Warner Brothers. At one screening, the lights came up and Gilroy saw an executive crying.

[B]

He goes, I know how we sell the movie. He goes, I know what the audience is. And he goes. I said, well, who's the audience? He goes, men who know they're going to die. And I was like, oh, my God.

[A]

I mean, I'm in that audience.

[B]

Yeah. No. Yeah, no. And I was like, that's a pretty big audience, I think.

[A]

Michael Clayton opened wide in October 2007, not long before Chop Shop hit theaters. Neither film was capital P political, but Michael Clayton and Chop Shop both illustrated the toll the bush years had taken on. So Americans, no matter where they lived or how they lived, but the movies had very different releases. Chop Shop played on just a handful of screens. Pretty much everyone who saw it loved it, even though it took some viewers a while to catch up to it. Michael Clayton, though, was unavoidable that year. It was a big studio movie with a major star and a fantastic tagline. The truth can be adjusted. That motto could have been the tagline for the entire bush years. The movie's release is kind of remarkable now for a couple of reasons. The first is that Michael Clayton was a hit. It made $50 million and won Tilda Swinton an Oscar. Sometimes you bet big and you take the house.

[B]

We snuck our way through.

[A]

But what's really amazing about Michael Clayton is the competition it had that year. 2007 was a pretty remarkable year for a certain kind of studio film, a kind of movie that's all but disappeared. These were movies with big stars and big ideas about the state of America. They were entertaining, provocative, and they gave a shit. We already talked about Zodiac from that year, but 2007 also gave us There Will Be Blood with Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview. He's a greedy and murderous oil man, and by the film's end, he's living alone in this massive mansion, lording over his longtime foe, who's played by Paul Dano.

[B]

Stop crying, you sniveling ass.

[A]

Stop your nonsense.

[B]

You're just the afterbirth.

[A]

Eli.

[B]

No. Slithered out on your mother's filth.

[C]

No.

[A]

I think you know how this scene ends.

[C]

I drink your or milkshake.

[A]

2007 was also the year of the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. It starred Brad Pitt as the famous American outlaw who's now finally taking stock of a lifetime of violence.

[B]

I go on journeys out of my.

[D]

Body and look at my red hands.

[B]

And my mean face I wonder about that man that's gone so wrong There.

[A]

Were lots of 2007 movies about Americans feeling rootless, lost, or just let down. And after all that had happened in the decade, those films felt like a collective scream. But those kinds of movies would soon get harder to make, if not impossible. The Great Recession would have a huge impact on Hollywood. Entire movie studios would be wiped out. Paramount Vantage, the studio that helped release There Will Be Blood, shut down in 2008. More studios and divisions would find themselves in trouble around that. Time Warner, Independent Picturehouse, and even Miramax. They'd all released crucial films in the 2000s, and by the decade's end, they were either gone or greatly diminished. Hollywood was feeling the pinch. But it wasn't alone. As the Bush years crawled to an end, it seemed like everyone was hurting. A lousy economy, multiple wars, and no sign that anything was going to get fixed anytime soon. In the final months of the Bush era, a group of films would look at what America had become in the 2000s and how we'd gotten there in the first place.

[B]

What you got ain't nothing new.

[A]

These movies were reminders. This was no country for old men.

[B]

This country's hard on people.

[A]

You can't stop what's coming. This podcast is reported, written and hosted by me, Brian Raftery. The executive producers of this podcast are Juliet Lippman and Sean Fenesty. Story editing by Amanda Dobbins. The show was produced by me, Devin Beraldi and Vikram Patel. Fact checking by Casey Gallagher. Copy editing by Craig Gaines. Talent booking by Cat Spoiling Sound design by Devin Beraldi. Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music you hear in this series is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by David Shoemaker. Thanks for listening.

[C]

Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's.

[D]

Navy the Navy offers new graduates hands.

[C]

On training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine, plus education.

[A]

And sign on bonuses.

[D]

Parents help your grads start their career.

[C]

[e-mail] Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

[B]

Oh come on.

[C]

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

[D]

Whatever you were made to outdo your holidays.

[C]

We were made to help organize the competition.

[D]

Expedia made to travel.