Long ago and far away, movie going was the act and the film was the maguffin. I mean, we went to the movies, and it didn't really matter which. They were only a quarter when I was young, and Hollywood ginned out seven or eight of them per week, and they ran from before noon down at the American and into the night, and it didn't really matter when you walked in neither. Thus the portentous ad campaign:
NO ONE WILL BE SEATED DURING THE FINAL SUSPENSE-PACKED FIFTEEN MINUTES!
There was an expression from back before the film became an expensive extravaganza, the star of the evening: "This is where I came in."
I'm wondering if maybe life does not indeed imitate art, or at least movies.
The first scene we see is the realtor assuring the buyer he qualifies. Sure, you don't need income or credit, and you'll be on your third house by the time this rate balloons, and besides the value of the property goes up with the rate! You can float away on your own equity! So lots of the mortgages are processed like sausage into unrecognizeable pulp and shipped far away to be resold over and over. And then there is the insurance on that investment, which also can be sold over and over, and the painted ponies, they go round and round ...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the bottom falls out. The properties are now worth less than the existing mortgages. Grim foreboding is at large in the land. Evictions. Fortunes built on those housing prices lost, then jobs. All that floating electronic muck back east - poof! Somber Congress doles out billions to support the failing banks in the style to which they had become accustomed.
But, wait, the bankers are holding onto those billions, not jump starting the economy by infusing capital into the hometown mix. They buy failed businesses, of which there are many, as tax losses to hide whatever income there may be from the IRS, which means a groaning load of deficit federal spending has more of the same piled on.
The worried politicians are all in a dither. For what good to the taxpaying investor is all this largesse if it just sits in the banks? So the banks are impelled to actually do what banks are supposed to do. But these stiffs aren't worth the risk, the banker wails. For they have no savings, no jobs, no credit!
Well, then, is the reply from on high. You'll just have to encourage them to take the loans. And so the banker lures the potential mark into the office. Look, you don't need credit nor income, you can see more investment capital for that new restaurant you've always dreamed of than you thought possible! Just sign here.
This is where I came in. Is this a David Lynch production? I don't understand the theme. What's this film all about?