FILM 1464: THE BIG SHORT

TRIVIA: After meeting with Dr. Michael Burry, the character he would play in the movie, Christian Bale asked to have Burry's cargo shorts and T-shirt, which he then wore in the movie. Bale later said he hoped Burry would make it to the L.A. premiere, "because I really want to sit next to him and see if he's going to punch me in the fucking face."

Author Michael Lewis revealed in an interview that Paramount, the studio distributing the film, allowed director and screen writer Adam McKay to make this film only if he agreed to make a sequel to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004).

The quotation that appears on screen, "'Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.' -Overheard at a Washington, D.C. bar" was in fact written by director and co-writer Adam McKay after unsuccessfully searching for the perfect quotation to use for that segment of the film.

Co-writer and director Adam McKay said the studio was worried that the "heroes" of Michael Lewis's book were flawed: "The studio was like, 'Shouldn't they be more likable?' It's like, 'No, heroes are dirty. Martin Luther King had affairs. Gandhi was a bit of a horndog. We're all dicks. Let them be dicks.' "

The cast includes three Oscar winners (Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, and Marisa Tomei), and three Oscar nominees (Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt). Pitt has an Oscar as a producer, but not as an actor.

Film 1096: American Hustle

Trivia: The fight scene that takes place in the bedroom between Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence is completely improvised. A version of it had been written in the script, but the actors were struggling to connect with it, so director David O. Russell ultimately decided to allow them to say what they wanted.

According to Christian Bale much of the movie was improvised. So, during the shooting of the film he noted to David O. Russell, "You realize that this is going to change the plot greatly down track." To which the director replied, "Christian, I hate plots. I am all about characters, that's it."

David O. Russell stated that Robert De Niro didn't recognize Christian Bale on the set even after they were introduced to each other. De Niro pulled Russell aside, pointed to Bale and asked who he was. First De Niro didn't believe it was Bale but after Russell convinced him of that De Niro noted, 'Wow, he looks really different", and nodded his head as a sign of approval. Russell then had to re-introduce the two now that De Niro knew who Bale was.

Christian Bale achieved the physical traits of his character by gaining over 40 pounds, getting a comb-over and slouching his posture and ended up herniating two of his disks in the process.

The film is a fictionalized telling of the Abscam (short for Arab scam) scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s, an FBI operation that began as an investigation of trafficking in stolen property, but was later expanded to include political corruption.

David O. Russell wrote the characters of Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro expressly for each of the actors to play them.

David O. Russell developed and expanded the role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld specifically for Jennifer Lawrence, who drew inspiration as well as the accent for the character from watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey (2009). Rosalyn is based on Cynthia Marie Weinberg, the wife of Melvin Weinberg (who was the basis for Irving Rosenfeld).

In the early 1980s French director Louis Malle adapted the Abscam story into a film script entitled "Moon Over Miami", with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi set to star, with Belushi playing a conman & Aykroyd playing an FBI agent, but Belushi's death in March 1982 scuttled plans for the film.