‘Dumb Money’ shows little people flipping script on Wall Street
![Paul Dano Dumb Money](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/torontosun/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/film-dumbmoney-Paul-Dano-scaled.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&h=216&sig=VhWPH5vgdlEGvu-jGMUNkQ)
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As he was watching the GameStop stock frenzy unfold in 2021, director Craig Gillespie didn’t immediately think it had the makings of a feature film.
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But the story of Keith Gill, the protagonist in Dumb Money, was a David and Goliath fable tailor-made for the big screen. Gill (played in the film by Paul Dano) bucked Wall Street by enthusiastically endorsing the video game retailer’s stock, much to the chagrin of the hedge fund titans that had shorted the bricks-and-mortar company.
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Trading out of his Massachusetts basement and building a cult following on Reddit message boards, Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, became a household name online as he gleefully became the face of small fry investors who took on the super rich One Percenters.
Gillespie, 56, followed the saga by watching his then-24-year-old son, who had been involved with the subreddit Wall Street Bets, eagerly devour Gill’s latest tidbits on the stock.
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As Wall Street firms bet GameStop’s stock price was headed for a fall, Gill, clad in cat-themed T-shirts and swilling from bottles of beer, convinced novice investors to get behind the company and boost its valuation.
“It’s crazy that I wasn’t thinking of this as a movie, but it was an intense experience,” Gillespie said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, where Dumb Money, which recounts the riveting saga, had its world premiere. “The emotion and drama that was happening in watching my son check the stock every three minutes was just a wild ride … It was kind of like the dinner scene in the movie where Keith’s family is learning how much money he’s got invested and they’re asking him when he’s going to get out,” Gillespie said, chuckling. “Finally, I got in, but I jumped in at the wrong time and lost. I learned the hard way.”
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But when he got a hold of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction screenplay from Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, Gillespie, who directed the Tonya Harding black comedy I, Tonya, quickly said yes.
In Dumb Money, Gill leads a collection of ordinary investors — including a single mother and nurse (America Ferrera), two college kids mired in student-loan debts (Talia Ryder and Myha’la Herrold) and a lowly GameStop employee (Anthony Ramos) — as they stick it to real-life Wall Street elites: Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital Management (Seth Rogen); New York Mets owner Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio); and Ken Griffin of Citadel LLC (Nick Offerman).
![Nick Offerman and Seth Rogen](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/torontosun/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/film-dumbmoney-Nick-Offerman-Seth-Rogan-scaled.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&sig=J_pcEnN3xW4ZoJ_gEimULQ)
Gill’s family — made up of his wife (Shailene Woodley); his slacker brother (Pete Davidson); his mother and father (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown) — look on incredulously as he pushes his life savings into GameStop, telling online followers: “I like the stock.”
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Both writers on the film worked at the Wall Street Journal as investigative reporters, so the filmmaking team goes to great lengths to highlight the veracity of the story. Songs of that moment (Cardi B’s WAP and Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage) act as the film’s de facto theme songs, while real clips, including one of Anthony Scaramucci referring to the GameStop drama as “the French Revolution of finance,” are threaded throughout. The only moments that are played for dramatic effect are when Gillespie had to imagine what the financial toll might have been like on the characters’ personal lives.
“When Keith Gill loses $30 million in 48 hours or when he’s going to be subpoenaed by U.S. congress, Paul and I would try and figure out, ‘What’s he talking about with his wife in the kitchen?’ We would take these real moments that happened and sort of try and dramatize them,” Gillespie said.
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Ultimately, the Australian filmmaker aimed to capture “a real moment in time that is still going on.”
“There was a real feeling of disparity in the wealth you would see flaunted online and social media,” Gillespie said. The GameStop saga, he adds, “became a mouthpiece to show that discontent and to hold Wall Street accountable and hit them where it hurts — with their wallets.”
![Craig Gillespie](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/torontosun/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/film-gillespie-scaled.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&sig=eagzJ-IMdNTQ9UwiRERdoA)
The real-life Gill stopped posting his stock tips online in April 2021, so it’s unknown how much he walked away with. The price of GameStop stock rocketed from under $20 a share to more than $500 over the course of a few months.
Still, the story depicted in Dumb Money is a rare instance when Wall Street’s power players didn’t get the last laugh. It was a moment, Gillespie said, that ignited a debate that continues to this day about a “system that feels rigged against the little man.”
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“I wanted to capture that on the screen, but really I want to continue this conversation. When all of this was happening, I was struck by the outrage and the frustration at a system that feels inherently rigged and marginalizes the little guy. To be able to activate that conversation again … to show that you can make a difference. When you come together as a community, you can be heard.”
Dumb Money is now playing in select theatres
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