The financial collapse of 2008 was brought about by many factors — including governmental deregulation and lack of proper oversight — but make no mistake, there were plenty of flat-out crooks involved. And were it not for the staggering scale of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff’s deception, Marc Dreier and his $750 million fraud would likely be the name most lastingly associated with American white collar crime. Filmed over the last two months of Dreier’s house arrest, leading up to his prison sentencing, “Unraveled” unfolds in unique fashion, offering up a rare first person reflection on scamming of this sort. Even more unique, however, is the fact that the film’s director, Marc Simon (no relation to this piece’s author), himself had a personal connection with his subject. ShockYa recently had a chance to speak to Simon one-on-one, about his movie, chasing a “Rosebud” moment in relation to Dreier, and his own thoughts on the criminal sentencing of his one-time boss. The conversation is excerpted below:
ShockYa: How did you first gain Mr. Dreier’s consent to do this film? You were at one point an attorney in his firm, is that correct?
Marc Simon: That’s correct. I worked for Marc for approximately six years, but I didn’t initially seek to make this movie. The personal damage of the firm’s implosion definitely affected me — even physically, I had a rash on my skin. This was someone who I had admired, and it took an emotional and financial impact. So I had to move on from the firm, transition my law practice to my new firm, and make sure my clients were satisfied. My second movie was coming out at that time, but then once I settled in some at my new firm it was scratching at me that in 10 years time I would be kicking [myself] for having been a filmmaker in a pretty unique position to explore this story. And so some clients at my new firm and some friends of mine at that time were also approaching me to make the film, so we reached out to Marc’s team and he was surprisingly very quickly open to the concept of making a film. There was no [period of] convincing or persuading — that happened relatively quickly. I think there were a lot of factors that went into that, including our background together and his trust of me.
ShockYa: The artistic choice to present this as the document of a parenthetically unreliable narrator — to not have other talking heads contextualize or tell the story, which I think is to the film’s credit — was that decision made absent any discussions with Marc, that is, the fact that it was going to dig into his crimes basically solely from his perspective?
MS: That decision and all creative decisions were solely mine, and I think it was fueled by both practical and creative considerations — the practical (one) being that the hedge funds that Marc defrauded, some of the biggest and best that exist, were certainly not going to be welcoming of this opportunity to come out and say, “Yes, I’m the guy that Marc deceived, and allowed $50 million from my investors to go to.” The attorneys that work for Marc are conservative, and are more interested in distancing themselves from the issue. …So those practical considerations fueled the decision-making, and then ultimately it was a creative choice that I truly embraced, for a couple reasons. Number one: we know he committed the crime, he’s admitting that. So to hear a bunch of third parties talk about it is boring. This is not a whodunit, it’s a how-he-dunit, and why-ya-dunit. So for me it was far more interesting to try to get inside this guy’s head, and put it out there and let the audience try to make their own conclusions and judgments. The other reason was because the public never really hears from these types of guys. These criminals are arrested, they’re on the front page of the newspapers and the 5 o’clock news, and then they’re silent and just go into prison. So to be with one of these guys in a real isolation and have him try his best to talk about the why, how and what (of his actions) — that’s what the public hasn’t seen.
ShockYa: As a quick sidebar, as someone with some insight into that world and not quote-unquote just a filmmaker, what happens to those people at hedge funds, those folks who maybe didn’t exercise complete due diligence? Are they summarily fired, or is it, “Whoops, so that was a $50 million mistake for the company”? Are those people still working in our financial markets?
MS: That’s a good question. There were so many hedge funds that I don’t know the answer to all of them, but my sense is that the vast majority of the individuals who were involved in this fraud from a hedge fund perspective did not lose their jobs. I think that would have been the exception to the rule. And that’s another one of the teachable moments that this film hopefully raises, which even Marc mentions — it wasn’t policing that ever exposed him, it was finally the market volatility. When the credit crunch happened, that was what exposed him. I certainly hope that as a result of many of these frauds and this story, that in the private sector where there is no SEC involvement, etcetera, that the public is more vigilant, and more diligence does happen in all sectors, both with big deals and smaller deals.
ShockYa: Obviously I think everyone understands the non-participation of his daughter, who is a minor, but we see Marc’s teenage son, and he talks some about him. Yet he doesn’t want to talk about his mother at all. Did you pursue that a little bit, did you have a desire to get him to talk more about his ex-wife and his mother, and those relationships?
MS: I did, and it has to do with humanizing of the subject. I think what makes Marc an interesting character — and anything that makes someone interesting, in fiction or nonfiction — is when they’re a fully rounded figure. So he’s someone that committed one of the worst financial crimes in history, but he’s still a father and a son and a brother. I think that his family relationships are what he’s most emotionally connected to in life, so that’s why I wanted to explore those. And because that’s where his emotional vulnerability is closest (to the surface), I think that’s why he didn’t want to go there. So that’s what that was about.
ShockYa: One of the things touched on fleetingly, something Marc said that really struck me, was this idea or feeling he discussed of working hard as a lawyer and not being paid or accruing the wealth of those for whom he was working — of resenting rich clients, in other words, because they had all this money and he was really better than they were. He started his own firm in 1998 and operated it for several years without fraud, but that sense of entitlement and resentment seems integral to so many of these cases of fraud. Did you get into that feeling any more? That kernel, to me, seems very important and revealing.
MS: One of the universal themes that I’m trying to have the film hit on is, “Why do these people do these things and what’s our connection to that?” I don’t think it was as much jealousy of these other people as it was this ambitious guy [feeling] that he wasn’t getting the recognition that he deserved. So many of us like recognition — in our professions and families — and that’s born out of childhood. (Cinematographer) Bob Richman and I called that the “Rosebud” (moment) of the movie, that we were always in every interview trying to get at, and (we figured) we might not get there because Marc might not be aware of it himself or might not be willing to reveal it fully to us. That’s what I was always trying to get, and I’m still not fully clear. If you look at Dreier’s history, he was always, from a young age, seeking recognition, and often got it. He was class president, he was “Most Likely to Succeed,” he went to these great institutions. I think somewhere along the way, as he entered adulthood — as many of us who were people-pleasers as children do — he wasn’t getting that glow from the world that he wanted and needed… and because he wasn’t getting that and got caught up with more wealth and wanting to do more, that was one of the huge factors that put him over the edge.
ShockYa: Expectations [attached to] the subject matter might lead one to surmise that “Unraveled” is really flatly staged and boring, visually, but it was quite engaging, cinematically — with your use of music, animation, and [time lapse material] to contrast and paint a portrait of the apartment as it once was and now it as this gilded prison.
MS: I’ve been very fortunate in that respect with some of the people with whom I’ve worked. I’ve worked with my composer, Chris Hajian, on two films, and his contribution was so important, because we’re in this isolated world and I really needed him to bring life to the film through his music. And Bob Richman, with whom I’ve done three films, has a natural style, to focus closely and work in this very over-exposed space. We wanted to use the brightness and the whites to the film’s advantage. It’s almost a sort of irony, given that white represents innocence. I liked that sort of play on it, and the cleanliness of it. And Dreier himself was always wearing white, unplanned, so we were trying to use that to the film’s advantage. And in terms of the graphic choices, some of the visuals that we used, those were real — we were able to get photographic stills that were taken for insurance purposes of the art, and then recreate that light. It was so important for me to be able to get that in there and show what that world he used to live in was like, and contrast it to the isolation that he now lives in, up in the clouds.
ShockYa: What was your opinion of the sentence ultimately rendered, and did Marc ever ask your opinion of what his sentence should be?
MS: Marc never asked me what I thought. He was very clear that he knew he was going to get a substantial sentence, but he just really hoped it wasn’t going to be a life sentence. I think the sentence was essentially fair. I remember being in the courtroom… and I think I wanted him to be sentenced to about 17 years and serve 15, that was my momentary reaction. But aside from his attorney, who probably would have wanted a few years less, even prosecuters acknowledge that it was a fair sentence. But these are tough decisions which I wanted the film to bring up — what is just desserts if you commit a financial crime that isn’t a physical crime, without a gun or anything like that?
For more information, visit www.UnraveledTheFilm.com.
Written by: Brent Simon
