Stupid Money Dramatizes the true story of a working-class Reddit user-turned-investor who turned Wall Street upside down. Now in limited theaters and expanding in the coming weeks, the Craig Gillespie-directed comedy-drama, written by Lauren Shuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, weaves together multiple storylines to bring the 2021 GameStop saga to life. The saga, which dominated headlines at a time when many were stuck at home during the Omicron variant, has its roots in the practice of large hedge funds making stock investments in companies like the video game retailer, hoping to short them – an investment strategy that would allow them to profit from falling stock prices. And these top Stupid Money, In the form of characters played by Nick Offerman, Seth Rogen, and Vincent D'Onofrio.
But where this story really got interesting was when working-class investors banded together on the Reddit internet forum r/WallStreetBets and squeezed the billionaire investors with short sales, causing the stock price to soar and the short sellers to take huge losses. At its peak, GameStop's shares traded at $483 a share. The unprecedented impact of these retail investors on the market led to multiple bailouts for short sellers and sparked criticism that the system was rigged in their favor.
“You look around you and it's easy to see how broken and fragmented and hopeless things seem,” Schucker Blum told TIME, “but here was an inspiring story of a large, incredibly diverse group of people coming together around a single idea.”
And that group is represented in the film by characters played by Paul Dano, America Ferrera, and Anthony Ramos who act as stand-ins for the public for the audience: some playing real people, others fictional or composite characters based on the experiences of several investors.
In the course of their research, the filmmakers got a wealth of information from interviews with Reddit investor participants like Harmony Murphy (who the film character Harmony Williams is named after, but is not directly inspired by, and who is currently suing Robinhood, the app that froze GameStop trading). They also used Ben Mezrich's 2021 book as a source. Anti-social network: The ragtag group of amateur traders who caused the GameStop short-selling crisis and brought down Wall Street. Mezrich was one of the film's executive producers.
Here's what you need to know about the real people behind this story.
Keith Gill
Keith Gill, played by Paul Dano, is the story's central mastermind behind the buyout. Gill wears a red bandana and kitten-print T-shirts in homage to his online username, “Roaring Kitty,” and is portrayed in the film as a man who has garnered a cult following among fellow meme-loving amateur investors who resonated with videos he films in the basement of his Massachusetts home about his GameStop investment.
While Gill has a strong online presence, with nearly half a million subscribers to his YouTube channel, the film depicts his everyday life as a financial analyst living in a modest suburban home with his wife and children, whose other hobby is running.
Mr. Gill initially invested about $50,000 of his family's savings in GameStop when the stock was trading at about $5 a share. After he shared his strategy with his followers, they watched as the stock price began to soar before their eyes, and Mr. Gill became a kind of folk hero.
In February 2021, Gill was called to testify before the House Financial Services Committee about his role in the scandal. During the hearing, he said:, “My investment in GameStop and my social media posts are entirely my own. I have never encouraged anyone to buy or sell stocks for my own profit.”
It's unclear how much Gill made from his investment in GameStop, but at one point his investment was worth $48 million. Gill has since lived a private life out of the limelight.
The filmmakers reached out to Gill but did not contact him directly about making the film.
Hedge fund billionaire
Stupid Money The film also portrays the contributions of several of the hedge fund billionaires involved in the mayhem. For Mezrich's book, the author spoke to dozens of senior officials who currently or formerly worked with the story's key hedge funds, as well as a number of billionaires who know them professionally and socially. He also contacted other hedge funds to make the film, but producers say he only heard back from a handful.
Rogen plays Gabe Plotkin, CEO of Melvin Capital, a hedge fund whose short selling of GameStop backfired, while Offerman plays Kenneth Griffin, founder of Citadel, the hedge fund that was instrumental in the $2 billion bailout of Plotkin and Melvin Capital. (PAC News reported that Griffin is currently in a legal battle over his portrayal in the film.) CNBC Reader In a September 18 interview, Griffin denied the allegations, saying he had “other things to do in life,” and when asked about the filmmakers casting Offerman in the role, he joked, “I think if they could have cast Daniel Craig, that would be better. But Nick is great.” Meanwhile, D'Onofrio plays Steve Cohen, founder of hedge fund Point72 and owner of the New York Mets. Like the Citadel fund, the Mets invested $750,000 in Melvin Capital when GameStop shares soared.
Sebastian Stan and Russ Kota play Vladimir Tenev and Baju Bhatt, respectively, co-founders of financial services company Robinhood. Robinhood offers “commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.” Robinhood, the primary platform through which retail investors buy and sell GameStop shares, was embroiled in controversy when its co-founders decided to freeze GameStop trading on January 28, 2021. The film portrays the co-founders as being in the pockets of hedge fund managers, despite their professed mission to democratize access to trading. At the time, Barron's reported that the company's explanation that “it was necessary to restrict trading in these stocks until it could increase collateral with the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation” was legitimate. Whatever the true motive, the move was widely criticized by public investors.
Angelo emphasizes that she and Shucker Blum were not alone in setting out to smear any of these men: “The villain in this film isn't any one individual, it's a system that is demonstrably not transparent,” she says.
The current situation is that Melvin Capital is facing several lawsuits and closed down in 2022, Cohen is still an owner of the Mets, and Robinhood reached a class action settlement after a congressional investigation concluded that “during the meme stock market event, Robinhood exhibited problematic business practices, inadequate risk management, and a culture that prioritized growth over stability.”
Working-class Redditors turn investors
The story of this stock would not be possible without the contributions of the thousands of investors who made this historic moment possible. Stupid MoneyTheir hopes, dreams and unity are at the heart of the film and provide the story’s key tension.
The film shines a spotlight on investors through four main characters: debt-ridden college students Lili and Harmony (played by Mihala Herold and Talia Ryder, respectively); Ramos' Marcus Barcia, a retail investor who works at a brick-and-mortar GameStop store; and Ferrera's Jennifer Campbell, a single mother working as a nurse during the pandemic.
The inspiration for Ferrera's character was a woman named Kim Campbell, who, like Ferrera, was a single mother and nurse who turned to the r/WallStreetBets page as a source of both financial advice and entertainment. “The stock market isn't just for people in suits. It's for everyone,” Campbell told TIME magazine about her interest in trading.
As Gill's movement gained momentum, Campbell wanted to get involved, too, so he bought 100 shares of GameStop stock. “I thought, 'This is going to happen. I can't be the person who doesn't buy,'” Campbell says. “If they were going to the moon, I wanted to go.”
Campbell sold just five of the shares, but made more than her investment of 100. She still holds the rest. Stupid Money The film portrays the solidarity between people like Campbell and Basia, who didn't know each other personally but felt they were in the same situation; many of them had held off on selling stocks in order to hurt hedge funds rather than their own profits. “While this was going on, I felt like I had a chance to win,” she says. “I thought, 'I want the money,' but it came to represent so much more.”
Campbell said he was surprised Robinhood removed the “buy” button from the app: “I knew it was rigged, but it just feels so unfair. It feels like they've changed the rules of the game.”
And this is the whole point of the film: by depicting how much power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest one percent, the filmmakers hope that the audience will come away impressed by how much influence the average Joe crowd still has indisputably.–Especially given that their work has prompted a larger debate about the trading industry, both within and outside government.. “I hope that when people leave the theater, they leave feeling a little more optimistic than pessimistic,” Angelo says. “I'm under no illusions that this story will change the system forever, but it's an example of the power of groups coming together to achieve meaningful victories.”
