{"id":16265,"date":"2011-12-29T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=16265"},"modified":"2011-12-25T12:52:52","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T17:52:52","slug":"the-big-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Billy Crudup as Tim Geithner in Too Big to Fail.<\/p><\/div>\n

Something unnerving happened to me about an hour into Too Big To Fail<\/em>, during a scene in which the actor who plays Tim Geithner pauses an early morning jog around Lower Manhattan on September 17 to call Hank Paulson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m on the street, Hank,\u201d he says, accurately, as commuters climb the stairs\u00a0of the 2\/3 train. \u201cAnd people … are just on the street going about their business …\u201d<\/p>\n

Around this line I began crying uncontrollably, for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

It occurred to me that the fall of 2008 had been a heavy quarter for crying for me, especially considering its notable lack of any consequential breakups. I tried to remember triggers:\u00a0Pnin<\/em>; a decades-old magazine feature about Barney Frank\u2019s decision to out himself; the now forgotten series of announcements that some lifelong Republican had \u201ccourageously\u201d endorsed Obama; watching Rachel Getting Married<\/em>; and most subway musicians, in particular the sad old Chinese men stationed at the Grand Street stop, condemned to civilization\u2019s most tragic musical genre.<\/p>\n

I replayed the scene, and … oh my God, it could not be more obvious:\u00a0I had been moved to tears by Too Big to Fail<\/em> because it was just that unbelievably bad!<\/p>\n

This is not to attest that it was not additionally believably<\/em> bad, or it would never have pulled off such a triumphant assault on my dignity.<\/p>\n

I mean, of course it is bad. It is a ninety-two-minute movie based on a six-hundred-page book<\/a> I finished in a day and a half, but one I cannot imagine picking up if I had not already known at least seventy-five of the one-hundred-and-fifty-long cast of characters. The Wall Street Journal<\/em> subscriber was the target audience, but Journal<\/em> subscribers do not write screenplays. It was designed to fail in the way of those productions that force actors to work a Wikipedia entry into every scene so that the next generation of high school teachers might feel justified in dimming the lights and letting the class watch in installments, to the amusement of all who had the foresight to smoke up in the parking lot before class.<\/p>\n

By some quirk of neurocircuitry, I cannot smoke weed. Its effect on me is generally the drastic magnification of my capacity for perceiving all that is phony and insidious and demoralizing about existence, which is akin to what I experienced watching this scene, only for the reason that it bore no actual resemblance to existence. In the tradition of high school, this movie is a sustained campaign of mockery directed at anyone who ever bothered knowing about anything.<\/p>\n

For instance, here\u2019s what Tim tells Hank, in a line I missed the first time because I was crying:<\/p>\n

\n

They have no idea the whole thing is about to fall down!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Um, thought experiment! Imagine Tim Geithner, or Billy Crudup as Tim Geithner, or anyone at all uttering this comment on September 11 while surveying the scene at Ground Zero around lunch hour. We have just watched as twin towers\u2014in this case, Lehman Brothers and AIG\u2014have fallen, and yet here we are meant to believe that Joe Six-Pack loitering outside has \u201cno idea<\/em> the whole thing is about to fall down!\u201d This could happen in a 9\/11 movie, if the guy delivering the line had been staring at Building 7 the whole time and the movie was a satire of 9\/11 truthers. But it couldn\u2019t happen in this case without a shocking degree of contempt for the actual truth, and for America and all the neighborhood food vendors who posted signs on their carts rebuking reporters for badgering their stressed-out customers with Lehman-related questions that week.<\/p>\n

So much about Too Big to Fail<\/em> is small and shoddy that the magnitude of its contempt goes almost unnoticed. But prior to the week of September 15, 2008, the last time an educated observer could have realistically believed that the average bystander going about business in the financial district had no idea<\/em> it was all about to come crashing down had been sometime around or before August 3, 2007, when the inimitable CNBC personality Jim Cramer diverted from his usual unscripted eccentricities to deliver a terrifying and detailed live sermon despairing that the Federal Reserve appeared to have \u201cNO IDEA\u201d what sort of unspeakable terror had stricken credit markets since the predatory mortgage dreck lurking within Wall Street\u2019s innumerable \u201cshadow banks\u201d had finally begun to default en masse. The network replayed Cramer\u2019s operatic declarations<\/a> that Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner \u201cknow NOTHING!\u201d and had \u201cNO IDEA!\u201d so assaultively throughout the ensuing year that everyone got around to turning the sound on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the fiction of pervasive cluelessness is so vital to this movie\u2019s very essence that the CNBC clips interspersed between scenes as a narrative device had to be \u201creread and, in some cases, reshot<\/a>\u201d\u2014faked<\/em> is another way of saying it\u2014by some of Cramer\u2019s calmer\/comelier colleagues two years after the fact, on an HBO set designed to look more like that of The View<\/em> or Reliable Sources<\/em> than anything on CNBC. Freed from the sweaty, disheveled realities of the moment, Maria Bartiromo looks as if she\u2019s aged herself back to the days of Glass-Steagall.<\/p>\n

By far the most improved from this outlandish orgy of image laundering, however, are the former Treasury flacks Michele Davis and Jim Wilkinson, bit players whose reality-based liabilities (ignorance, naivete bordering on recklessness) are confidently converted by Cynthia Nixon and Topher Grace into the ultimate Hollywood asset that is \u201cjust like us!\u201d affability. Both actors were gracious\u00a0enough<\/a> to meet their subjects. Asked by New York<\/a><\/em> whether\u00a0Davis seemed concerned about her portrayal, Nixon laughed, \u201cYeah, I mean, as you can tell from the film, a lot of what she does is spin.\u201d Throughout the course of the movie, though, the straight-shooting Wilkinson can generally be trusted to talk the bosses off any ledge over which the spinplications would be too dire\u2014namely nationalization, the n<\/em> word, an \u201cun-American\u201d course of action akin to handing the financial system over (in one of the many lines that gave Andrew Breitbart\u2019s movie critic a serious\u00a0man crush<\/a> on the Topher Grace character) to the \u201cPost office\u2014and that runs like a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Paul Giamatti as Ben Bernanke. <\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, across the river in Arlington, the real-life bureaucrat Sheila Bair was plotting the largest bank nationalization in history, using the Depression-era powers of the FDIC to shut down Washington Mutual and sell its assets to the highest bidder. In the ultimate triumph of spin, neither Bair nor the FDIC nor any other genuine vestige of lessons America learned from the Depression are given a role in Too Big to Fail<\/em>. Instead, the movie concludes by solemnly crediting Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke for averting a second Great Depression. The evidence supporting this conclusion consists mainly of a scene in which Paul Giamatti as Bernanke asserts his expertise on the Great Depression in the same tone of withering condescension with which he so unforgettably slandered \u201cfucking<\/em> merlot\u201d in the movie Sideways<\/em>, which famously boosted<\/a> American pinot noir sales by 16 percent. In an ongoing national tragedy, however, Bernanke\u2019s entire manual of Depression-aversion techniques originated with one of the twentieth century\u2019s epic promulgators of spin, Milton Friedman, whose \u201cmonetarist\u201d prescription for staving off the next Depression was transparently aimed at staving off the next New Deal. But sometimes there seems no quantity of free money large enough for the job, a dilemma Bernanke and Paulson discuss in a final, heroically wooden scene following a meeting with bankers to discuss the terms of the latest bailout:<\/p>\n

\n

BB: I certainly hope they …
HP: What.
BB: I … hope they use the money the way we\u2019re asking them … they will<\/em> lend it out, won\u2019t they?
HP: (grins) Of course<\/em> they will!!
Then, turning to look out the window into the distance, in a voice closer to a whisper<\/em> …
Of course they will …<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are moments at which this movie approaches a kind of beauty in its bargain-bin cheesiness, in a way that recalls some of the schlockier nonsense peddled by the Bush Administration\u2014\u201cMission Accomplished,\u201d Iraqis dancing in the streets, Jessica Lynch …<\/p>\n

The nightmare for Jessica Lynch, according to Jessica Lynch, truly began after she was \u201crescued\u201d from the Saddam Hospital in Nasariya, Iraq, where she had been recovering from injuries sustained during a raid in which her gun jammed. Lynch was under the supervision and care of gentle and humane doctors and singing nurses. Once rescued and tucked away in Walter Reed, she was inundated with gifts and lucrative offers to exploit the gruesome true story of the rape and torture she endured in an Iraqi gulag after killing untold numbers of terrorists in an action-packed gunfight. She later described to the author Susan Faludi the process by which her ghostwriter Rick Bragg \u201cwore [her] down\u201d in his effort to force the rape lie into her \u201cauthorized\u201d biography by insisting repeatedly that such a thing could<\/em> have happened when she was unconscious, that her injuries were \u201cconsistent\u201d with those of a rape victim, that \u201cpeople need to know\u201d the perils of being a \u201cwoman soldier.\u201d In 2007 Lynch testified before Congress that in truth she possessed none of the valor or victimhood of the Jessica Lynch invention investigators had traced to none other than Jim Wilkinson<\/a>\u2014who failed to recall<\/a> any of the details of his creative process in the specific incidence\u2014but added that \u201cthe truth of war is not always easy to hear but it is always more heroic than the hype.\u201d Isn\u2019t it pretty to think so.<\/p>\n

Well, America, Too Big to Fail<\/em> is your Jessica Lynch story<\/a>. Remember her brown-skinned best friend who was captured in the same ambush but completely forgotten by the monomaniacal missing white girl\u2013centric media? If Jessica represents Tim and Jim and Ben and all the artificial heroes being celebrated in Too Big to Fail<\/em>, then the friend represents the millions of anonymous homeowners fending off illegal evictions carried out by criminal rings of notary sweatshops churning out falsified documents to replace the ones mysteriously lost by the too-big-to-fail banks. Without them to exploit, who would fight our wars or sign up with adjustable-rate NINJA mortgages? It\u2019s a central question … for Howard Zinn maybe, but this is Hollywood, where the target market is still middle American, white, and inexplicably disdainful of the postal service. In Too Big to Fail<\/em> the hidden master propagandist is Milton Friedman, and Jim Wilkinson is one in a platoon of artificial heroes who are paid to make us forget what we know and repress what just happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Cynthia Nixon as Michele Davis. <\/p><\/div>\n

The last time I cried in a movie for a reason other than psychological torture was during Michael Moore\u2019s Capitalism: A Love Story<\/em>. I saw it with an ex-boyfriend who was sure he detected an undercurrent of anti-Semitic propaganda, which is just another reminder that the most effective marketing campaign in history was the one that convinced everyone they were smart enough to see through it when someone was trying to sell them on something. I won\u2019t go into the general problem of titular liberals who reflexively recoil at the mere mention of Michael Moore other than to venture that they are mostly afraid of the fact that he is fat. Like Cynthia Nixon, an ardent Democrat who nevertheless attests to having been thoroughly won over by Michele Davis<\/a>\u2014\u201cI liked her so much, and I agree with so many things that she said. It was kind of a reminder to me that the loudest parts of the Republican party are really who we hear from … it doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re blind to common sense or human rights\u201d\u2014they are drawn to identifying with people who do not strike them as physically repulsive, even if, as in the case of both Davis and Jim Wilkinson, they are people who launched their political careers working for Dick Armey, the former Republican majority leader who helms FreedomWorks, the most prominent of the innumerable Tea Party propaganda outfits (and whose precursor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, employed Davis in the early nineties). This is why effective liars are usually attractive and thin. If this is your problem, though, you are in luck. No one in Too Big to Fail<\/em> is fat, not even Barney Frank.<\/p>\n

Moe Tkacik, formerly of the <\/em>Wall Street Journal and <\/em>Jezebel, is a writer in Washington, D.C. Her essay on television and the financial crisis, \u201cThe Real Housewives of CNBC,\u201d appears in <\/em>Bad News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something unnerving happened to me about an hour into Too Big To Fail, during a scene in which the actor who plays Tim Geithner pauses an early morning jog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1186],"tags":[2405,2402,2407,592,2406,2404,1295,2403,2401],"class_list":["post-16265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-film","tag-aig","tag-andrew-ross-sorkin","tag-ben-bernanke","tag-financial-crisis","tag-jim-cramer","tag-lehman-brothers","tag-the-wall-street-journal","tag-tim-geithner","tag-too-big-to-fail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Big Fail by Moe Tkacik<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Big Fail by Moe Tkacik\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"574\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"323\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Moe Tkacik\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Moe Tkacik\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Moe Tkacik\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9e429db6910def00abdcf250b5dfb604\"},\"headline\":\"The Big Fail\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\"},\"wordCount\":2159,\"commentCount\":8,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"AIG\",\"Andrew Ross Sorkin\",\"Ben Bernanke\",\"financial crisis\",\"Jim Cramer\",\"Lehman Brothers\",\"The Wall Street Journal\",\"Tim Geithner\",\"Too Big to Fail\"],\"articleSection\":[\"On Film\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\",\"name\":\"The Big Fail by Moe Tkacik\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00\",\"description\":\"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg\",\"width\":574,\"height\":323,\"caption\":\"Billy Crudup at TK in Too Big to Fail.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Big Fail\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9e429db6910def00abdcf250b5dfb604\",\"name\":\"Moe Tkacik\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/81ea8d0490718ed633b270ceeeeb49eeec671f1a1c3e9d93036153ed25588977?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/81ea8d0490718ed633b270ceeeeb49eeec671f1a1c3e9d93036153ed25588977?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Moe Tkacik\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mtkacik\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Big Fail by Moe Tkacik","description":"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Big Fail by Moe Tkacik","og_description":"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00","og_image":[{"width":574,"height":323,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Moe Tkacik","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Moe Tkacik","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/"},"author":{"name":"Moe Tkacik","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9e429db6910def00abdcf250b5dfb604"},"headline":"The Big Fail","datePublished":"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/"},"wordCount":2159,"commentCount":8,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg","keywords":["AIG","Andrew Ross Sorkin","Ben Bernanke","financial crisis","Jim Cramer","Lehman Brothers","The Wall Street Journal","Tim Geithner","Too Big to Fail"],"articleSection":["On Film"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/","name":"The Big Fail by Moe Tkacik","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg","datePublished":"2011-12-29T13:00:48+00:00","description":"December 29, 2011 \u2013 We\u2019re out this week, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! Something","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/toobigtofail_billy_BLOG.jpg","width":574,"height":323,"caption":"Billy Crudup at TK in Too Big to Fail."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/29\/the-big-fail\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Big Fail"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9e429db6910def00abdcf250b5dfb604","name":"Moe Tkacik","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/81ea8d0490718ed633b270ceeeeb49eeec671f1a1c3e9d93036153ed25588977?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/81ea8d0490718ed633b270ceeeeb49eeec671f1a1c3e9d93036153ed25588977?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Moe Tkacik"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mtkacik\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16265"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25040,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16265\/revisions\/25040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}