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Source link: http://archive.mises.org/3209/why-no-movies-about-making-money/

Why No Movies About Making Money?

February 23, 2005 by

Michael Lewis, writing on Bloomberg, explores the question of why the movie industry finds capitalism so unheroic and uninteresting.

{ 5 comments }

Brad Dexter February 23, 2005 at 1:00 pm

Worse, I think, is that Hollywood glorifies the wasting of millions of dollars on crackpot schemes. Cost is irrelevant when one follows the heart. Not only are they not championing enterprise, they are championing wasteful Statism.

Stephen W. Carson February 23, 2005 at 4:23 pm

The Mises Film page only identifies one film whose theme is the entrepreneur, the wonderful Lucas/Coppola film Tucker: A Man and His Dream. It would be nice if we could list more… It would be nice if they made more!

AJE February 23, 2005 at 5:14 pm

The Aviator

Ohhh Henry February 23, 2005 at 8:03 pm

A friend of mine who grew up in Eastern Europe pointed something out to me several years ago. It surprised me, but as soon as he said it, I realized it was true: in the movies, the bad guy is always a businessman or corporation, and the good guys are always government agents of some kind, or else private citizens who are assisting the government.

The Bond movies are classic examples – in a typical plot, a private “entrepreneur” plots to blow up or enslave the world, only to be foiled by selfless civil servants. Of course the reality is the opposite: it is governments which build nuclear weapons (and use them), and governments which plan and commit genocide.

What I wouldn’t give to see a biopic made about someone like Lincoln or FDR from an Libertarian/Austrian point of view! But more likely, you’ll see literary droppings like this get turned into polished turds by the Dream Factory: Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom

Michael A. Clem February 24, 2005 at 12:23 pm

I’d have thought others would mention it already, but there’s an old movie from the late 50′s/early 60′s called Cash McCall, with a young James Garner in the starring role. I was also thinking maybe of Trading Places with Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis, but it’s not such an obvious example.

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