00:00Everyone is Lying to You premiered at South by Southwest London earlier this year.
00:04Was the reception everything you hoped it would be?
00:06It was fantastic. I had never seen the movie in front of an audience of any size.
00:10And so the nerves are very high, especially when it's your directorial debut.
00:15But it went over great. People were laughing at the right moments.
00:18I saw a few dab of tear here and there, so it all worked.
00:22Everyone is Lying to You for Money also marks your directorial debut.
00:26What was the biggest challenge going from actor to filmmaker?
00:28Well, as an actor, you're always able to ask, wait, who's in charge here?
00:34As a director, you are the person in charge.
00:37I learned a lot while doing it.
00:39I directed in television before on Gotham, and I'd written on Gotham before,
00:44but I'd never written and directed a movie.
00:47And this movie is unusual because some of it is verite,
00:52is just interviews with people like Sam Bankman-Fried
00:55and this other guy who's in jail named Alex Mashinsky.
00:58Some of it is me and my wife, Marina Baccarin.
01:04You know, there's no script, but we're sort of improvising a scene
01:10in order to, like, move the story forward.
01:12So it's a mixture, and it was really, really fun to work on.
01:14And it was great to work in the medium of, in the genre of comedy,
01:18which is not a genre that I've worked in a lot.
01:21It doesn't rely on talking heads to explain what Bitcoin is.
01:26You know, can you talk about finding the balance between informative and entertainment?
01:30Yeah, that's a great question.
01:31I really did not want the documentary to be a talking head documentary.
01:35I personally love those documentaries.
01:37I'm a total nerd, but I don't think that's the best way to reach a large audience.
01:41So I wanted the documentary to be on its feet.
01:44There are some sit-down interviews that are important,
01:46that are with sort of a couple of people who are now in jail.
01:49But the rest of it, I want it to be alive.
01:52I want it to feel fresh.
01:54And I wanted the audience to be able to connect to me
01:56and see what I'm experiencing as I go down the rabbit hole here on crypto.
02:00So comedy was really our North Star.
02:03You know, comedy, keeping a sense of humor about it,
02:07keeping a lightness to it,
02:09allows the audience to kind of be disarmed a little bit.
02:12And so then you can kind of sneak in the vegetables of life,
02:15teaching them a little something about crypto.
02:17It's clear you're very comfortable with your time on the OC.
02:20Now I am.
02:22When did you learn that you could use that to your advantage when making the stock?
02:27Oh, well, one particular time was when I was interviewing Sam Begman-Fried.
02:33I was about to interview him.
02:35And his assistant slash handler, this nice young lady,
02:39came up to me to introduce herself.
02:42And the first thing out of her mouth was,
02:44oh, my God, I'm such a big fan of the OC.
02:48And that allowed me to set up the interview
02:51to where I was alone in a room with Sam,
02:54just my camera people and Jacob,
02:57who wrote the book that this movie is based on.
03:00And she, I said, could you just maybe wait outside?
03:04Because it's such a small room.
03:05And as my publicist, who's right here knows,
03:08never leave your client a room in a hostile interview.
03:11But because she was a fan of the OC, I got away with it.
03:14That's right.
03:15You even had the fraud investigator or examiner mug.
03:19That was bold.
03:21My favorite purchase ever on Etsy.
03:24I still drink from it every morning just to kind of remind myself.
03:27Yeah, thank you.
03:28I'm fairly proud of that one.
03:29I love that there's so much of your life in this doc.
03:33You know, Marina, as you mentioned, you know,
03:35is a key player in a lot of vignettes.
03:38She's clearly over your crypto obsession at times,
03:41but she's still really supportive.
03:43What did she make of the whole thing?
03:44Yeah, I don't think she was thrilled about the cameras in the house.
03:47What I love about it is, first of all, it shows how funny she is.
03:50I mean, she's very, very funny.
03:51She steals several scenes.
03:54But it also, Marina is sort of a surrogate for,
03:57I cannot tell you how many women I've talked to
03:59who the first thing they say when I talk about crypto is like,
04:03oh, my God, this guy, this other guy, hopefully not me,
04:06was talking about crypto to me and just, like, would not shut up.
04:09Like, they're so tired of dudes mansplaining
04:12this fictitious currency to them.
04:15It's probably pretty obnoxious.
04:17And so, Marina was sort of playing a similar role.
04:21Even though I'm skeptic, she's a little bit like,
04:23oh, my God, can we please talk about something else?
04:25Well, and one man who couldn't mansplain crypto
04:28is Marina's Greenland co-star, Gerard Butler.
04:32Were you surprised to learn that he had some, you know,
04:35experience with Bitcoin and crypto?
04:38Yeah, I mean, you know, crypto's a pretty guy thing.
04:41The vast majority of people who invest in it are dudes.
04:44So it wasn't that surprising.
04:46I was surprised that Jerry was so game.
04:48He was great.
04:48He was really terrific.
04:49You know, right before we did the scene, which was improvised,
04:53it was like, you know, what do I do?
04:54What do I do?
04:55And I said, just treat it like a scene out of extras.
04:58And, you know, I'm Ricky Gervais and you're the famous actor.
05:01And just, you know, give me a ton of grief.
05:03I believe at one point you say, and I think I'm paraphrasing,
05:06is crypto is backed by nothing but a story,
05:09which makes sense, you know, that the industry would employ celebrity spokespeople
05:14like Matt Damon, Gwyneth Faltrow, Tom Brady.
05:17Why shouldn't people take financial advice from celebrities?
05:20Because they're not qualified.
05:22Celebrities aren't qualified to give financial advice.
05:24Technically, it's illegal.
05:26If you're not a licensed financial advisor,
05:27you're not supposed to offer people financial advice.
05:29That law is rarely enforced.
05:31But, yeah, you shouldn't take financial advice from a celebrity
05:35in the same way that, you know, I don't know,
05:39I shouldn't ask my four-year-old about nuclear physics.
05:41Like, they don't know anything about it.
05:43My hope is that the celebrities will still stay on the sidelines.
05:46And nowadays, they're not so much into crypto.
05:50I'm a little worried that as the bubble re-inflates,
05:52they're going to come back.
05:53But I also think a lot of people have been burned
05:55and they probably aren't coming back to invest in it.
05:58You were able to interview and expose both Alex Masensky
06:01and Sam Bakeman-Fried for the frauds they were
06:04long before they were sentenced to prison time for their crimes.
06:07Do you feel vindicated?
06:09Yes.
06:11Yes, I do.
06:12Yeah, I mean, it's a shame that it's taken me this long
06:15to sort of finish the documentary,
06:16but it's interesting how timely it is.
06:19You know, both Alex and Sam are in jail now.
06:23Alex got 12 years and Sam got 25.
06:25I was interviewing them, as you said,
06:28before they were even indicted for these crimes.
06:32But it was pretty clear to me as well as to other people
06:34that whatever they were up to, it was not on the up and up.
06:38So I do feel vindicated.
06:40I also hope that showing the sort of vacuity of it,
06:45how absolutely useless this whole thing is,
06:51will remind people, will serve as a warning for people
06:55not to go back in.
06:56Because I think the temptation now,
06:58as the sort of bubble reinflates, is to invest again.
07:01So hopefully it serves as a vindication and a warning.
07:04You interviewed so many victims of the Celsius scam,
07:07and their testimony was really moving,
07:09but yet most of them still haven't given up on cryptocurrency.
07:13Is there anything that can sort of break the spell?
07:18For the 5% or so of the population
07:20that's really, really into crypto, I doubt it.
07:23I doubt that they're ever going to be convinced
07:25because it's not, it's a, I hesitate to say,
07:30belief system that's a little grandiose.
07:32But it's, these are deeply held feelings.
07:35And the more they've invested, the more they believe in it.
07:39So it's ironic, but when I asked,
07:43so I interviewed, I don't know, several dozen victims,
07:46all men, when I asked them the question of,
07:50do you still believe in crypto having lost money
07:52in this fraud that was Celsius?
07:54Every single one of them said yes.
07:56So I don't think it's about convincing that 5%.
07:59Unfortunately, I wish we could.
08:01Maybe in the long term we can.
08:03I think it's about warning the other 95%.
08:06And I think, quite frankly,
08:08it's about debunking all of these myths
08:10so that people have the knowledge
08:12to make the right financial decision.
08:14Something I'm going to take away from this documentary
08:16is we can't let cryptocurrency infiltrate our banking system.
08:20What is something you want audiences to take away from?
08:23That's exactly right.
08:24I'm deeply worried that as crypto has gotten further
08:29into our regulated financial system,
08:31the Congress just passed a bill that the president signed
08:34called the Genius Act,
08:37which if you know anything about our Congress,
08:39if it's called the Genius Act, it's got to be dumb.
08:41And it puts crypto, basically,
08:44it opens the floodgates up for crypto
08:46to be more intertwined with our banking system.
08:50That's really bad.
08:51In 2023, three banks failed in the United States
08:55and they were all tied to cryptocurrency.
08:59It's one thing for people to gamble with their own money
09:01and to lose it.
09:02And I don't really, in the abstract,
09:04have a problem with that, right?
09:05I'm not sort of anti-gambling, you know, per se.
09:10But if you're gambling
09:12and then we have to foot the bill for your losses,
09:15all of us,
09:16and it potentially takes down our whole system,
09:18that's insane and that's terrible.
09:22I worry that that could happen with crypto.
09:24Can you tell me about the future of the film?
09:26Where do we stand now?
09:27We premiered in London.
09:28We're now going to some American festivals,
09:30including Mill Valley, New Orleans,
09:33and another one that I can't talk about yet.
09:35And we're in conversations with distributors
09:36about sort of, you know, getting the movie out.
09:39So if you happen to be in the San Francisco area,
09:41please come to Mill Valley or in New Orleans.
09:44And if you're in New York,
09:46we will be coming to a festival near you this fall.
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