Keith Gill, better known as his YouTube moniker “Roaring Kitty,” started a financial revolution by inadvertently leading an army of working-class investors against Wall Street tycoons during the pandemic. Dumb Money is the knockdown funny true story of the Gamestop “short squeeze,” where billionaire hedge funds purposely bet the video game brick and mortar retailer’s stock would fall. Gill, from his Massachusett’s basement, denounced the move, thought the stock was undervalued, and convinced a legion of online followers to drive up the stock price. The firestorm that followed caused bankruptcies, global media sensationalism, and an eventual congressional investigation.

Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo adapted the film from The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich. Incredibly, there were still writing the script when Gill (Paul Dano), billionaires Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Steven Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), and Kenneth C. Griffin (Nick Offerman) were subpoenaed for possible criminal charges. Blum and Angelo, respected financial reporters, “became screenwriters” from “daily journalists.” Their “training came in very handy” as they “were watching this unfold.” The script took shape in “real time” while they were “writing and researching.”

Blum and Angelo shred Wall Street’s unquenchable greed with a scathing critique of class disparity. They wanted to capture a “David and Goliath story” that was “rooted in the moment” and “explained how America got to where it is today.” They view the film as a “French braid, complex latticework” of ordinary people who were tired of “feeling small” and “isolated.” They wanted their “voices heard” and formed “a community” even though “they’ve never met.”

Dumb Money has a unique visual style accompanied by a booming rap soundtrack. Blum and Angelo had Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s raunchy “WAP” in “our first draft of the script.” The characters connect because “social media is such a powerful force.” They also wanted to “recreate an old-fashioned western gunfight” with characters through their computer screens. They realized that all the players were having the “experience of watching the same videos,” becoming digital “gunslingers about to fight a duel.”

Read on for our full interview with Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, and you can watch our video interview above.

Related: Exclusive: Dumb Money Director Craig Gillespie Decries a Rigged Economic System

Journalists Become Screenwriters in Real Time
Sony Pictures Releasing

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​MovieWeb: Reading about the process for writing this film, you’re both seeing things develop in real time while adapting the book. Talk about getting that done. How crazy was that?

Lauren Schuker Blum: We became screenwriters. We were actually daily journalists before. So I feel like all that training came in very handy as we were watching this unfold; as we were writing and researching in real time, the congressional hearings are taking place as we were doing the first draft.

Rebecca Angelo: There’s no greater joy as a screenwriter and filmmaker than to be fully immersed in the world of your story and to have that world be so exciting, full of so much righteous anger, and energy, and passion, and love, and joy. We say a little bit that it was like hopping onto a rollercoaster mid-ride. We were spectators for the first few months when the story was unfolding. And then when we came on to write the script. Suddenly, we found ourselves thrust into the middle car of that roller coaster turning loops.

Lauren Schuker Blum: I feel like we were thrown into the deep end of the pool. Our first thought was like wow, there is powerful energy behind the story, real emotion. That’s actually about something much bigger than even just Gamestop and the stock market. It’s about people who felt small and want to make their voices heard. It’s about the pandemic. It’s about income inequality. And really touching, to us, it was a story that explained how America got to where it is today.

Rebecca Angelo: I think there are some true stories that find their way to the screen that end up feeling like really great entries into the news cycle. You know, a great distillation of what happened. When we were talking about writing this movie, we saw pretty quickly a depth of humanity in the story, and also a timeless quality to it. It really is a classic David and Goliath story that has urgency because it’s so rooted in this moment. And it says so much about where we are as a society right now, but it’s also just a story that anybody can relate to. We can all relate to feeling small, feeling isolated, feeling like an outsider, and then the ultimate fantasy of ending up the reluctant leader of an army that does something big.

Related: Dumb Money Review: A Hilarious Adaptation of the GameStop Short Squeeze

Gunslingers About to Duel
Sony Pictures Releasing

MW: The movie has this great visual style. Where the Gamestop clerk, college girls, the poor nurse who’s working through COVID, they have their say, make a difference, and basically bring these Wall Street titans down. Were these visual cues in the script as written? Or was it decided in the filming process for the separate characters to have some kind of interaction?

Lauren Schuker Blum: No, it was very carefully done the script. One of the challenges of this film is that these characters don’t know each other in the flesh, in real life. They never actually interact. And so, the script was this very high wire act, kind of a complex latticework, or French braid, where we had to be very careful about the ins and outs of scenes. The characters are kind of speaking to each other, but not in the same room, but through the way one scene ends and another scene begins.

Rebecca Angelo: It’s a funny thing, because social media is such a powerful force in the world today. But it’s not really a terribly cinematic one. Because what you’re looking at ultimately is people typing on their computer. What they’re feeling inside, it can be so big and so wild. But it’s a challenge to render that for the screen, and so we developed all these techniques to overlap scenes, to carry music through, to use imagery, and phrases like “if he’s in, I’m in” to show this army coming together, these people who are feeding off each other’s energy, who are in dialogue with each other, and then in some cases in conflict with each other, even though they’ve never met. They’ve never been in the same room, and they may not know even know that this other person exists. But it’s about the formation of a community, and to try to make that as visual, and thrilling, and fun as we can.

Lauren Schuker Blum: That’s why the film was anthemic, like we used music in the script. Megan Thee Stallion was in our first draft of the script, and “WAP,” because you want to use songs to bring together this army. We felt like we sort of crafted new language in a way. We realized that while we were watching all of Roaring Kitty’s videos, doing our research. We realized at some point, Gabe Plotkin, and Steve Cohen, and Ken Griffin, have all had the experience of watching the same videos.

Lauren Schuker Blum: We want to recreate sort of like an old-fashioned Western gunfight, or like face-off, with our hero and our villain. But we had to do it through a screen. So you see in the opening of the film, Seth Rogen as Gabe Plotkin looks into the eyes of Roaring Kitty and says, “Who is this schmuck?” You feel the energy between them. Of course, it’s through a screen.

Rebecca Angelo: Almost like they’re gunslingers about to fight a duel.

Dumb Money is currently in New York and Los Angeles theaters with national distribution on September 29th from Sony Pictures.