PASADENA, Calif. _ What kind of man would cheat thousands of people out of their hard-earned cash and smile while he was doing it? Bernie Madoff, the financier who pulled off the biggest Wall Street fraud in history, was that kind of man.
In 2009 Madoff confessed to orchestrating a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, and HBO will re-examine the drama when it presents "Madoff: The Wizard of Lies," premiering May 20.
The show is based on Diana B. Henriques' best selling book and stars Robert DeNiro as Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his unsuspecting wife, Ruth.
"What he did is beyond my comprehension," says DeNiro. "So there's a disconnect somehow in him, and I still would like to understand. I did as best I could, but I don't understand ... You can go so far. You can do your interpretation. The only things I do feel strongly about is that he didn't tell his kids, and he didn't tell his wife. But everyone around him probably had an idea. They just didn't want to look too deeply because they knew something wasn't quite right."
Henriques, who was the first reporter to interview Madoff in jail, thinks he can be classified as a psychopath. "I don't think you can conduct your life with such a lack of empathy for the devastation that you're causing and not meet that fairly spongy definition of a psychopath," she says.
"But I don't think that tells us a lot about Bernie ... You can put a label on a sociopath, but you can look at some of the greatest entrepreneurs and innovators in American business _ I mean, Steve Jobs _ some people would have said he's a sociopath. It doesn't explain anything to say he's a sociopath. What you need to understand, and what I think you'll see in Bob's performance, is how plausible con men like this are, how utterly they can seize your trust and your imagination and make you believe," she says.
"A friend of mine once said, 'The thing about a Ponzi schemer is they can do a perfect impersonation of an honest man.' And that's what you'll see," she continues. "So I hope folks won't get real tangled up in what kind of label, sociopaths, psychopaths, what kind of label you put on it. What it boils down to is how he treated people and how incredibly magnetic he was."
DeNiro believes that a few of the upper echelon of investors harbored an inking of what was going on. "I think some of them sort of suspected, but would never want to look. They were getting a certain amount of money in return. Why look too closely? It's OK. That, I feel, is a certain kind of complicitness, but you can never prove (that) with some people."
Henriques disagrees. "Because I think there's a tendency to blame the victims of Ponzi schemes more than other kinds of fraud," she says.
"But, in fact, I think you could make an argument that they are actually more to be pitied because all of us trust people in our lives, and only someone you can trust can truly betray you. So the stature Madoff had in the financial world, I can attest to. He was a source of mine for decades before he got arrested.
"The respect and the admiration that he had, the success he seemed to project, and the fact that his legitimate business firm was a huge success, technologically cutting-edge in everything. So you put all that together, and it isn't crazy to trust Bernie Madoff. It wasn't a leap of faith. It wasn't an act of greed, by any means, to trust Bernie Madoff," says Henriques.
"As I've often said, if you can't inspire people's trust and keep it through thick and thin, you need to go into another line of crime besides Ponzi schemes, because that's a non-negotiable job requirement for that particular kind of fraud."
The film is directed by Barry Levinson, who has worked with DeNiro on four other projects. DeNiro develops a role in a unique way, says Levinson. "We'll go over stuff. We'll be talking about things _ this all in pre-production. And then he'll be trying on some jacket, a thing, or et cetera. But step by step by step, very slowly _ maybe inch by inch _ all of a sudden this character begins to emerge. It's not, like, one day. It's somehow over that period of time of talking and pre-production notes and going over things, it just keeps evolving. And then there's that day when all of a sudden there's the character he's going to play. I've worked with him now, and I'm fascinated every time to see that inch-by-inch transformation that takes place."
UNKNOWN 'BATMAN' CREATOR REVEALED
Few fans realize that Bob Kane wasn't the only creator of the famous "Batman" character. Another artist, Bill Finger, was equally if not more responsible for the masked crusader who's so beloved today. But nobody had heard of Finger until Marc Tyler Nobleman wrote his book, "Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman." Hulu has picked up the fabric of that book for a new documentary, "Batman & Bill," which begins streaming Saturday. Though Nobleman admits he became obsessed with introducing Finger to the world, he says it didn't start with him.
"I didn't discover Bill Finger. I discovered a lot about him that hadn't been published, but the man who brought Bill to light was a man named Jerry Bails back in the '60s," says Nobleman.
"He was fan who did some detective work of his own and he figured out that Bob Kane, who up till that point had been the only name on every single Batman story for a quarter century, could not have been doing that by himself. So Jerry interviewed Bill. And this was way before social media, of course, and there were no major news outlets that were interested. So instead, Jerry, who was such an enterprising guy, he wrote up a two-page article and he mailed it out to 'Batman' fans all over the country. And that's how word began to spread."
'WITNESS' IN BRILLIANT RETELLING
If you haven't caught up with Agatha Christie's short story, "The Witness for the Prosecution" or seen any of the earlier versions, you're in for a rare treat with the release of the smashing British version on DVD and Blu-ray. Superbly cast and set in the Roaring '20, the British tale involves a randy heiress (Kim Cattrall), an Austrian showgirl (Andrea Riseborough) an earnest solicitor (Toby Jones), and a well-meaning lover (Billy Howle) _ all embroiled in a corking good story. Filled with Christie twists and turns you're always tilted off balance in this saga of greed, betrayal, redemption, and despair. The disc includes bonus feature interviews with the stars as well as backstage information on the costumes and story. Price is $35.
DEMME'S DEATH LEAVES A VOID
We lost a great filmmaker when Jonathan Demme died Wednesday of complications from esophageal cancer. He was known for "Silence of the Lambs," "The Manchurian Candidate," and most recently "Ricki and the Flash." The first time I saw him was on the set of "Swing Shift" with Goldie Hawn and Ed Harris at a hotel in Pasadena. The scene was a nightclub dance, complete with orchestra (which did not actually play a note), scores of extras dressed in 1940s garb, and Demme hustling from sound man to cameraman to the actors. He was dressed like a young Orson Welles, in pleated pants, wide suspenders and a thin mustache. And I remember marveling at how he could juggle decisions and camera angles and tentative actors all at once. But that was his job and he was so good at it.
