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Germanyshort satire on financial crisis
SynopsisKid is a young Wall Street broker who is used to working long hours and taking naps on his pillow under his
desk, as everybody does. When his financial firm goes bankrupt, he suddenly finds himself on the street one morning, a
box with his belongings and his pillow with him. In his attempt to make some sense of that situation, a coworker engages
him in a pillow fight, that turns massive...
Wall Street Chicken is inspired by the events following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in New York, starting the worldwide financial crisis. The film is meant as a satirical comment on the way people involved in the downturn of investment banking vastly do not see themselves guilty of wrongdoing and remain a feelgood attitude.
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Directed by
Martin Menzel -
Written by
Martin Menzel -
Produced by
Martin Menzel - Wall Street Chicken Website
Written by: Martin Menzel
Produced by: Martin Menzel
Cast
Kid: Joel BradyRich: Joel Horwitz
Crew
Camera Assistant: Martina CasasCamera Operator: Yong-Pil Choi
Music Composer: André Stoeriko
Sound Recordist: Ilenia Martini
Sound Recordist: Christopher Filippone
Production Assistant: Antje Thiele
Camera Operator: Francesca Nale
"from a pillow fight to the film" Wall Street on April 4, 2009, was a scene of absurdity: a thousand people engaged in a giant pillow fight under the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange and a stone’s throw away from the iconic bull statue. White feathers and fluff were flying. Police officers, reporters, tourists and pillow attackers became a pulsing throng, punctuated with moving white clumps. Thump, thump, thump. It was just one of dozens of events during World Pillow Fight Day. Martin Menzel, 30, a German filmmaker, thought it an extraordinary opportunity to document a truth that was stranger than fiction. He grabbed his 16-millimeter camera and shot two rolls of film of people thrashing others. But then he was stumped on the question of how to use it. “I tried to find an idea — what to do with it?” Mr. Menzel said. “I thought maybe I would make a humorous piece about the recession and incorporate the pillow material I shot.” But what movie could possibly involve a pillow fight on Wall Street? Then Mr. Menzel had a conversation with a former Wall Street worker that provided him the missing piece: Workers often keep pillows under their desks because of the long hours they work, either working on a deal on a tight deadline or waiting for foreign stock markets to open. And from that fact, the plot for his short film, “Wall Street Chicken,” was born. In Mr. Menzel’s seven-minute film, two men lose their jobs the morning of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. They pack up their office belongings in cardboard boxes and place their pillows on top. As they walk down the street, they tease one another by hitting one another with pillows. Other passers-by, also with pillows on top of their boxes, join in, until it becomes a feather-flying melee and blends into the footage Mr. Menzel collected on April 4. “It’s a heightened reality, satirical approach,” Mr. Menzel said. News & Reviews "The Recession on Film, as Comedy and Satire" The New York Times (September 17, 2009)
"Wall Street Chicken" was a student project at New York Film Academy (NYFA) and was inspired by - and shown at the New York Film Festival "Blackout Film Festival: The Great Recession" in 2009
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Director
Martin Menzel
