“Margin Call” has neighborhood connection

 Photo courtesy of Cameron Goodyear

Last Thursday I received an email from my dear friend Mary Morgan asking if I wanted to conduct an interview with her son-in-law J.C. Chandor, above right, the writer/director of Margin Call, a new movie that has generated lots of buzz in advance of its October 21 opening. I chuckled at the thought that J. C., whom I do know, would be willing to pause between appearances with Kevin Spacey on talk shows or interviews with the NY Times and Wall Street Journal to conduct an interview with the writer of a CWE blog.

I've known J. C.'s wife, Cameron Goodyear, above left, since Mary and step-father Michael Morgan moved to Lenox Place in 1986. Cameron went to Mary Institute (MICDS) for a couple of years, and then left St. Louis to attend St. George's in Rhode Island. Cameron, J. C., and young children, Frances, shown above, and Miles (not pictured), currently live in New York State.

Before making Margin Call, first-time director J. C. Chandor's previous experience in film making was directing commercials. His intimate knowledge of the investment business comes via his father, who was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch for 40 years. J. C. wrote the first draft of Margin Call over a weekend in November 2008. In Rachel Dodes recent article describing Margin Call in the online Wall Street Journal, she explained: "The film, set during the height of the 2008 financial crisis, has an ensemble cast that includes Mr. (Kevin) Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. It zeroes in on a group of executives trying to save their 107-year-old financial institution from imminent collapse: notably by selling off billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities in a single day, before the bottom falls out of the market." The big-name actors in the film were such believers in the project that they agreed to work for scale and a percentage of profits.

After I passed on a possible interview offer, Cameron emailed that she and J. C. were attending the premier last night at New York's Sunshine Theatre. She thought all the cast will be there and as she said, "That's a fashion crisis!" Funny she should say that because what I remember about lovely Cameron is that she was quite the fashion plate while she lived here. That, of course, required a little extra preparation time before heading off to school in the morning, which tested the patience of the mother (often her own) driving carpool. Once I remember a scarf-as-blouse kind of get-up, which I felt certain made the ride out to Warson Road a much more pleasant trip for the Country Day students in the backseat. But back to the movie….

Cameron informed me that J. C. started working with producer Zach Quinto (who also plays a part in the movie) soon after he wrote Margin Call, but the pair didn't sell the U.S. distribution rights until the Sundance Festival, which the whole family attended. "So," Cameron said, "it really is a low budget Indie film, despite the stellar cast. Thanks for the support, Nicki!" It's my pleasure, Cam!

J. C. requested that the film's distributors include St. Louis on the list of opening cities for the movie, and perhaps because of the neighborhood connection, Margin Call is opening this weekend at both the Chase Cinema and Landmark's Plaza Frontenac–an unusual occurrence as local movie buffs know.