In Steven Soderbergh's new film, "The Laundromat" he explores the world of offshore banking and the international crises caused by the Panama Papers. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, and journalist Jake Bernstein sit down with Soderbergh to talk tax evasion, casting Meryl Streep and to look at how they took a real-life scandal and adapted it into a feature film.
In Steven Soderbergh's new film, "The Laundromat" he explores the world of offshore banking and the international crises caused by the Panama Papers. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, and journalist Jake Bernstein sit down with Soderbergh to talk tax evasion, casting Meryl Streep and to look at how they took a real-life scandal and adapted it into a feature film.
Melissa [00:00:00] Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.
Melissa [00:00:06] I'm Melissa Slaughter, and I'm hosting this week's episode. Here on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. This month, we're bringing you a film that was inspired by an international event. The Laundromat uncovers the secrets of the Panama Papers and the world of offshore banking. Don't think that affects you? Well, director Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, and journalist Jake Bernstein want you to know just how the tax evasion of the uber wealthy can trickle down into your everyday lives. They'll also dive into the comedy and drama of how they took a political scandal and adapted it into a feature film. Now here's Jake, Steven and Scott.
Steven [00:00:51] Hi, I'm Steven Soderbergh, I'm the director of the Laundromat. I'm here with our writer and producer, Scott Z. Burns and Jake Bernstein, whose book Secrecy World was our jumping off point. And we're going to take a quick spin through our process of getting this thing onto a screen.
Jake [00:01:11] My name is Jake Bernstein and I was a senior reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on the Panama Papers Project. And I joined with hundreds of other journalists from 80 different countries, I think, to investigate this leak of a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca. And I did that for about a year. And then we published in April of 2016. And it was a huge story all over the world. But there were still aspects of it that interested me, questions that I hadn't been able to answer, in part because of the nature of the investigation and because it's such a dense and interesting topic, this subterranean financial system that exists that people kind of know about but had never been able to see in this way. And so I decided to do a book which ended up being called Secrecy World. And shortly after selling the book, there was interest from Hollywood and in optioning it to make a movie out of it. And we talked to a number of different people, including Scott Burns and Steven Soderbergh, and they had a very concrete vision for what they wanted to do. And they are some of the most talented filmmakers alive. So I was really excited to join with them on working on this project.
Steven [00:02:36] Hi, I'm Steven, the one that Jake was just referencing, and I'm here with Scott Z. Burns. So you have a better memory for these things than I do. What - at what stage did you reach out to me? Because you reached out to me and said, hey, are you...I think this is interesting. What do you think? Where, where in the timeline was this? Because you'd made, you'd made your book deal, Jake. Like you'd agreed you'd had a deal, but you hadn't started or you were early in the process?
Jake [00:03:08] No, I had...I was just beginning.
Steven [00:03:11] So this is when, summer 2016?
Scott [00:03:14] Yeah. This is Scott Burns. I was made aware of Jake's book proposal because it was moving around Hollywood. And I thought that, you know, that it was worthy of a movie. And I had read a book that Steven had given me called Thieves of State. And I can't remember the name of the author.
Steven [00:03:36] Sarah Chayes.
Scott [00:03:38] So I had read that. And that deals a lot with how corruption worldwide is preventing our governments from...from serving the people the way it might. And so there was that. There was also a movie that had come out, that had been nominated for best foreign film called Wild Tales by Damien Szifron that I loved. And I - Steven and I had spoken about that movie and I was trying to come up with a movie that Steven and I might collaborate on. And I said, you know, what about taking the stories of of the Panama Papers and trying to to turn them into an anthology movie? And he said yes.
Steven [00:04:29] Yeah, I don't know if, Jake, Scott had told you as part of this initial conversation, my, my two demands or requirements for for being involved. The first is that we come up with a way to explain to a lay person how this touches them, because I think when this story broke, there was still this sensation like, oh, that's what super rich people are doing. Doesn't really affect me when I go to the store. And showing that that's not true. And the other was I told him, I don't want to see a single journalist in this movie.
Scott [00:05:05] Which - and there was one other one.
Jake [00:05:06] Which was?
Scott [00:05:07] It had to be funny.
Steven [00:05:08] Well, yes. But I think, you know...I guess I felt and in this specific instance, that in service of that first request, which was to explain to people how this touches them, all the real estate of the movie needed to be devoted to that and that the story of the story, which is a totally fascinating, separate thing, needed in this instance to sort of be set aside. However, as you found out, one of the first things that we wanted to know from you was could you create a kind of menu for us of all these different countries in the most interesting story that you felt came out of those countries? That was a pretty fascinating document.
Scott [00:05:55] I remember it had three columns, it was sort of the crime against humanity, whether it was greed, or money laundering, or murder, and then it was the country in which it took place, and then it was the aspect of the financial system that allowed it to transpire. And it was great because Jake was able to provide us with stories that allowed us to move around the world and tell this, but also to kind of illustrate for the audience how this system, you know, impacts you on a daily life. And the fact that I am financially illiterate, I think made me a really good stand-in for for everybody else.
Jake [00:06:40] I mean, this is one of the things that always spoke to me about the Panama Papers is you have you end up having more than two hundred thousand entities. These are companies, trusts, foundations, other things like that. And every one of them is potentially a story. You know, every one of them sort of has things that, you know, sometimes perfectly innocent things that are legal and, but are very human, and some that are very nefarious and and definitely not innocent.
Steven [00:07:05] So I think I know we said Lake George was the first thing you went after. And then China seemed like a pretty natural movie story because it's so bizarre and completely true. And then for a while, the middle story for a while, we were, we focused on this Russian sailor. This was really weird. These people would become slaves basically on these ships. They're hired, they're told they're gonna get paid X, then they're not paid. They're not allowed off the ship and then sort of discarded afterwards. And we were pretty far along in the process when we decided that that was just so grim. It was a really gri-, I mean, it was, it was really grim and upsetting. And we decided, you know, let's go...let's go 180 degrees in the other direction and go full bore, you know, '70s Neil Simon and comedy, which I think probably was...was the right call in the sense that we did find a way to personalize...personalize...look, for instance, bearer shares. Like we're trying - we're like, OK, how do...how do we talk about bearer shares and not put an audience to sleep or just confuse them? And the idea of, of using them as this tool within a power dynamic between a father and a daughter, I just thought was a really nice way to to show how bearer shares work, or in this case, don't work.
Scott [00:08:43] Yeah. I mean, I think at some point there's so many stories. I mean, you know, the Russian slave ship basically is one. Jake and I had spent a lot of time talking about a British guy who had been an arms dealer. There were narco trafficking stories that we began to look at. You know, an Israeli diamond-related scandal. And so there was that. But, you know, I kind of went back to what you had told me at the beginning, which was we needed to make this relevant to...to a person just, you know, someone who's not a billionaire or not a criminal. And so there was kind of this thing you had to go back to all the time and hold the story up against and go, how do we make it reverberate off of...off of a character who was going to have to be a through line? And also, you know, we began to create a taxonomy of these things. And it's exactly what you said. What was about trusts? What could be about bearer shares? What could be about these various financial institutions? What could be about money laundering? You know, one of the things that I found fascinating as we went through this was learning that, you know, as much as 40 percent of high-end real estate in New York and L.A. is really just used for money laundering and it's bought with cash and there's no due diligence. And, you know, you walk around New York City and you see these high end, beautiful, you know, condos and they're all empty and they're just, they're safety deposit boxes.
Jake [00:10:26] And they're still going up. They're still being built.
Scott [00:10:28] So there were stories like that as well. And I think, you know, we we definitely had that happen now and Martin. So it sort of...it flipped at one point and it wasn't just a free-for-all in terms of what the stories were. They had to now start fitting into this taxonomy that we were creating.
Jake [00:10:47] So when...again, because I just can't remember anything, when did the when did the, you know, Mossack and Fonseca as variety show hosts idea, where...when did we start talking about?
Scott [00:11:03] I think fairly early on, I felt like I needed some way...we needed a guide, you know, to get through this. In a way, it was sort of a twisted, you know, Salieri Mozart thing that we had talked about. And that could there...could we use these guys to, to show us how this world worked in almost a gleeful way. As...and then it took on, the spine kind of took on the shape of a confessional. And it was around then that I asked Jake if it would be possible to actually speak with them.
Jake [00:11:46] I mean, this was really resonated with me because my conception of my book, Secrecy World, was that I was going to use the Panama Papers to tell the evolution of this financial system and how it worked and, and use the papers and the stories within it to sort of describe that and how it functioned. And what Scott and Steven end up doing is personifying that in these two characters. They are your guides to this world. And we were extraordinarily fortunate and they happened to be two of the most charismatic human beings on the planet who ended up being our guides and in Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman. And so they're wonderful guides. And the audience is..is lucky to be with them.
Steven [00:12:30] Well, I felt I think we all felt it was too it was too easy to just paint these guys as as stock villains. We were both, I think, really intrigued with this idea that they get to articulate on multiple occasions, you know, why they're doing what they doing or what they're doing and and sort of really explaining, you know, where they feel their responsibilities lie and where they don't. But I really like this idea of them...I mean, the goal to me was was really to have people like them. To, to be, to have the audience really be happy when they showed up on screen in their, like, great outfits and they start talking that you would think, oh, I like this, that that would be some sort of weird achievement.
Jake [00:13:22] Well, this wasn't a motivation for me in doing the book in the first place in that, you know, I...we really didn't get their side of the story. When we were doing the investigation. And that's just the nature of these investigations. I mean, there, you know, you work on this leak of this massive information for a year. And, and then, you know, whatever, a month or two months before the project drops, you send this list of questions to the subject. And it's a thir-, it's 30 pages of questions. And they're questions like, did you know that your firm was being used for money laundering for, you know, all this awful stuff and things like that. And so, of course, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to necessarily sit down with you and explain at length, you know, how their business functioned and started and all that stuff. I mean, they'll respond to you in lots of different ways, but you won't be able to get the dialog. And so I really wanted that. I was fascinated by it, by, you know, wh-who these people were and what it was like to have, you know, this this leak sort of dropped on them. And so I kind of laid siege to them because, of course, they were not immediately accepting of the idea to speak with me. And I just I really sort of pushed it and pushed it and pushed it. And when I - the promise that I made to them was, you know, I will make a good faith effort to, to, to describe, you know, your perspective. And...
Scott [00:14:50] And they believed that?
Jake [00:14:51] And they believed it. Which is always astounding to me when when people do. But then I actually try to do it. So I have a history of doing that. I don't know why, but they, they, they agreed. And, and so they began to talk to me. And, and the great thing was that then I got to bring Scott in on some of those conversations as well. And...and they are, you know, they're not one-dimensional characters.
Laundromat Clip 1, Antonio Banderas [00:15:19] First of all, there are some things you should know before we begin.
Laundromat Clip 1, Gary Oldman [00:15:23] For instance, we are real people just like you.
Laundromat Clip 1, Antonio Banderas [00:15:28] Secondly, we did not write a word of this. To be perfectly frank, we would have prefer all of this remain a secret.
Laundromat Clip 1, Gary Oldman [00:15:35] But we had no choice in the matter. We just woke up one day and everything changed.
Laundromat Clip 1, Antonio Banderas [00:15:41] There were stories about us everywhere: TV, newspapers and the Internet.
Laundromat Clip 1, Gary Oldman [00:15:46] And now it is our turn to tell a few stories. Think of them as fairy tales that actually happened.
Laundromat Clip 1, Antonio Banderas [00:15:53] Don't worry. These stories are not just about us. They're also about you.
Scott [00:16:00] Now the first conversation...I mean, the conversation we had with Ramon over Skype, really informed a great deal of, of the script. I mean, he...he's a fascinating guy. You know, he...he was influenced by this Father Gallego who he knew as a kid who, you know, was part of this, you know, virtually Marxist view of Catholicism that took hold in Latin America and South America. And I was fascinated that a guy who started there in terms of his belief system would eventually make it all the way to being somebody who ran this kind of retail business for selling entities that allowed people to conceal their frequently ill-gotten gains. And he said something that, that is in the script and sort of reverberates through the whole piece, which is inside of all of us, there are wolves and there are sheep. And that to me, you know, I think it's not just the justification of a bad guy, because I tend not to think of him as a bad guy. I think of him as somebody who identified human foibles and he didn't create these laws. You know, personally, do I feel that they should have done more due diligence? Absolutely. Do I find some of their claims that this went on without them knowing thoroughly disingenuous? Yeah. But I get his point about the wolves and the sheep.
Jake [00:17:42] I mean, one of the great things about the movie, I think, is that it's it's really focuses on the system. It's, it's not really looking to blame individual actors as much as to sort of talk about what's driving all the participants in it, and I think that's really important because it is a systemic issue.
Scott [00:18:00] And also the way that they made money is so kind of retail at its base. I mean, the amount of money - I mean, how much, Jake, is it to to register a company and pay the fees every year?
Jake [00:18:13] I mean, it's at most a couple hundred dollars. Usually it depends on the jurisdiction.
Scott [00:18:18] Well, so they're getting a couple hundred dollars from a client, but they created over two hundred thousand of these. And it does as you've said before, they really did want to be the McDonald's of the offshore world.
Jake [00:18:31] This was the initial vision. Vision. You know, they started in the mid '80s where there was nothing to this business. I mean, basically you would create a company for someone, you'd stick it in a file, and you'd forget about it until it was time to invoice them the following year for renewal of the company. And, and so it wasn't - it was very easy. And you could do, you could, you could have this conception of being the McDonald's of the offshore world. And, you know, there was, there was new wealth being created, particularly in the developing world, in places like China and stuff like that. And communication made this much easier. And so it was possible to do, to do all this stuff. But then slowly, particularly after 9/11 and the financial crisis became apparent to governments that the system was being misused by terrorists, by, by narco traffickers, by all kinds of people like that. And they started to layer on, depending on the jurisdiction, more and more due diligence and vetting requirements. But by that point, they had released, you know, one hundred thousand companies into the wild and they couldn't really go back and figure out who was behind all those companies. And so it became very difficult for them.
Scott [00:19:37] When you taught me, Jake, early on, that part of the reason why I was struggling so much to understand these things is they're actually designed not to be easily understood. And when you start learning things like that, it does point you towards comedy because you realize that all of this time you've spent with your accountant or your lawyer or banker or whatever is kind of a joke. I mean, these are people who get paid by the hour. So the joke is on us that, that these things are, are designed to be inscrutable so that they're good tools for obfuscation.
Steven [00:20:17] If I may, how does Meryl come into the picture?
Jake [00:20:19] I mean, once we had a draft that we we felt good about, there was a discussion about where to go with this. But before deciding where to go, we really felt getting a cast together would be the best first step. And the, and Meryl, you know, she's at the top of everybody's list, obviously. But I think what, what was really crucial about her casting in this is because at a certain moment in the film that I'm not going to ruin for people who haven't seen it, who the actor is actually becomes very relevant to the film. Their baggage as a human being, what they believe, what they say out loud is actually turns out to be a critical component of what we're trying to do. And so in this case, we, we really had someone whose skill set is obviously other worldly, but also as a person really represented, I think, a certain legitimate and sincere moral stance that, that is crucial to what we're trying to accomplish. So in my mind, there really - there wasn't a, there wasn't a real plan B. We really had to have her. To my way of thinking. And then fortunately, her being her, she responded to material immediately and said, yeah, I want to be a part of this.
Laundromat Clip 2, Meryl Streep [00:21:57] My mother used to say a lightning strike 'em all without hitting me. Aren't you still in charge of lightning? I know, I know, I know. I'm not supposed to, I'm supposed to say forgive them, father. They know not what they do. But I think they know. They know God damn well what they're doing. They just don't care. I just wish just one of them could say, I'm sorry. And mean it. Or go to jail. Or both. Yeah. Hey, that would be nice. How about both?
Jake [00:22:31] Well, one thing we can talk about is the...the difference between something that's true and something that happened. For instance, in the Beverly Hills story, we took two...two things that have happened. This one story about a billionaire who got involved with his daughter's roommate and then something that I'm sure happens all the time, a bearer share structure being used to, to essentially betray another person when the...when the account is emptied out.
Laundromat Clip 3, Simone [00:23:07] I was told that there were 20 million dollars.
Laundromat Clip 3, Gary Oldman [00:23:10] Well, looking at the bank statements you requested from our directors quite clouded the process. It was indeed worth 20 million U.S. dollars.
Laundromat Clip 3, Miranda [00:23:20] Was?
Laundromat Clip 3, Simone [00:23:22] Well, as you can see for yourself, as of last week, they appear to be worth a little less than 37 dollars.
Steven [00:23:32] So those are two things that happened. But the way in which we employ them in that particular story. That's not a true story. Are we OK with that? Are we allowed to do that?
Scott [00:23:43] I think we are allowed to do that. I mean, Hell, if they're allowed to do what they did, then I think we are. You know, I think that it's, it's an interesting thing in our, in our culture and obviously in our particular art form when people start claiming that something is a true story, you know. And I've always found that to be a complicated space to climb into. Because we live in a time where you can basically find, you know, the narrative of your dreams on the Internet and all sorts of support for it. And I did feel when I was writing this, you know, kind of these two pulls, one pull towards the facts and this other pull towards entertainment. And I think in a lot of ways the piece is about that as well, it's about how do we come to understand these things? Because, you know, as you said, if there's over two hundred thousand of these companies, there's two hundred thousand different stories. And they're all about people who have different motivations for having chosen to involve themselves in the subterranean world. And some of their motivations are legitimate. You know, there are people who do require privacy. There are situations, you know, where someone may live in a political - in a country that is very unstable and they want to provide for their children and they need to shield this money someplace. So, you know, you understand how this thing got created. But like everything else human beings create, it can, it can turn to shit in a hurry.
Steven [00:25:38] I've been getting a lot of questions over the past couple of weeks about what what the what the purpose of this film is in this, you know, people's like, oh, is this, do you think this is a political film? And Meryl at one point said something interesting. She said, well, I think if you look at it a certain way, all films are political. They're, they're a piece of culture. And at some point they will tell you what, through what they show or not show, they will tell you a lot about that specific time and that specific place and that culture. And, and that, she, she was arguing could be construed as, as political. What I was, what I was arguing for was that it's a fi-, the film is posing a moral question that I feel exists on top of any kind of constructed political systems, that this is, this is really something...the question is very simple. Is this fair? Do we think this is fair? And if it's not, what do we do? You know, when, when as you discuss the people who write these laws are, are aligned with the forces that benefit. So, and then Meryl said, well, I mean, shouldn't - we should have something that we tell people to do after they see the movie. Like if it's a, if it's a call to action...I said, well, I don't know what to...I don't know how to address that. I don't know what to tell people to do. What I would - what I would hope is that the first step in trying to get a handle on this is awareness. It's just awareness. It's just getting the story out. If we can get the story out and have people understand that they are directly connected to this kind of behavior, something is happening in their life that you can draw a line back to some form of practice that we would probably describe as unfair. And when you have the people who are - the very, very wealthy extracting value and then the, the state, you know, infrastructure is being paid for by the people that can least afford to pay for it, that seems like an unsustainable paradigm, ultimately. Maybe it'll last for - at some point, that's going to collapse. It has to. It seems like. So I'm trying to I'm trying to keep that from happening. At least...
Scott [00:28:10] At least this fall. I remember when...when we went in to talk to Warner Brothers about contagion, and the last thing you said before we went into the room was just remember, no matter what at the end, say it-it's really about hope. And I do feel that way about, about this film, you know. I mean, somebody once said that hope is not a strategy. But what I do think is hope is an attitude that you can have when you're pursuing a course of action. And what I found inspiring and and why, you know, I at some point put my pen down and relied on John Doe's words were because I think there is a call to action in there for...for all of us. And I think there is something inspiring about someone, and you have, you, Jake, have never told either one of us who John Doe is. I don't know if you know, I don't want to know. But I think it's important that there are people in the world who are standing up and saying what needs to be said and, and supporting them and emulating them is something we can all do.
Laundromat Clip 4, Meryl [00:29:34] Reform of America's broken campaign finance system cannot wait.
Steven [00:29:43] Well, that was...fascinating. I think we've...I don't know that we've all said these things to each other. I'm sure we've said them to other people. But I'm glad we had the opportunity to do it in close proximity and have the world listen in. So thank you for that.
Melissa [00:30:04] And that's it for this week's episode. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next month with the new True Crime documentary for you to add to your watchlist. You can find this show on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this show. It helps other people find us and it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Media and Netflix. Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. So I'm Melissa Slaughter. Thanks for listening.