Why is "Domino" relevant?

I'm going to make this short...perhaps not sweet, but short.

In 2008, the United States led the world in entering the financial crisis, due to vastly over-valued real estate (read "homes, etc."), extremely risky financial dealings, and corruption.  Thousands and thousands of people lost their homes, thousands and thousands of people lost their jobs.

In 2012, having only partly recovered from the economic crisis of 2008, the United States passed through two moments of brinkmanship when we were on the "fiscal cliff."  Each time, at the last possible moment, Congress and the President managed to find a solution that avoided our falling over it.

As of this writing, the United States is less than 24 hours away from "sequestration," which is something that could well produce another and perhaps more serious financial crisis.

Is Domino:  Caught in the Crisis relevant to the United States?  You bet it is.

I could pepper this short article with photos of closed businesses and homes in foreclosure, but I've already posted those, you've seen those for yourselves, and I think it unnecessary to repeat them.

OUR NEXT BLOG POST will be about the CD release in the flamenco festival

The banker as speculator and villain

In addition to using Domino to put a human face onto the economic crisis, I´m using it to express my own personal ideas about some of the causes of the crisis and some of the economic problems I observe in Spain.  This has led me to create various scenes with bankers.

In brief, I think a lot of the cause of the crisis is economic speculation, especially by banks and others involved in financing real estate.  I also think the leaders of this speculation, and those who bear a lot of the responsibility for the crisis, are banks and other financial institutions in the United States.

Of course I know that this is not a terribly original idea, but ...

Ok, so how have I used Domino to illustrate some of this?

Well, there´s the scene we recently shot that I call "the banker Miguel in the bar."

Here we all are together.  The two "bankers" are wearing suits.

In this scene, we find banker Miguel (the banker that our hero goes to when he asks for a loan) in a café/bar, drinking a cup of coffee.  In comes an acquaintance, the banker Rodolfo.  (I have fun choosing names for all these people.)  Rodolfo works for a rival bank.  He points out to Miguel that Miguel´s bank is in all the newspapers today because their major project, a huge complex they were financing in the "southern sector," has collapsed.

And it seems that Rodolfo and his buddies had expected it to fail all along.  It was (says Rodolfo) massively over-capitalized, it was relying on a shady construction company, etc., etc..

I´m not going to tell you any more.  You´ll just have to watch Domino when it comes out.

Here is Nicolás Montoya (our "banker Miguel") playing a Roman sergeant.

But I will say that this scene ALSO helps explain why banker Miguel loses his temper in the bank in the subsequent scene when our hero, Luis, comes in to ask how his loan process is coming along.

Poor Luis.

And a note:  banker Miguel is played by Nicolás Montoya (who also has a role in the current popular television series, Bandoleras) while banker Rodolfo is played by Manuel Oteo Barranio.  The scene takes place in Peña Recreativa "el Toke" and thank you to José Carlos Ruiz Suarez for lending it to us as well as playing the part of the bartender.

Since we mention him here, I´ll also remind everyone that Luis is played by Antonio de la Malena.

OUR NEXT POST will be about shooting the final scenes.