The Role of Restaurants in the “Finance Bro” Film
By Jack Miller, Edited By Duncan Geissler
Before the audience gets to know Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in American Psycho as the chainsaw-wielding, recklessly tempestuous, blood hungry serial killer he is, they get to know him at the dinner table. He’s at a fine dining restaurant popular among New York elites, many of them Wall Street investors like himself and the three suit-clad men at his table. As sprightly strings play in the background, the film’s title credits roll over establishing shots defined by their exaggeration of the restaurant’s indulgence and luxury: raspberries falling onto a plate of roasted partridge breast in slow motion, diners dressed in fine outfits who peer over the menus written in a garish cursive font, close-ups of beautifully plated culinary masterpieces that look as if they belong in the Louvre rather than someone’s digestive tract. Why would this film, directed by Mary Harron and based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name, choose to start a story that is defined by long stretches of murder and mutilation with a comparatively placid restaurant sequence?
The answer lies in the violent thread of greed that is woven between Bateman’s thirst to kill and the desire for exclusivity in the form of a hard-to-get restaurant reservation. In Bateman’s world, everything is about pleasure. Chasing wealth through investment banking is a pursuit of the pleasure that profits bring, while pining after fine dining reservations is a pursuit of the pleasure that an elevated social rank brings. And when these things no longer excite Bateman, he turns to murder to feed his never-ending hunger for pleasure. Though Harron’s work is fictional, even in cinema based on the real lives of Wall Street higher-ups–where murder scenes are not present–fine dining is associated with status and money, the two craveable vices that drive characters like Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) in The Wolf of Wall Street or the CDO managers whose practices caused the 2008 financial crisis, profiled in The Big Short. In these films, just as in Harron’s work, the characters profiled are meant to be archetypal “finance bros,” or wealthy white-collar workers who occupy financial fields that are male-dominated and linked to lifestyles of grandeur and greed. In The Wolf of Wall Street, before Belfort fully falls victim to an unquenchable lust for profits, sex and drugs–cheating on his wife and committing a gargantuan list of financial crimes in the process–we get to know him at a business lunch. To fully encapsulate the evil of CDO managers, The Big Short’s Mark Baum (Steve Carell) meets with one such manager at an expensive Las Vegas restaurant. By utilizing fine dining as a setting, films such as American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short seek to contemplate the parallels between the greed and privilege that defines Wall Street’s quest for profits and the unquenchable desire for exclusivity that defines the fine dining scene.
The use of fine dining as a setting allows films to compare the exclusivity of fancy restaurants with the excess of the pursuit of wealth. For example, when the first lines of dialogue in American Psycho are uttered, they are not from Bateman nor any other character that will appear in subsequent scenes. Rather, they are a recitation of dinner specials from a waiter at the restaurant: “Our pasta this evening is squid ravioli …” (1:40) the tuxedoed employee begins. A pan to a pair of diners looking almost lustfully up at him as he reveals their enchanting gastronomical options for the night lends itself to establishing that the experience of fine dining is euphoric for wealthy NYC clientele. The elaborate description of foods most viewers have never heard of delights the diners, but the very words “swordfish meatloaf” (1:48) and “goat cheese profiteroles” (1:44) have already isolated the average viewer from the high status of the restaurant. Most of its clientele, the audience gathers, is very wealthy. As opposed to painting the setting as a place of joy, however, the extravagance is paired by Harron with a brooding unhappiness. The main conversation that takes place in the restaurant after the specials are read off is between Bateman and his Wall Street colleagues. Immediately, one alludes to wanting to be at a different, more exclusive dining location: “I hate this place . . . Why aren’t we at Dorsia?” (2:05). Alluding to another dining location by name creates a fuller diegetic world of fine-dining, one in which the characters at the table are well-versed in. Even surrounded by luxury that took the film many shots to set up in all its visual and aesthetic complexity, Bateman’s finance banker colleague can only think of being anywhere else. Immediately, American Psycho establishes that the suit and scowl wearing group of Wall Street businessmen is so used to having profiteroles on the menu; their privilege of being able to dine at any restaurant of their choosing causes them to only want more exclusive options and leads to them shedding the ability to be impressed by or grateful for their present surroundings. But it’s not just profiteroles that American Psycho is commenting on; it’s profits.
When the meal ends, the four investment banker friends, including Bateman, toss in identical silver cards to cover the bill. The $570 dollar bill. Or, considering the film came out a couple decades ago, what would be the buying power of $1,010.23 in today’s dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is, as per U.S. News & World Report, a month of groceries for a family of four. Spent. In. One. Dinner. Naturally, Bateman’s colleague calls the bill’s total “reasonable” without second thought (3:22). Harron demonstrates the absurd skew of Wall Street’s perception of an affordable night out through this careless dialogue. The tossing in of identical credit cards is also of note. The financial employees at the table are all paying with money from the same source: Wall Street. They’re all some of the wealthiest benefactors of the capitalist system. But they take no time to reflect on their privilege, instead feeling comfortable in a setting whose flashiness and exclusivity would make the average viewer feel out of place.
In The Wolf of Wall Street, writer Terence Winter explores the ethics of Wall Street investors through a key scene that he decides to set in a restaurant. In the scene, a young Jordan Belfort is out to lunch with Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), a man further along in his career as a stockbroker. Belfort is hungry to make profits, and Hanna is ready to give the young buck some advice. As viewers glimpse the background of a beautiful NYC skyline out the window, Hanna offers Belfort cocaine, tells him that masturbation is the key to keeping focused and rounds out this trifecta of ethically questionable behavior by essentially telling Belfort how to extract the most money out of investors by misleading them. So why set this scene in a fine dining establishment? Belfort is at the restaurant on an invite from Hanna, which creates the precedent that Hanna feels comfortable at the location, while Belfort is new, an outsider. Flowers in refined vases dot tables while other diners in expensive suits talk over their exquisite meals; the restaurant setting corresponds with the privilege that Wall Street is defined by. Most people do not spend their lunches at such dining locations, near oblivious to how nice their surroundings are. Similarly, most employees do not abuse drugs on the job or chase dishonest work habits. But Wall Street seems to be about profits over people, as Hanna reveals. Make money, no matter the cost because it leads to feeling comfortable having lunch up among the skyline, the choice of setting paired with Hanna’s dialogue seems to say.
The Big Short too seeks to utilize the fine dining setting to prod at the evils of a capitalist desire to make money no matter the ethical cost. An investor named Mark Baum meets with a CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) manager in a scene set at a Vegas restaurant. To prelude, collateralized debt obligations were a major driver of the 2008 financial crisis because they were securities filled with risky mortgages misleadingly labeled to investors as more stable than they really were. The CDO manager, named Mr. Chau (Byron Mann) is based on real Wall Street bankers who sold products they knew were in jeopardy or otherwise of low quality to clients. As Chau admits to Baum, he doesn’t assume any risk for the products he sells, which gives him no incentive other than altruism to steer clients away from the riskiness of CDOs. So why does writer and director Adam McKay choose to shoot the scene in a restaurant? Baum gets
angrier and angrier as he tries to get Chau to admit any sort of moral fault for the products he is selling, and the filmmaker decides to cut to a montage of knives slicing seafood, a lady drinking a cocktail, even a long shot of the two characters talking at the table, the lively Vegas restaurant filling up the frame around them. The montage plays quickly, overlaid with the sound of swooshing metallic knives. As Baum is getting more appalled by Chau’s complete disregard for his clients’ financial wellbeing, and the wellbeing of the economy as a whole, audiences are faced with the parallels between financial greed and the workings of a fine dining restaurant. An everyone for themself capitalist system is like the menacing knife that is emphasized visually and sonically here: it slices away at the average consumer and their wellbeing to provide for whoever is wielding the knife. The lucky few, like Mr. Chau, keep chasing wealth and profits because they can. The montage demonstrates the liveliness of a fine dining establishment, but viewers watching the movie know that this scene is set just months before the economy collapses and millions of Americans lose their money to a Wall Street that didn’t care to regulate itself responsibly. People lost their homes, jobs and valued stock portfolios in an instant, but Mr. Chau can nibble on his pistachio ice cream throughout the exchange without an inevitable demise weighing on his conscience.
As Jaya Saxena writes for Eater, in a piece titled “There Really Is No Ethical Restaurant Under Capitalism,” any dining location has a hierarchical component to it. There is a chef who makes more than the line cooks and an owner who makes more than the chef. Just as the average employee in the United States does not have as great a say in the workings of the economy as a Wall Street banker does, the average employee at a restaurant does not get to determine the menu. Differences among hierarchical levels are further exacerbated within the fine dining world when expanded to define the relationship between restaurant employees and clientele, the latter often being made of money while many of the talented people making their food earn salaries that would not allow them to afford meals at the very restaurants they work at. When the finance bro film includes shots of waiters, chefs and other fine dining employees, it is a direct uncovering of just whose time, energy and lives are contributing to the comfort and pleasure of the people at the top of the economic hierarchy. In this way, no other setting but fine dining could demonstrate the systemic economic underpinnings of the grand excess painted in American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short in as perfect or deliberate a way.
It’s understandable that financial power leads to a concentration of privilege, but representing that privilege is rendered more difficult without the appropriate setting. By utilizing shots of grandeur in the restaurant setting and then pairing those shots with a clear lack of gratitude for them, American Psycho established the typical “finance bro’s” privilege. Wolf of Wall Street chose to illustrate how making money through questionable means was associated with the same high status and class as the restaurant that Belfort and Hanna dined in. Finally, The Big Short interjected its major demonstration of the ills of CDOs with a montage of a restaurant to highlight how restaurants’ glamor contrasts with the harsh and unflinching realities of the 2008 financial crisis. Restaurants, especially those of the fine dining industry, represent the divide between those at the top of finance, an industry defined by greed, and those who are simply sliced up by greed’s cold and calculated knife.
Works Cited
American Psycho. Directed by Mary Harron, performance by Christian Bale, Lionsgate Films, 2000.
The Big Short. Directed by Adam McKay, performances by Steve Carell and Byron Mann, Paramount Pictures, 2015.
“CPI Inflation Calculator.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=570&year1=200001&year2=202301.
Saxena, Jaya. “There Really Is No Ethical Restaurant under Capitalism.” Eater, 1 Sept. 2020, www.eater.com/21398969/future-co-op-worker-owned-restaurants-ethical-business.
Williams, Geoff. “How Much Should I Spend on Groceries?” Edited by Barri Segal, U.S. News & World Report, 18 Oct. 2023, money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/saving-and-budgeting/articles/how-much-should-i-spend-on-groceries.
The Wolf of Wall Street. Directed by Martin Scorsese, performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey, Paramount Pictures, 2013.