The pre-production version of Deborah Margolin’s Imagining Madoff was largely composed of dialogue between the notorious criminal named in the title and the famous writer, holocaust survivor and philosopher, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. The choice was easy to justify: there is probably no one living more widely respected for his moral responsibility that Wiesel, whereas Madoff is a slimy crook. Plus, Madoff swindled Wiesel in real life, as he swindled thousands of others.  But there is another aspect of the two compared to each other worth noting: Wiesel is also fabulously lucid; one of the clearest thinkers on the planet, and his writings are models of the powerful use of language. Madoff, on the other hand, used the opaque grammar of the options trade business to obfuscate his intentions and to hide his criminal dealings. Margolin makes Madoff’s nature clear in an early scene, in which Madoff describes how he fooled his mother as a child.

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An Interview with Rick Foucheux

The actor’s stock-in-trade is his ability to empathize with the character he plays, in order to make that character recognizably human, with clear motivations. The actor must be nonjudgmental: “if you comment, and judge your character, you’re not coming at it the right way,” 4-time Helen Hayes Laureate Holly Twyford said in an interview in Asides Magazine. So how do you empathize with a man who has stolen a fortune estimated at $65 billion, mostly from people who had entrusted them with their pensions? [Read more...]