'The Big Short' evokes big tears, bad memories

Michael Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice, relives the housing crash while watching the Oscar-nominated film “The Big Short” with The Arizona Republic’s Catherine Reagor.

(Photo from Paramount Pictures)

No one experienced the boom and bust in the Phoenix real estate market quite the way the real estate analysts did: watching data spell out the coming disaster, then witnessing the human toll. Catherine Reagor, who covered the story, worked closely with the W. P. Carey School’s Michael Orr to produce accurate accounts. Reagor invited Orr and one other expert to view the movie with her, and react to it. From The Arizona Republic, February 4, 2016:

When "The Big Short" started, the three of us were sitting with our arms crossed and faces hardened, almost as if we were preparing for a fight or some very bad news. We grimaced at some scenes, nodded at others that brought back bad memories, laughed at the funny lines not related to the crash, and two of us cried. A few scenes were the most poignant for us. A bit of a spoiler alert here. When the inevitable scene came — the man and his family who had been renting the home in the half-built Miami subdivision end up living out of their beat-up SUV — Orr and I teared up again. “That same scenario happened over and over ... in the Valley,” Orr said. “It was very hard to watch it then.”

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