How did Ben McKenzie, an actor still most famous decades later as the hunky star of “The O.C.” end up testifying before Congress and emerge as the face of crypto critics with his documentary “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money”?
“It’s pretty much what you see in the movie. There was the pandemic. I was bored, looking for something to do,” McKenzie, 47, said in a Zoom interview.
“Because I’ve made a lot of TV” – most notably “Southland” and “Gotham” – “you obviously couldn’t make TV in the throes of the pandemic.
“And at that time Bitcoin was everywhere. Celebrities” – most prominently we see Matt Damon – “were hawking. It was skyrocketing in price.
“Dave, a buddy of mine, said I should buy Bitcoin. Only he had given me bad financial advice years before, so I was skeptical of his advice – and I have a degree in economics.
“I asked Dave: ‘So, it’s a currency? Can you buy things with it?’ Because that’s one of the things you can do with money.
“And he was, ‘Well, no. It’s more like, you put money into it and you hope it comes up and you sell it.’
“So it’s an investment? He’s like, ‘Kind of.’ And I was: This just seems sketchy and weird. Once I started looking into it online, I just couldn’t stop and became obsessed.”
McKenzie, married with kids to “Sheriff Country” star Morena Baccarin, reached out to journalist Jacob Silverman. “We both lived in Brooklyn and I pitched him on writing a book. He was going on paternity leave, he was available!
“We started writing articles, sold a book proposal. When we started going into the field to report for the book I figured I’d turn a camera on. You know, why not document this stuff? And that’s the genesis of this strange, bizarre obsession I developed.”
A highlight is McKenzie’s interview with Sam Bankman-Fried, the public face of crypto currency, now imprisoned.
“Sam was, in retrospect, playing a part. The public image he developed was this wunderkind California Golden Boy whose parents are professors of law at Stanford, who went to MIT. He emerged out of nowhere as this multi-billion dollar crypto entrepreneur. An image that was being fed all over the financial press.
“But the disparity between public image and personal reality was just so stark. I mean, his young assistant’s first words to me were, ‘Oh my God! I’m such a big fan of ‘The O.C.’
“It just got more and more bizarre with his inability to articulate a real reason for crypto. But his empire hadn’t collapsed yet. I wondered, if the emperor is this naked, what does this say about what’s to come? And sure enough, everything did get worse.”
Ben McKenzie will be at the Coolidge Corner Cinema April 24 for a Q&A following the 7 p.m. show of “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money.”
