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Writer/director Ben Younger makes his film debut

SERENA DONADONI
Special to the Jewish News

T

here's a bit of dialogue that
Ben Younger wrote for his
first film, Boiler Room, open-
ing today, that sums up the
slippery morality of the hotshot young
stockbrokers whose world he examines:
"My father once asked me where my
work ethic is. Looking back now, I real-
ized that wasn't the problem. I had a

room," he says, "it was unbelievable. I
knew immediately that this was going to
be the first film I was going to write."
He had the determination to back up
that gut instinct. Even though he's only
27, Younger already has several careers
behind him. With a political science
degree from the City College of New
York, he went right into the political
arena. After working on Assemblyman
Alan Hevesi's successful bid to become
comptroller of New York City, Younger

Giovanni
Ribisi plays
Seth Davis
and Ron
Rifkin is his
father in Ben
Youngers
"Boiler
Room."

very strong work ethic. My problem was
my ethics at work."
"Boiler rooms" are a host of semi-
legitimate brokerage houses located pri-
marily in Long Island, New York, whose
workaholic salesmen sell IPO (initial
public offering) stock the way telemar-
keters hawk tools or long distance. They
promise big profits and are convincing
enough to reel in a sizeable clientele.
The only problem is that it's a con.
The IPOs are from bogus companies,
which means the only people making a
profit are traders (who earn exorbitantly
high commissions) and their bosses,
who rig the stock sales so that they reap
a healthy profit at their clients' expense.
Younger first became aware of this
subculture when he was approached by
a boiler room firm and attended a
recruitment seminar. He was excited,
but for very different reasons than the
eager young men around him.
'As soon as I walked into this

Serena Donadoni is a Detroit-based
freelance writer.

worked for him as a senior policy ana-
lyst. He then served as campaign man-
ager for Democrat Melinda Katz, who
won a seat on the New York State
Assembly.
Then Younger decided it was time to
pursue an even more elusive profession:
filmmaking. He supported himself
working as a film crew technician while
he spent a year interviewing boiler-room
brokers.
"Normally I would have to [go
undercover] to get into the world,"
Younger explains, "but these guys were
so eager to tell me what they did —
how illegal it was — that I didn't have
to play that game. They wanted the
notoriety."
What he discovered was a whole new
breed of salesmen who target specific
groups (like Midwestern doctors) with
the seductive promise of instant wealth,
courtesy of the bull market.
"At least when [salesmen] went
door to door," he says, "if you were
selling Bibles or vacuum cleaners, you
had to look somebody in the eye.

What's interesting about these guys is
they can screw somebody out of 50
grand [anonymously]."
The dynamics of the boiler room
have levels of exploitation. While it
functions as a concerted effort to part
suckers from their money, the brokers
are often not fully conscious of the
complexity of the scam.
That's the case with Boiler Room's
Jewish main character, Seth Davis
(Giovanni Ribisi), a 19-year-old col-
lege dropout who's intelligent but easi-
ly seduced by the lure of easy money.
Seth's moral dilemma is played out
through his relationship with his
father (Ron Rifkin), a judge who
maintains an emotional distance.
"My generation has an extended
emotional capacity," says Younger,
compared to — at least in my com-
munity — our Eastern European par-
ents. A lot of my friends were brought
up by hardcore Eastern European
Jews. So I explored that juxtaposition,
of my generation and the one prior.
Seth is trying to make a connection,
but his father responds to him by say-
ing, 'Our relationship? Am I your girl-
friend?' That's a typical answer you
would find in that world. I think that
gap is an interesting one."
Younger, who grew up in Staten
Island and Brooklyn (where he still
lives), was raised in a modern
Orthodox family. His mother is a psy-
chotherapist and his father, who died
seven years ago, was a CPA.
"I'm an Ashkenazi Jew," he
explains, "the first-born Younger in
this country. My father was born in
Budapest. I went to yeshiva my whole
life, went to synagogue every week,
kept kosher."
Both Seth and his boiler-room
mentor are Jewish, and Younger
infused their feelings of isolation with
his own memories.
"Certainly my experience growing
up Jewish," he says, "was being an
outsider — not in the yeshiva-but def-
initely everywhere outside of it. [Both
of these] characters were outsiders not
only from traditional Wall Street, but
also within the boiler room, as is the
case in real life. Most of the boiler-
room brokers are Italian Americans,
not Jews."
But Boiler Room shows that as a
director, Younger is very much a part

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