Ben McKenzie believes he knows why the major streaming services weren’t interested in licensing “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money.” His new documentary takes on the cryptocurrency industry, portraying the controversial digital currency as corrupt and in dire need of more regulations. But the film is being released as President Donald Trump has profited handsomely from the sector, raking in $1.4 billion in combined crypto-related income during his first year back in office.
“If you’re a corporation and you’re trying to decide on the marginal value of buying an independent movie that you don’t have to buy, and potentially incurring the wrath of the Trump administration, it’s a pretty easy decision,” says McKenzie. “The risk calculus is not in our favor, and they’d rather just not buy it.”
It doesn’t matter that “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money” has received nearly universal praise (it boasts a 100% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes) since opening in April. It has also earned roughly $150,000 during its limited theatrical run, which is more than some of the films that competed for best documentary prize at last year’s Oscars. The Forge, a boutique indie studio, distributed the doc in theaters. But with its home entertainment release, McKenzie feels like major corporations are behaving as if his movie is too hot to touch.
“I have no right to receive the money back that I’ve spent financing this movie, but it does seem wrong that certain avenues seem to be either closed or more difficult to access because of the outspokenness of my film,” McKenzie says.
McKenzie could, of course, make “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money” available to rent or buy on platforms like Amazon or Apple, but that would mean forking over a percentage of the sales, as well as paying them to advertise the film on their platform. Instead, he’s cutting the major streamers out entirely and releasing the movie on Eventive, a digital platform that specializes in helping indie films reach an audience. The service doesn’t require a subscription, which McKenzie thinks could help “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money” reach an even wider audience.
“If we can get 100,000 people in the world to watch this movie over the course of two weeks, that’ll be a phenomenal success for us,” McKenzie says. “If we can do it, then it potentially provides a way forward for other filmmakers to eventize their movies and go straight to consumers. It means you can bypass the traditional gatekeepers that are the big VOD [video-on-demand] platforms.”
The film will be available to rent or buy on August 22. The plan is also to offer access to a live Q&A, where viewers can submit questions for McKenzie, his wife, actor Morena Baccarin, and other cryptocurrency critics and experts.
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“Hopefully they feel like they’re not just turning on Netflix or whatever and flipping through a movie, but are actually interacting with it to some degree,” McKenzie.
McKenzie, the former star of “The O.C.” and “Gotham,” financed the production with a combination of savings and “about a million dollars” he made “betting against different frauds, crypto being sort of the primary one.” Because it was self-funded, McKenzie felt he had more freedom to speak openly about his concerns that crypto is a sham, one that fails to tell investors about the risks associated with such a volatile business.
“I felt very strongly that the only way to make this movie correctly was to do it completely independently and to finance it myself, which I frankly have the privilege of doing because of money I’ve made in television,” McKenzie says. “I did not realize it was going to be quite this expensive or take quite this long. The old saying about independent movies is that they are never finished. You just run out of money. And that is definitely true here.”
McKenzie first got interested in cryptocurrency during COVID lockdown when one of his friends walked him through the bitcoin economy in an effort to get him to invest. Though he had made his living as a performer, McKenzie was an economics major in college and something about the pitch didn’t sit right. So McKenzie started researching the business, growing more and more alarmed. Because crypto wasn’t heavily regulated, people could use it to launder money or pay for illegal activity, and retail investors were frequently getting fleeced, he found. Ultimately, his investigation led to the 2023 book, “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud,” which was written with journalist Jacob Silverman. That, in turn, led to the documentary.
“You’re not afforded the protections you ought to be when you’re investing in cryptocurrency,” McKenzie says. “It’s very difficult to actually spend cryptocurrency in the real world. I can’t go to my neighbourhood deli in Brooklyn and buy a bagel with Bitcoin. So it is really an investment for the retail public. You plug money into it. You hope to make money off it through no work of your own. That’s literally the definition of an investment under federal securities law. And the reason that we regulate securities differently than currencies is so people aren’t defrauded and swindled out of their money. And yet crypto has really thrived in this grey area where it’s called itself a currency and therefore has avoided a lot of the laws that would otherwise apply to it.”
Because of his fame, McKenzie has been able to generate more attention for his crusade, appearing on cable news and writing op-eds about the dangers of cryptocurrency.
“I’ve gotten so many people who I think have perked up their ears a little bit and paid attention to what I’ve been doing just because it’s so unusual. ‘Oh, I didn’t know Ryan Atwood from ‘The O.C.’ had a brain,’” McKenzie says.
McKenzie hasn’t shied away from criticising celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Matt Damon who have made money hawking cryptocurrency companies in ads.
“Celebrities have always shilled for products,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But these were not consumer goods. These were not soap or fast food. This was an investment vehicle. Not to presume too much, but I don’t think they know much of anything about crypto. You’re not supposed to offer people financial advice if you’re not a licensed financial adviser, and you’re specifically not supposed to sell them on what I believe cryptocurrencies to be, which are unregulated, unlicensed securities.”
Have there been career repercussions for McKenzie’s outspokenness?
“There’s no way to quantify that,” McKenzie says. “I may not get cast in a Matt Damon movie anytime soon. That’s OK. For the record, he’s a terrific actor. He just shouldn’t have sold crypto.”
And yes, McKenzie still plans to see “The Odyssey.”
From Variety US