Woody Allen's Lobsters

The idea to convert Bernard Madoff, the man who had committed the biggest economic swindle in the history, into a fictional figure in a film or book is just a matter of time. The guy had cheated thousands of clients out of 65,000 million dollars making him the most outrageous and daring thief. He was caught in December 2008 and put under house arrest but, on the 12th of March he admitted all the charges and was put in jail.

The surprise being that Woody Allen was the first one to use this material for entertainment purpose. Not only is he an acclaimed film maker, script writer, director and actor, he is also an excellent writer of humorous stories. In an issue of the well known magazine 'The New Yorker', his literary home since the 60's, Allen published a story in which the victims of the financial fraud carry out revenge against Madoff in the most ingenious and unexpected way.

"Abe Moscowitz died of a heart attack and reincarnated into an lobster' so begins the story titled 'Tails of Manhattan'. No, it's not my typing mistake; it's 'Tails', his word-play obviously.

One such Moscowitz ends up in a fish tank of a seafood restaurant of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and there he meets up with Moe Silverman, an old acquaintance. They had both been swindled by Madoff and both reincarnated into lobsters.

"At first he told me there's no room for a new investor. But the more he refused to take me on, the more I wished to join in." said Silverman, who killed himself when he discovered that he was one of

the victims of the huge fraud.

One day Madoff defied the rules of his house arrest and appeared in the restaurant where the lobsters spend their hours philosophizing. What's more, he ordered lobsters and chose the two of them. "He cheated me out of my whole life's savings and now he wants to eat me with butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?" cried Mos.

The unravelling is very interesting and could serve to compensate, although it's just fiction, the victims of Madoff, headman of the Jewish community who, for years, lied and cheated everybody, including even victims of the Holocaust.

One little paragraph really tickled me. Silverman was telling Mos: "When I knew I was totally ruined, I wanted to kill myself by jumping from the roof of our Golf Club of Palm Beach (frequented by many victims of the Fraud). I had to wait half an hour before I could jump as I was number 12 in the queue."

Tags:woodyallen,lobsters

Current Mood: Amused