Hank Paulson (written by Craig Warner): “The West is fucked. We fucked it up. Oh, not just you and me [addressing John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley]. All of us. The West. It’s done, it’s over. You wanna call it a game? This is the game. You want your great-grandchildren speaking Chinese? The dollar is going to go. We had Rome, than Europe, than this. Us. This thing with cars and stereos and hoola hoops, and we screwed it all up. We ran through it all, this stuff. And we’ve come out on the other side where it’s …? I don’t know. Where is this place? Oh yeah. We have this one weekend, where maybe we can come up with something to hold it all together a little while longer.”

Ken Lewis, speaking with John Thain (wrtn by Craig Warner): “You see those pictures? They’re what I call real art. They would form the kind of exhibitions Bank of America might once have bankrolled. But now we find ourselves funding modern art as well. Art that can insult everything you and I have worked our whole lives to make sacred. Some of it to me looks like a road accident or a human being turned inside out. But those that matter, culturally I mean, like to stand back, arms folded, brows furrowed in just the right way, assessing the disturbed minds of psychopaths and getting from this a grim kind of satisfaction I freely admit remains unavailable to my own sensibilities. [Referring to the painting] The Judas Kiss. Exquisite isn’t it? But time has moved on Mr. Thain. The brand has to move on. The world is different now. We are currently financing an exhibition of paintings by Francis Bacon at the Tate Museum in London. Starts today. Do you know what his paintings look like?”

Thain: “I leave that sort of thing to my wife.”

Lewis: “Our name, Bank of America, is on that exhibition. History is happening Mr. Thain. Right here, this weekend. No one is going to blame you for keeping up with it.”

James Cromwell (l) plays Hank Paulson (r)

John Thain (l) played by Ben Daniels (r)

John Thain (l) and Ken Lewis (James Bolam) share a drink in fake life

John Thain (l) and Ken Lewis (r) shake hands in real life