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Let’s Get Physical
Encore exclusive interview with Floored producer Steve Prosniewski
James Allen Smith makes his directorial debut in the docudrama Floored, which follows the lives of former Chicago floor traders displaced after the emergence of electronic trading. “People were leaving the floor in herds, it was a huge exodus and as I would run into these people, they would be talking and sharing so much,” producer of the film and former Chicago trader himself, Steve Prosniewski explained the emergence of the film as being in part due to “the community taking a turn from being silent to wanting to talk about it.”
It’s apparent upon watching the first few minutes of the documentary, that it isn’t a film that seeks to recount a moment in history where once again we see the demonic computer taking the jobs of the helpless family man through its algorithms and logarithms, although, the man-versus-computer debate does find its way in more than a few moments of this film. In fact, Prosniewski noted the working title was to be “The Way of the Carriage Maker,” an allegorical reference to the men who worked tirelessly creating carriages only to find out there was something faster and better.
Floored unintentionally gives its audience a revealing look into the lives of Chicago men with families, bad habits, big dreams, and a unique affection for children’s moccasins who just so happened to find their calling, their passion in the middle of a physically exhausting and draining trading pit located within the trading capital of the world. Prosniewski stressed that if there was one thing he hoped moviegoers took away after hearing the candid tales of these displaced men, it would be that they were more than just “stereotypical traders with loud mouths and too much money,” they were also “men gambling with their mortgages,” men who bet their entire livelihoods each and every day they walked onto that floor with absolutely everything to loose and gain simultaneously, “it was their job. And it was addicting.”
For more information, visit flooredthemovie.com.