Burn Rate

Billions 6×4

Kate Sacker: I was approached.
Chuck Rhoades: For a job?
Kate Sacker: Nobody said anything about a job.
Chuck Rhoades: It's a job.

Kate Sacker: So, obviously, I'm not going...
Chuck Rhoades: Oh, no, you're going. But you're going for me.

Scooter: M-Tap, I think he's right.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Oh, I'm right, 'cause this is the down and dirty, and I happen to be both.

Taylor Mason: Feeling that Jack London, Elizabeth Gilbert call, huh?
Rian: I don't aim to leave for another eight to ten months, at least. Just pre-planning.
Taylor Mason: Once you've saved up enough.
Rian: Right. No shame in the frugality game. I'll peace once I have 600k. But for now, it's more about grooving the feeling. Visualizing.

Taylor Mason: If reality were as good as the fantasy, we wouldn't have had to invent "The Sims."
Rian: If we start talking Sims, I'll never get back to work.
Taylor Mason: Yeah. I lost all of 8th grade in service of one particularly needy pet Sim dog, an Akita.

Taylor Mason: Thing is, fantasy or reality, you aren't calculating opportunities lost. Here. To your career. To your development.
Rian: Come on, you never think about getting free?
Taylor Mason: No hidden agenda. I too have considered and calculated an out number.
Rian: Assuming it's a little steeper than the cost of a Pittsburgh duplex, huh? How much? Twenty mil? Fifty?
Taylor Mason: About twice that.
Rian: Oof! Boss wants a beach house and a ski chalet... No. No, they do not. Or that's not the why, anyway.
Taylor Mason: Correct. It's not for lifestyle. I plan to leave once I've accrued enough personal capital to drive real, measurable, prosocial advancement.
Rian: A 5% withdrawal rate to protect against principal erosion?
Taylor Mason: Exactly. One hundred million is a solid starting point to build a legacy of truly effective humanitarian progress.
Rian: Okay, but if my math is right, and I'm p-sure it is, you still got a while before you get to temple-run.
Taylor Mason: I do, so I gotta serve my master, get paid, and make sure I can move the needle even before I hit my number.

Bob Sweeney: Listen, I know I got to take a flume ride with one of you two lunatics on this. I just haven't decided who I win with yet. And you both need me more, so I finally got my balls back. Can you hear 'em clank?

Chuck Rhoades: Perhaps this isn't a decision that requires a great show of inner steel. Perhaps it merely requires remembering that we, both of us, serve the people. And Mike Prince's grand plan, it doesn't really serve them. We know this.
Bob Sweeney: You may know this. But I may need a little more convincing.

Mike Prince: Is she as good as they say?
Wendy Rhoades: Steel-trap legal mind, charisma, knows how to work the angles. Has political ambitions too. Learned at Chuck's elbow.
Mike Prince: Sounds amazing. Is she gettable?

Mike Prince: There must be something that would induce you to do it for me, to make it worth it.
Wendy Rhoades: I'm not that transactional.

Mike Prince: Consider it.
Wendy Rhoades: You hear what you're asking, right?
Mike Prince: You hear what I'm offering, right?.. So will you?

Kate Sacker: You starting a band?
Chuck Rhoades: We may have a meeting across the river, if you know what I'm saying.
Kate Sacker: Let's switch to you knowing what I'm saying. Congress. It's time.

Chuck Rhoades: We're finally doing the good thing for good reason, and it will be good for you, Kate.

Taylor Mason: You know what the most powerful four-letter word is?
Mike Prince: I don't curse much.
Taylor Mason: "Free."

Mike Prince: You have a line into it?
Taylor Mason: Yes. Here's the pitch: New Yorkers get it gratis, courtesy of the Games. Free Internet in the five boroughs is the holy grail. And we set it up so that every time a New Yorker uses it, someone in sub-Saharan Africa gets the same allotment of Wi-Fi.
Mike Prince: It's a do-good, feel-good, look-good play. The greatest trio since Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay. What's it gonna cost?
Taylor Mason: Twenty-two million, and we control the company.
Mike Prince: ..... Do it.

Mike Prince: How's this whole "Tango and Cash" thing going?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Ah, the Stallone-Russell classic.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Which one is Stallone in that?

Rian: It won't be as much money. Barely any, really.
Taylor Mason: Willing to pay that price.
Rian: Yeah. Me too. More than willing... That's what I always say... It's not really. It just seemed like what I should say now.

Wendy Rhoades: You know, Kate... sometimes staying too long is a bigger risk than leaving too soon. There's never a right time to make a big change.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yeah, after we eat, it's off to Palazzo with our soft targets. Place is loaded with talent. Clean talent. And I mean clean. Ladies, gentlemen, other. Everything they'll want. And all documented, vaxxed, and virus-free with antibodies onboard.

Kate Sacker: Whoa! Whew. You scared me there... with your Batmobile. What brings you up to the triple digits?

Mike Prince: Having blind faith in anyone can be dangerous, even yourself. Adam Grant talks about this in Think Again. The best predictors of the future aren't smarter. They're just willing to take one more look, one more time, than the other folks.

Mike Prince: If your mother asks how many eggs you want, and you say one, but she makes two and you eat both, who's better at math, you or your mother?
Kate Sacker: Excuse me?
Mike Prince: What my old man used to say when I'd worked myself into a knot over something. Doesn't matter how good your gut is, don't double down on old instincts when presented with new insight.

Mike Prince: I love that you're loyal. You did right by your boss despite the potential cost to yourself. That's what matters. It's how I know that you'll serve me loyally as well. Until I help get you elected to Congress...

Mike Wagner 'Wags': My guns, they can't be empty!
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Maybe you'll have a stray bullet left.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': "Him" is me, right? He manipulated me and you're congratulating him for it?
Mike Prince: Absolutely. Always give props to the guy who made the assist. The guy who scored already knows what he did.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': I need a slap on the ass when I score. That's how I'm wired.
Mike Prince: Good job, Wags! Feel better?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yeah.

Chuck Rhoades: Son of a bitch. They played the Albin on me!... I fancied myself some chess grandmaster and brought my big piece out early. Albin's a hyperaggressive counter. I lost my advantage... and failed to protect my goddamn queen.

Mike Prince: Done. It's not that you weren't transactional. It's that you're very good at it. And for the right reasons... which pleases me.

Taylor Mason: And now they get what? The consolation prize: a free tote bag?
Mike Prince: People love free tote bags. Especially when they don't know what they could have gotten.

Mike Prince: But, come on, what did you think your plan was really going to accomplish long term? What was going to change?
Taylor Mason: You know the answer. With Wi-Fi they could connect to the... I don't have to spell it out for you. You know the answer.
Mike Prince: I do. You know, I've lived through versions of this before. More than that, Africa has. There was a great initiative, with great goodwill and good intentions, to build wells in different places. Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali. More. Ones that really needed it. Only once the wells were built, there was no money to maintain them. So when they broke and fell into disrepair, no one knew how to fix them. The people also became reliant on them. So instead of making things better, the people ended up worse off. This would be like that.

Mike Prince: You'd get them dependent on the connectivity, and then, when it disappeared, they'd be lost.
Taylor Mason: Sure, it's easy to take that position now.
Mike Prince: Nothing easy about it. But I pick and choose my shots to make things better, so that when I do it, it works. It holds. It sticks.

Mike Prince: You have a number.
Taylor Mason: I do.
Mike Prince: Hundred. Gotta be a hundred mil. That's the nine-digit combination that opens the lock to the escape hatch.
Taylor Mason: It is.

Mike Prince: The problem is the number shifts when you see what it can and can't do. I'm at over 10 billion. I'm a philanthropist, like you, yet I haven't left. Your eyes are always bigger than your stomach, and at your level, they should be.

Mike Prince: If this had been my cause, those struggling folks would be getting their Wi-Fi, regardless of the business end, with the money baked in to keep it going. Infrastructure, technicians on payroll to keep it reliable, sustainable, so the well would never run dry. Because even at a 150 mil a year personal OPEX, I can afford it, you can't.
Taylor Mason: So you're trying to turn this into an object lesson on scale.
Mike Prince: Not trying to do anything. That's what it is. I'm independently wealthy. You're not. You're kind of rich, which is great. But if you want to change the world, nine digits ain't gonna do it.

Taylor Mason: I can see that you are right that my number was faulty. I have a new one now.
Mike Prince: A billion...

Kate Sacker: I had the best professor.
Chuck Rhoades: What if that professor isn't done teaching yet?
Kate Sacker: Then he'd better find someone who's still in need of those particular lessons... because this student has already left the campus.

--
On the IMDb
+ Soundtracks