10 Small Movie Roles You Didn't Know Held Signifigance

While we're toiling in the wasteland of Trump's cabinet, let it not be forgotten that his Secretary of the Treasury had a fairly interesting career as a film producer. In 2004, he founded Dune Entertainment as a side project to his investment banking, first financing the X-Men franchise. After his deal with X-Men ended, he teamed up with filmmaker Brett Rattner to found Ratpac pictures, and under it produced some genuinely good films such as The Conjuring 2, Mad Max: Fury Road and Inherent Vice.

But don't mistake that for artistic credibility, it's all bottom-line thinking for Mnuchin. That explains his name attached to numerous would-be blockbusters like Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, Winter's Tale and Oscar bait like Collateral Beauty.

Eventually and despite a few hits, Ratpac would go bankrupt, but not before financing Warren Beatty's most recent foray out of his property Rules Don't Apply. The film, featuring Beatty as a shadowy Howard Hughes in his heyday, was a failure, and the likelihood that it's not going to be some #metoo artifact in the near future doesn't help its appeal.

Mnuchin halfway through Rules Don't Apply in the reverse of what he was to the film: someone who needed Hughes' money. His performance, if one can call standing a performance, is a lot easier to take than that of his wife's in Cabin Fever (2016).