Starring Chris Murray, Tyler Evans, Evan Neumann, Timmy Cassese, Brian Rigney Hubbard, and
the hot girl from After Judgement (we want you to work for us!).

Written and Directed by a Team of Professionals

Lights and Lasers by Fernando Cuestas

Written and Directed by Chris Murray

Starring Tyler Evans, Timmy Cassese, Daniel O’Brien, and Evan Neumann

Camera Fernando Cuestas and Mayur Deshmukh

Edited by Fernando Cuestas

Original Music “New Deal” by Alan Thicke  Written by Murray and Evans

Opening Animation by Jeremy Minton

Port Canaveral, Florida- As the closing bell tolls on Wall Street and perpetually pale financiers begin the long commute home, heads hung low, calculating the day’s losses, an unlikely trio is breathing in the dying embers of another sublime sunset. To the north, past a grouping of day laborers fishing snook from the shallows, stand the hulking steel sides of panic-attack inducing, all-inclusive, floating vacation oases. And to the southeast, over acres of protected everglades and decaying suburbs on stilts, the launch pad of NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery idles, like an antique rocking chair, waiting to sling the next astronauts into orbit. Wedged between these two giant symbols of American ingenuity and capitalism, on a narrow spit of beach, three dreamers sit, swatting red ants away from their legs. As they like to put it, they are “Breaking Canaveral ’09.” This is not Carnival, nor Cannes nor Cancun, but to the visionaries at Claude S. Dutchy, LLC, a Brooklyn based Hedge Fund notoriously “full of bull,” Port Canaveral is paradise found.

Covered in a towel, and over-tanned, Claude Thornbush smiles from under a wide brimmed hat one would see in the Australian Outback, “Our goal is to fly into a zero gravity vector someday, and we love watching the ships come in, and I hear through the grapevine, that there’s plenty of boob down on Main street.” Skip Murphy chimes in, holding a dying manta ray by the tail, “The water is real cold and green, I saw an alligator eat a white bird, and that Mexican guy over there gave us a fish. I’m going to cook it.” Off to the side, a drunken Dutch Alison sits on a surf board, laughing, “That is the weakest cruise ship break I’ve ever ridden. A two year-old could surf this shit.” The three partners have their own unique personality traits- something advantageous in an industry fraught with high expectation and greed- but on vacation, they are united as one. Muses Thornbush, “We’re like a God head or a Napoleonic army or something.”

Perhaps it is modesty that strikes one first, or more accurately, poverty, or their beyond-golden tans, but one thing stands out amongst the Styrofoam and flotsam of the inlet. The three partners of Claude S. Dutchy, LLC, are indeed ahead of the times. Pointing to a cumbersome cell phone, Thornbush states, “We like to mix business with pleasure. I got this thing hooked right into our office. If somebody calls, our European associate, Phillipe Rochambeau is at home, manhandling the lines of communication.” And what happens if it actually rings? “Well,” smiles Murphy, “that’s when this trip gets paid for.” A fading Alison walks over and slams his surf board down indignantly, “Aah F%$#@ it,” he shouts, “I’m going back to the van to huff some diesel and spread some cream on this taint rash.”

Port Canaveral may be the most depressing Spring Break destination on the eastern seaboard, but it seems, at least for these mavericks, it’s all smiles. Claude Thornbush sits back and dives his fist into a bag off sweet habanero corn nuts. “We’re hedging this vacation against the recession. Damn it these are hot!” The smell of burnt sea life wafts to the edge of the water. In the parking lot, against the sharp edge of a palm shadow, Skip Murphy stands at the van, banging a metal pipe against its hood. For a brief second, it sounds like a bell, an echo perhaps, carried on the dark wings of cormorants from Wall Street, with a message of doom. But it quickly becomes apparent that it’s just metal on metal, the Claude S. Dutchy, LLC version of the dinner bell. In these troubled economic times, it’s good to know at least somebody’s got an appetite for hope.

Perpetually Tan Magazine

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Claude S. Duthcy, LLC is open for business but nothing’s shaking.  Enter a breath of French
Air to the mix and things will never be the same.

Starring Tyler Evans, Chris Murray, Jake Eisbart and Evan Neumann.

Music by The Shorebirds.  www.myspace.com/theshorebirds

And here’s what some are saying about HEDGE FUND:

• Dale Harpsicord of The Greenback Century calls Hedge Fund "A Fundancial Laugh Riot.
   I shit my pants...TWICE!" FOUR STARS

• Helene Crossarrow-Hernandez of Nickels and Sense raves, "A true orignial.
  Hedge Fund stayed with me for days, even after I got laid off from this newspaper!"

• Mortimer Schwarzbaum of Bazooka Capital spits, "Who the F@#$^ are these guys!
  They've made me want to raise my fees and say to hell with it all!

• Robbie Tony,  New York Times Best-Selling Author and Motivational Speaker, says,
  "If these guys can do it, anybody can!  They're living proof of Blood, Sweat,
  Tears, and Personal Knowledge."

Brooklyn- Hedge Funds, that once ubiquitous term, which rose meteorically through the eighties and nineties to become the Kings of Wall Street, look more like rooks in a crumbling game of chess- once subordinate vassals now running arms akimbo to the hills to rule themselves. With the majority of investors sitting on the side lines waiting out the financial crisis, Hedge Funds are losing profits, clients, and in many cases, themselves. And with the prospect of the Federal Government not only taking over majority shares of private banks, but regulating many of the private investment vehicles, many equity managers are witnessing the death of the once kingly, elitist, deregulated, and mythical Hedge Fund.

Au contraire mofraire.

Four unremarkable, perhaps dopey, and seemingly under qualified financiers would have you believe otherwise. The partners of Claude S. Dutchy, LLC firmly assert that there is, in fact, no better time than now to start a Hedge Fund. This infectious optimism is quite succinctly folded into their motto, “Full of Bull in a Bear Market,” like buttercream in a nutcake.

Sitting on the only couch in the offices of Claude S. Dutchy, LLC, a pre-war tenement with cracked paint and uneven floors, one thing becomes apparent. This Hedge Fund is not your typical “white-shoe” firm, and they’ve got innovation written all over their faces. Eschewing a traditional office, Claude Thornbush, Skip Murphy, Dutch Alison, and Phillipe Rochambeau have transformed their one-bedroom, Williamsburg apartment into an almost seamless, utopian office environment where no one seems to sleep- there is neither space nor time for it. The walls are adorned not with accolades and certificates of financial achievement, but with tigers, lions, and a swimming baby elephant. As CEO Claude Thornbush beams, “We’re in the Serengeti here, alone, frightened, but with that feeling of isolation and survival. We want to get up, polish off that antelope carcass from the night before and maybe get some coffee, read the paper, look up some stuff, and then make a call or two.”

They may not seem like your traditional Hedge Fund partners- no one who works at the Fund has a post-graduate degree, nor a particular financial lineage- but one thing is for certain. They are long on themselves. As Dutch Alison put it, “We are poised to fill the widening private equity void and perhaps become The Last of the Hedge Funds. Like Chingascook, the last Mohican, circling with that blue, wooden axe to that badass music, slicing Mogwai in half and kicking his body off the cliffs to that Netherdom below.” After spending a quiet afternoon with the Claude S. Dutchy Partners, LLC, one thing seems inevitable. They live together as one, they believe in the blood, sweat, and tears of dreams. And they are ready to be, if not the princes of finance, the warriors in that proverbial Serengeti where kings once reigned.

– Gene Wilderbarn
Hedge Funder Magazine

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Synopsis:

Claude comes home after losing his job.  But he’s got something of a plan.

Starring Timmy Cassese, Tyler Evans and Chris Murray

Written and Directed by Chris Murray

Music by Dujeous.  www.dujeous.net/