Ace in the hole, Scoundrel journalism

Desperate, alcoholic, unscrupulous journalist Charles Tatum (the brilliant Kirk Douglas) takes refuge in a small Albuquerque newspaper whose motto is "tell the truth" (the newspaper's president is the only decent person in the film), who, due to a misfortune, seizes the opportunity of a scoop and uses the most sensational and brutal journalistic techniques available to blackmail his way back to his old job and social status.

It is a satire of a provincial magistrate who, seduced by popular electoral agitation, gives himself up to the highest bidder.

In the slum they run together, an unfaithful and greedy woman tries to take advantage of her husband's misfortune to enrich herself.

An Indian miner is trapped in a cave (Seven Vultures) while searching for tools left by his ancestors to sell to the handful of tourists who pass through the village, a name that foreshadows what is to come.

The sobriety of Wilder's work contrasts with the acidic nature of his collective paintings: perhaps he has sinned of some excess in his depiction, as a kind of thick stroke for his protagonists.

Wilder sees his characters from the distant heights of European intellectuals, shocked and disgusted by the petty society of a place.

As a young man, Wilder worked as a journalist in pre-Nazi Germany. So he knows that an easily manipulated news story will snowball into an unstoppable snowball, ultimately, an unethical media will create embarrassing scenes.

The plot of The Big Bash is inspired by real events in Kentucky in 1925.