{"id":14776,"date":"2012-03-26T22:15:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T21:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=14776"},"modified":"2012-03-27T13:15:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T12:15:42","slug":"film-notes-5-wall-street-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2012\/03\/26\/film-notes-5-wall-street-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes #5: Wall Street (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Wall-Street.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14777\" title=\"Wall Street\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Wall-Street.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>* SPOILER WARNING: Plot details will be revealed *<\/p>\n<p>Oliver Stone&#8217;s 1987 drama about corruption in American finance forms the fifth part of my Film Notes series.<\/p>\n<p>For newcomers, the deal is that I must watch a film every day and make notes about it, with the following rules:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It must be a film I\u2019ve already seen.<\/li>\n<li>I must make notes whilst I\u2019m watching it.<\/li>\n<li>Pauses are allowed but the viewing must all be one session.<\/li>\n<li>It can\u2019t be a cinema release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point is to capture my instant thoughts about a movie and my overall film diet for 30 days, as well as post interesting links to the film in question.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my notes on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0094291\/\">Wall Street<\/a><\/strong> (1987) which I watched on a Blu-ray on Monday 26th March (today).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Opening sequence is tinged with a post 9\/11 sadness as it features prominent shots of the Twin Towers (I last saw this film in October 2000)<\/li>\n<li>Big, old style Hollywood fonts on the titles<\/li>\n<li>Hal Holbrook&#8217;s character is based on Oliver Stone&#8217;s father who was a stockbroker<\/li>\n<li>The green text and lack of GUIs on the computer screens is noticeable<\/li>\n<li>But the film reflects how technology even then was changing the nature of finance<\/li>\n<li>Before the subprime crisis of the late 2000s, there was the crazy period in the 1980s<\/li>\n<li>No-one had done a mainstream business film in years partly because of ROLLOVER (1981) and also because the genre is not deemed sexy enough<\/li>\n<li>Richard Gere turned down the role of Gecko and later regretted it &#8211; possibly why he played a similar character in PRETTY WOMAN (1990)<\/li>\n<li>Jeff Beck (not the guitarist) was the adviser on the Gecko character but Stone and Douglas later found out he had lied about being in Vietnam.<\/li>\n<li>Confidence is the key to Gecko&#8217;s appeal and the fact that he knows how to aggressively play the system.<\/li>\n<li>Ellen Mirojnick did the costumes, which are actually a key part of the film.<\/li>\n<li>Douglas was not &#8216;on text&#8217; for the first few days of filming, meaning that Oliver Stone had to pull him aside and get him to stick to the script.<\/li>\n<li>His final performance is really precise and on point &#8211; clearly the pep talk from Stone worked (like Gecko&#8217;s to Bud!)<\/li>\n<li>Lighting change at the end of the squash club sequence goes to dark (shadows form around Gecko&#8217;s head), possibly reflect Bud&#8217;s crossing over to the dark side.<\/li>\n<li>British business tycoon played by Terence Stamp is apparently based on Sir James Goldsmith<\/li>\n<li>Gecko&#8217;s line about British arrogance might have been influenced by certain people he had worked with<\/li>\n<li>Music is interesting: Sinatra, Eno\/Byrne and score by Stuart Copeland.<\/li>\n<li>Bud becomes Gecko&#8217;s corporate spy because of the allure of the closed world of Wall Street.<\/li>\n<li>Stone filmed actual sessions on the trading floor.<\/li>\n<li>The Anacott Steel deal is loosely based the dispute between Jimmy Goldsmith and Carl Ichann over TWA<\/li>\n<li>Stone cameo in the square block 60s montage<\/li>\n<li>Sean Young pissed off Stone by saying she was Dariane in front of Daryl Hannah (who eventually won the role). Ironically Hannah ended up not liking the role.<\/li>\n<li>Julian Schnabel provided most of the paintings in Gecko&#8217;s house.<\/li>\n<li>Ernest Lehmann&#8217;s punchy dialogue for THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) was an influence on Stone and Stanley Weiser&#8217;s screenplay<\/li>\n<li>Stone cast Terence Stamp after seeing him in THE HIT (1984)<\/li>\n<li>Robert Richardson&#8217;s visuals are interesting &#8211; lots of real locations mixed with beautiful shots of the Manhattan skyline<\/li>\n<li>Yuppie lifestyle now looks tame and understated compared to the boom of the 2000s<\/li>\n<li>Hard to state how influential this film was on the real Wall Street: dialogue, red braces and juicy dialogue all were a big inspiration on a generation of traders.<\/li>\n<li>Gecko&#8217;s famous speech works because it contains elements of truth about corporate bureaucracy.<\/li>\n<li>Stone intended it for to be ambivalent &#8211; equating evolution with greed.<\/li>\n<li>The phrase &#8220;greed is good&#8221; has become synonymous with that era of late 80s greed &#8211; one of the most resonant lines in film history.<\/li>\n<li>People even write about Gecko as though he&#8217;s a real person.<\/li>\n<li>Ivan Boesky once said &#8220;greed is right&#8221; and Stone modified it to &#8220;greed is good&#8221;Boesky once said &#8220;greed is right&#8221; and Stone modified it to &#8220;greed is good&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A paper company is a brilliant metaphor for stodgy, indulgent business as practiced by old, complacent men.<\/li>\n<li>Scene on Gecko&#8217;s jet very well lit &#8211; notice how the light moves up and down Charlie Sheen&#8217;s face (apparently Robert Richardson&#8217;s first plane sequence).<\/li>\n<li>Douglas is brilliant in the dinner party sequence &#8211; he really sells the deal with the unions and the look of pride on his face is noticeable<\/li>\n<li>The argument between the Sheens has added juice because the actors are actually father and son.<\/li>\n<li>Nice swinging camera movements in the elevator scene and in Spader&#8217;s law firm<\/li>\n<li>Jeff Beck of Drexel Burnham plays someone in the scene where Bud finds out Gecko has betrayed him &#8211; he was a leading light of Wall Street who knew Douglas socially and was an influence on the Gecko character<\/li>\n<li>Stone claims that Kirk Kerkorian asset stripped MGM in the same way Gecko strips Bluestar Airlines<\/li>\n<li>David Byrne&#8217;s wife plays the woman who tells Bud his father has had a heart attack<\/li>\n<li>Moving scene between the Sheens provides the emotional motivation for Bud&#8217;s rescue plan.<\/li>\n<li>Gecko&#8217;s meltdown after Bud tells him not to &#8220;get emotional about stock&#8221; is shot intriguingly wide and then Richardson goes for the same lighting trick that he did in the squash club scene (i.e. Gecko&#8217;s head fades to black)<\/li>\n<li>Unusually long tracking shot as Bud is led out by Stock Watch<\/li>\n<li>Confrontation scene in Central Park was shot in the July, 1987 on a wet summer day.<\/li>\n<li>Final music cue is great as the camera pulls back on the Manhattan skyline &#8211; this scene was shot on July 3rd 1987.<\/li>\n<li>Stone feels that BROADCAST NEWS (1987) was favoured by Barry Diller (who ran Fox then).<\/li>\n<li>Scott Rudin &#8211; then a Fox executive &#8211; had left before the theatrical release and Stone felt they had lost an ally of the movie.<\/li>\n<li>Stone felt that they shouldn&#8217;t have opened wide immediately on 2,000 screens and instead gone for a buzz-building platform release, like they did with BROADCAST NEWS which earned several Oscar nominations<\/li>\n<li>Although WALL STREET was only nominated for one Oscar (Best Actor) it ended up winning &#8211; one more than BROADCAST NEWS &#8211; that year was dominated by THE LAST EMPEROR (1987).<\/li>\n<li>It ended up making about the same money as BROADCAST NEWS but has had a much longer legacy, even though.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-5-wall-street-1987.js\"><\/script><noscript>[<a href=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-5-wall-street-1987\" target=\"_blank\">View the story &#8220;Film Notes #5: Wall Street (1987)&#8221; on Storify<\/a>]<\/noscript><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oliver Stone&#8217;s 1987 drama about corruption in American finance forms the fifth part of my Film Notes series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2487],"tags":[971],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}