Tag: michael douglas

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Michael Douglas on Letterman

Michael Douglas appeared on the David Letterman show last night and revealed that he is already undergoing treatment for throat cancer.

In a fairly dramatic and moving interview he said that although it was at an intense stage, the cancer hadn’t spread and he had something like an “eighty per cent” chance of eventual recovery:

“It’s a stage four [cancer], which is intense. You want to be at stage one. The big thing you’re worried about is it spreading. I am head and neck, …nothing’s gone down. The expectations are good.”

Watch an edited version of the interview here:

> Michael Douglas at Wikipedia
> The David Letterman Show

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Wall Street 2 starts filming in New York

Wall Street 2 starts filming

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps has started filming in New York and the Daily Mail has got some paparazzi pictures (courtesy of Splash) of Michael Douglas, a sockless Shia LeBeouf, Frank Langella and director Oliver Stone filming on location.

The plot is the modern-day story of Gordon Gekko, who has recently been sprung from prison and re-emerges into the current chaos of the financial markets, whilst trying to rebuild a relationship with his estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan).

Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf plays a young trader and Frank Langella stars as his mentor, whilst Josh Brolin has a key supporting role as a hedge fund manager.

Check out the pictures here.

[Images are from Splash / © 2009]

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Thoughts

The Legacy of Wall Street

When Oliver Stone directed Wall Street (1987), it was a drama inspired by Regan-era insider dealing scandals.

It became famous for Michael Douglas‘ portrayal of corporate raider Gordon Gecko, who coined the term ‘greed is good’.

But the law of unintended consequences kicked in and – like Milton’s Satan – the villain of the movie somehow became the hero to a generation of stockbrokers on Wall Street.

Even later films such as Boiler Room (2000), a parable about the 90’s stock market boom, saw their trader characters quote Gecko:

Douglas himself admitted that drunken traders would come up to him in restaurants and miss the entire point of the character.

When a sequel was announced in 2007, it was presumably meant to be a milder depiction of the business (maybe even presenting Gecko as a vharming villain).

But now, given that the Western world is reeling from an economic crisis inspired by the kind of greed Gecko loved, what will the new film look like?

> Wall Street at the IMDb
> Gordon Gecko and the sequel at Wikipedia