WALL STREET
Gordon Gekko feels the need for greed…
BALLROOM BLITZ
Taking the mic, sharp-suited Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) addresses the stockholders’ meeting of Teldar Paper, a company he’s targeting for a takeover. The suitably expansive location is the Grand Ballroom of New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, typical of director Oliver Stone’s fondness for location shooting.
COINING A PHR ASE
Stone holds Douglas tightly in the frame as he delivers the most infamous part of his oration, gradually pushing the camera on him: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” The line “greed is right” came from a speech delivered by former stock trader Ivan Boesky. “Everything else is original,” says Stone.
PLAYING ALL THE ANGLES
Long shots, close-ups, inserts, tracking shots… as Gekko berates the overpaid executives for not delivering to the stockholders, Stone performs every trick in the directing book. “We [ were] making a movie about sharks… so we wanted the camera to become a predator,” explains Stone.
WORD PERFECT
After Stone reportedly accused Douglas of being on drugs when he fumbled his words early in the shoot, the actor worked so hard, he could “read my lines standing on his head”. Hence this all-shot-in-one-day three-page scene: the moment that arguably clinched his Oscar. “He nailed it,” says Stone.
SWEE PING THE BOARD
Stone frequently cuts to the board members. Kenneth Lipper, a former banker and Wall
Street’s technical advisor, was instrumental in ordering the extras. For senior management, “16 country club types”; for the others, “10 thin distinguished directors, 16 chunky VP types and one grayish dignified accountant.”
OL’ BLUE EYES IS BACK
As Gekko concludes his speech to rapturous applause, Stone ramps up Frank Sinatra’s classic ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ on the soundtrack, already heard over the opening scene. “I went for Sinatra because he hadn’t been used in a while – he was out of fashion from the late ’70s to the ’80s.”