Wall Street

1987

A pertinent morality tale of a young broker seduced by the cash and lifestyle of Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko… “My father had been in wall Street for 50 years so i grew up around that and knew that world. i wanted to do a classical film in new York City and in the 1980s there was bigger money than ever. i found that out on Scarface [Stone wrote

the screenplay] because i was doing a lot of coke down there in Miami and then when i went up to new York, they were doing coke, too.

“Michael Douglas was very good, but television had taught him some bad habits on The Streets Of San Francisco. [The studio] was not excited about him. But he surprised everybody, he was a sleeper. He shocked them, winning the Oscar. His ‘greed is good’ line came from one of the traders who was busted, ivan Boesky. He said, ‘Greed is right.’ we took that, and we changed it. it’s actually an ambivalent speech, but people loved it… it was completely misunderstood and a whole generation of people went into wall Street because of that movie.

“i turned down the sequel [2010’s wall Street 2: Money never Sleeps] for several years until after the crash of 2008, when it intrigued me. Douglas was being offered it, and he wanted me. And actually, i didn’t have quite the control that i did on the first one. Dealing with the studios is difficult. it’s a very difficult, very tricky business. if you consider that i’ve directed 20 films, and written several others, i’ve been independent and done what i wanted on 17 of them, let’s say. that’s a pretty good average.”