Transcript

Gordon Gekko (Wall Street)

In the last 7 deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pre-tax profit of $12 billion. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward forward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Steve

It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the '80s and '90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve

Nic

and I'm Nic,

Steve

and today we are continuing our journey through Two Dads, Two Decades to the year 1987 and to downtown New York City. We watched Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and Nic, this was your pick for us, so just give us a little idea about why did we watch Wall Street this week? Why'd you pick it?

Nic

Yeah, I, I thought this would be a fun one to visit. I mean, one thing I mentioned to you, uh, off the pod is just that thinking about like the great stars of the '80s and '90s who haven't we seen yet? And we haven't seen Michael Douglas yet. That's which is crazy. You know, he had so many bangers during this, uh, era. So I thought it would be fun to get him in there. I've seen this movie a few times. Uh, there's a lot of really cool stuff in it. I thought it would be interesting to talk about. There's a couple places that showed up like in other culture in our life, especially the movie Boiler Room, where they're big fans of Wall Street, which made me more of a fan of Wall Street because I like Boiler Room so much. And you know, uh, just stupid shit like that. It's just one of those like, does it hold up? And also all all this stuff about the economy, the way the world works and stuff. How relevant is that today? How, how did this movie work to change the wrongs that were being done, or did everything just get fucking bulldozed like it always does? So, right, yeah, I thought this is kind of like, uh, you know, maybe predicted some stuff, maybe talks about some stuff that's relevant, and maybe is fucking crazy off the wall and doesn't make any damn sense anymore. So I thought it'd be a fun one to chat about.

Steve

Absolutely. And I think, I think we'll get into all this, but I think, yeah, there's so many similarities outside of maybe the kinds of computers they're using, uh, to the, to the, you know, financial crimes of today. Lots of stuff. It was funny you mentioned Boiler Room. That's one of my favorite movies of all time. I love Boiler Room. I'm almost bummed— I'm actually very bummed that it came out the year 2000 and technically doesn't fit into our—

Nic

it is one of my, one of my toughest omissions from the scope of this pod. It's really hard. Yeah, I'm with you.

Steve

It's like Boiler Room at 2000, and for me it's Alien in 1979. It's like, oh, if you'd only been one year later, Alien, we would have— anyway, yeah, maybe someday we'll, we'll break— we'll breach those, uh, those barriers. But no, like, love Boiler Room. And I actually realized, yeah, I'm way more familiar with the scenes of Wall Street that are watched in Boiler Room than I am with any of the rest of the movie Wall Street, including Vin Diesel doing the whole like, here's the kid who calls me 96 days in a row, like that whole speech or whatever, you know. And then also I've been funny enough, I missed the show Billions when it was airing live, you know, on Showtime. And I've been going through and rewatched— well, not rewatching for me, it's watching the first time, but like binging through it. It takes forever because my wife's not interested, so I watch it on my own. So I get like maybe one episode a day. But it's amazing, like how similar a lot of the You know, the way that these financial criminals communicate with each other and how they talk is so similar. And obviously, you know, the creators of Billions, David Levine and Brian Koppelman, they actually wrote the movie Rounders, which we have watched on the pod. Same guys. So there's a lot of elements of that, but you can feel the inspiration of movies like Wall Street in series like that. So really interesting. And I do think, yeah, this is one of those movies that maybe is not as great as the sum of its influences, you know, which we'll get into.

Nic

100%. I feel like this is going to be a more fun conversation than our ultimate scores for watching the film are, but yeah, we'll see where we end up.

Steve

All right, before we get to all that, let's dive into the facts on Wall Street. All right, the movie Wall Street came out on December 10th, 1987 with an R rating and a running time of 126 minutes. It was directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone. It stars Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, and Daryl Hannah. Scores, 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, very solid. IMDb is 7.3, not bad, not fantastic. 2 enthusiastic thumbs ups from the homies Siskel and Ebert. And then awards, like a couple of really— I actually didn't realize this. This was Michael Douglas's first, if only, maybe Oscar. I actually didn't look back to see how many, if he got any others, but he did win the 1988 Oscar for Best Lead Actor and also the 1988 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama. So both of those to Michael Douglas. And this was one of those interesting movies that really did feel like it has two lead characters, right? Gecko and Fox are both— you can't really call either of them supporting, right? They're both totally instrumental to the plot.

Nic

And I knew that Douglas won the Oscar and I couldn't recall if it was for lead or supporting because of the nature of that. It is difficult.

Steve

You'd either have to consider them both lead or both supporting. If they're both supporting, there's no lead in the movie, which seems weird, right? So, and then another award to mention here at the 1988 Razzies Award, Ms. Daryl Hannah was awarded worst supporting actress for her performance as Darian in this movie. So on a $15 million budget, the film took home $43.9 billion at the box office, 2.93 times what it cost, which we consider, you know, definitely a success, but maybe not like a box office hit.

Nic

Gordon Gekko wouldn't be happy with that result.

Steve

No, no, that return is garbage. It's like, that's like lunch. It's for wimps. So, uh, all right, let's get into Wall Street. And Nic, why don't you kick us off, man?

Nic

How does this movie start? Yeah, so I mean, we get a nice kind of, uh, just a view of New York City, all the different people, the busyness of it, the cabs, the buses, the subways. Uh, Fly Me to the Moon is playing. Um, sets the tone for this movie. I mean, it's a very kind of like— there's no deep cuts really. I feel like we're, we're smashing you over the head with what it is. Yeah. Um, and, uh, we get one of my favorites is like the trading floor where it's just like computers computers and paper all over the floor and guys like shaking papers at each other and stuff like that. Uh, there's so much crumpled paper on the floor. But we end up following, uh, into Charlie Sheen's workplace, Bud Fox. Yeah. And he's kind of like a sales level— like he's— he has a list of like people that might be good leads. Yeah. So he's cold calling, but it's at least like a procured list a little bit, but not a fucking high-flying, right, executive job.

Steve

No, no, no. He's right. I feel like he's got the job that to just make the first major reference, I guess, that Giovanni Ribisi has near the beginning of Boiler Room. He's making the calls, but you know, essentially, although he does have his own account, so there is an element where he is a broker, he has a license. So he's doing that. But there is this— yeah, you're right, it feels very entry-level. Yeah, right. He's still waiting to make it big or trying to make it. He's not— he's not made it big at any point.

Nic

And he's a young guy. I don't know if it says exactly how old he is. And it talks about like some such and such by the time I'm 30. Yeah. Yeah. Mid-20s guy. One of his coworkers, one of our favorite character actors, John C. McGinley. Shows up in this. So he's sitting across. So it's just this big kind of like noisy, chaotic room. Everyone's on their own phone call trying to slide tips to each other and all this stuff. Um, and I think the, the first like bit of action is that Bud is giving a call to Gordon Gekko's office. And Gordon Gekko is Michael Douglas. He's this big shit investor, you know, he's on the COVID of Fortune magazine, aka the Bible, as Bud Fox, uh, refers to it later. Um, So yeah, this is kind of like the big investor that he's chasing. Like, if I can do a deal with this guy, then I'm in.

Steve

Yeah, basically, if I can sell an investment idea to Gordon Gekko, that's going to open up so many doors for me.

Nic

And it validates his whole, like, life progress to that point, right? Yeah, everything—

Steve

nothing was in vain. Everything was worth it. A couple things I noticed kind of in the opening, right? First off, it totally makes sense for this movie, but obviously post-9/11, it was interesting to see how many times the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center show up. 'Cause it was a constant.

Nic

I swear every time I watch a movie, you know, it is like, dude, I feel like we're seeing this a lot.

Steve

Yeah, there is a reason it was a target. It really was a symbol of the city and of the country. I mean, my wife and I are rewatching Friends, and in the many seasons pre-9/11, boy, almost every establishing shot of the city either shows you the Empire State Building or the Twin Towers. It almost never neither, right? So, and same thing here. It's like because of the Wall Street, I mean, that's the name of the movie for God's sake, because of the nature of the movie, it's gonna show us that a lot. It's a very important piece, a very important symbol of the industry. Also, there's the fact that Oliver Stone has never in his career ever been accused of being subtle. So the guy is always completely just like, this is the point, slam, slam, slam. Yeah, and we'll get into more of that as we go through for sure, yeah. Yeah, but basically we see, Bud tries to call Gordon Gekko's office and is basically rebuffed once again, we learn, by his secretary. But there was a little banter, there's a little friendly banter between Bud and the secretary.

Nic

She appreciates him, she's not as annoyed by him. So, and we find out later that he's called like 60 days in a row or something.

Steve

Like 90-something, yeah, it's like, yeah, long time.

Nic

So yeah, he's like, he's a bit of a charming guy and like he kind of knows what he's doing too. Like he's not trying to pretend too much.

Steve

Yeah, yeah. But then we follow Bud after work. He goes to Queens to visit his dad who played by his real, Charlie Sheen's real-life father, Martin Sheen. And he, you know, the two of them are discussing just sort of like Bud's choices and, you know, you make $35,000 one year, you make $50,000 another year and yet you got nothing to show for it. And you know, points out like he doesn't live in Queens, he lives in Manhattan, and he's got to spend money to, you know, all this stuff. And I mean, it's a lot of things young people tell themselves about why they can't save. Yeah, for sure.

Nic

But I mean, he's also in a world where you need to like be a certain type of person, you need to have a certain image which costs money in order to be accepted and like move your way up and stuff. So yeah, he's trapped a bit. I did want to check Bud on his tax math here. He was talking about he made $50K, 40% in taxes. I went through, I went through the federal, I went through the payroll taxes, New York City, New York State, and it's right around 40%. So good job, Oliver Stone, for, uh, for having that figured out. Oh, one thing Bud said, uh, money-wise that I thought was funny when he talked about Gekko, he said he makes 20 times what Dave Winfield makes in a year. Dave, it's such a perfect— like, I swear, like, guys our age, like, no one might have been the biggest fan of that guy, but that's just a guy you mentioned and people were like, oh yeah, like, just a a cusp Hall of Famer type guy, you know, like we love those.

Steve

I feel like it's similar. He's in this, occupies a similar space as like Ozzie Guillén where it's like, everybody knows the name. Like everybody, like I said, our age, right? Knows the name. You maybe don't remember every team he played for. You don't necessarily remember specifically, but it's like everybody knew Dave Winfield. Everybody knew guys like that. Yeah. It is funny.

Nic

And that was the player whose glove my parents could afford.

Steve

There you go. So I had a Dave Winfield glove for sure.

Nic

The other kids had Ken Griffey Jr. And, you know, yeah, that's out of my range.

Steve

Yeah, I think I had a Jose Canseco.

Nic

Uh, so he's meeting his dad, and this is a good— this is a good Martin Sheen role. Yeah, I really like— I mean, out of this whole movie, this is the, the only like grounded character, really.

Steve

Yeah, maybe the only good guy in a sense, the only kind of like somewhat innocent, not trying to put something over on somebody.

Nic

And he has like principles that matter to him. Like, there are things that matter to him more than status and money. Yep. And that can't be said for anybody else, right? That's definitely true. Yeah. Yeah, so it's funny, his dad's saying to Bud, you know, talking about how much money he's made. Yeah. And he's like, you're a salesman, you know? And Bud is like adamant, like, I am not a salesman. It's so funny 'cause what he does is exactly a salesman. Oh yeah. You know, but he's separate.

Steve

He's like, I'm in finance. Yeah, I'm an account executive, Dad.

Nic

Like, what do you do then? I sell things too. Fuck, shit. Like.

Steve

You're selling financial instruments instead of vacuums, buddy. But like, it's basically the same thing.

Nic

Oh, and Bud had gotten, before he went to meet his dad, Bud had kind of gotten stuck with a losing deal where one of his— one of his clients basically said, no, you never told me that. And, you know, no emails. Like, this is all over the phone. It's a lot of like he said, she said type stuff. So he kind of intimated that he's out like $7,000 on this deal, which if you're making $50,000 a year, that is a ton of money to be down for sure.

Steve

Yeah, there's a couple of great lines in this conversation between Bud and— I can't remember the father's name now. Adam, maybe something like that. Anyway, when Bud Fox says to his dad, "There's no nobility in poverty anymore, Dad." I love the idea that "anymore" is an appropriate modifier to that sentence. The idea that, like, he's admitting there was nobility in poverty, but it's gone. I feel like you either believe there is or you believe there never was, but it's weird to think something has changed rather than, like, you have changed or your perspective. You know what I'm saying? Like, I thought that was an interesting line.

Nic

It's kind of how Bud, like, reconciles his whole worldview, 'cause, like, he knows for a fact, "My dad is a good guy. My dad lives life the way you're supposed to live." So to— to like justify the way I'm trying to live, I need to convince myself that the world has changed. The world that made my dad a good guy is different than the world that I'm going to go out and live in.

Steve

So it's not going to make me a good guy, but it's not my fault, right? It's the world.

Nic

Yeah, it's not me, Dad, it's the world.

Steve

Yeah, the world's different, buddy. It's— yeah. Um, the other kind of very important piece that happens during this moment is, uh, the, the beginning of sort of an insider trading moment where Bud's dad tells him, hey, the, uh, F F— which— FAA. Thank you. The FAA. I was like, I was about to say FCC and FTC, and definitely neither of those are correct. Yes, the FAA is about to like exonerate their airline over a crash that happened the previous year. It wasn't their fault. It was a manufacturing defect, not a maintenance one. So, you know, he's like, oh, it's going to open up new— we're going to be able to add new routes. We're going to be able to buy new planes and train new crews. So it's like, you know, an opportunity obviously would be very positive for the airline and meaning good things for them.

Nic

And having that hanging over the head would have like suppressed the stock price even for the meantime.

Steve

Right. Exactly. Yeah. So it would be down now as that's doing. And so it's going to come. So this is, this is classic insider trading. This is, you know, somebody who's inside the company. His dad, Bud's dad, is a union representative for the maintenance workers at the airline. So he is gonna be privy to things, not everything obviously, but some things that management knows, right? That the maybe frontline worker at Blue Star Airlines wouldn't know. And so to pass that onto his son, he's just talking to his son. He's not whatever. And initially Bud doesn't, isn't gonna do anything with this information. So, but it's very important to recognize that, yeah, he does get this kind of juicy nugget of info about Blue Star Airlines. Before he leaves the conversation with his dad.

Nic

Yeah, very, very important. And so he ends up hitting up his dad for money. So Bud, who probably at that time even is making more annually than his dad— oh God, yes. You know, and he's kind of rebuffing his dad's suggestions like, well, you could have worked at the airline and been an executive. You could have been a doctor or a lawyer. But like, oh, those bitches don't have boats. So yeah, he hits his dad up for $300, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now we're on to like the next day, and it says it's May 6th, 1985, just to like put us in a place in time.

Steve

Also, I think— was this the one only piece of nudity in the movie? Was that this— there's a woman that gets up on Bud's bed and walks away just naked. It's like, it was just so odd to have— to have again, to have something like that so early in the movie, and then it's like never again. It's just a strange choice. Like, leave it out.

Nic

It's like Pacific Heights. I think they had good nudity at the beginning.

Steve

That was in the cold open. It was while the credits were running and then not Nothing. And it's just such a tease.

Nic

But anyway, um, yeah, and Bud's— so he's in like clearly like a studio or one-bedroom apartment. He has his work shit everywhere, all these charts and stuff stacked. It seems like a nightmare. Yeah. And then, you know, classic like frameless bed and all that kind of shit, right? And, uh, the home office, man, how much did the iMac change things as far as an aesthetic home office? Because you had like 9 feet of shit behind the computer screen with those things that he had. Wild. Yeah. Uh, but he, he gets, uh, like on his calendar it says this is Gecko's birthday, right? And you know, he's been trying to get in the office. He's like, fuck, I'm gonna go over there. So he has a plan. He has a box of Cuban cigars that his dad was able to get from the airport, you know, having a good connection. And I'm gonna go to Gecko's office and I'm gonna fucking get in there.

Steve

And he's able to get up to the right floor in the, in the building that they're in by basically just saying like, there's a— this is a delivery, and, and you know, like the assistant has to sign for it, or somebody has to sign for it. And so You know, the front desk isn't going to do that. They're going to go get Gecko's personal secretary to do that. So he goes up and then that's when he says to her, like, I recognize the voice. Like, you know, she realizes who he is and he basically is like, you know, hey, look, I know it's his birthday. It was in the Bible. Like you say, he has a Fortune magazine or whatever. He's like, these are Cuban cigars. They're impossible to find. I would love to give them to him. Like, please, I just want 5 minutes, you know? And it's like, you know, he's persistent, but it's like not an unreasonable request of a man who's very busy to say 5 minutes on his birthday with a gift. You know, you've brought some, you know, he's, he's ticking all the boxes of like, You know, maybe he's gonna get—

Nic

yeah, he's not being entitled. He's like, I think this is where it'll take me to get a little face time.

Steve

Doesn't hurt that he's a white man too, so good for him, I guess. That's gonna be one of those requirements that has to be checked off there. Um, but you know, he's told to wait, and so he does. He sits like in the kind of lobby area, but not— you know, we don't know how much time has passed. I think maybe an hour or more, because he ends up being a few hours late for work. But sure enough, the secretary comes back, he's like, Mr. Fox, like, Mr. Gekko will see you. You know, you got 5 minutes. He goes in and this is again that sort of, you know, scene that Vin Diesel quotes in Boiler Room, right? About, you know, this is the kid that calls me.

Nic

And this is a good scene. I mean, this is a great intro to Gecko because when Bud Fox walks in, Gecko is not waiting to meet him. He's on all these important calls. He's doing stuff back and forth. He's talking to Bud for a little bit. He's checking his blood pressure. Like he's like just the prototypical, like too busy guy. You know, the reason I'm successful is I've never had my sleeve rolled all the way down. Pretty much.

Steve

Yeah. But yeah, so he basically offers— Bud's got some stock plays that he wants to mention, and everything he's mentioning is stuff that Gecko's either like, "That's a dog. That's a dog with different fleas. Like, I know about that. Tell me something I don't know." Like, you know, and look, a guy like this is gonna have most of your basic info. You know, you're gonna have to bring something real special. And that's when Bud lets drop that Blue Star is about to be cleared by the FAA, and, you know, that that's something he should look into. And Gekko goes, okay, that's interesting. And he gets, I think he, you know, takes his card and he says, kid, I hear like 100 deals a day. I'd pick maybe one of them. Yeah. Maybe I'll call, maybe I won't. It's kind of what he says. But sure enough, you know, I think a day passes or whatever.

Nic

Yeah. He gets the call. He gets the call. One of Gekko's like kind of in-house favored stock guys that he has working for him is the principal from Billy Madison. And I love seeing that guy, good old revolting blob. Yeah, so, so Bud's back at the office. He's, he's done. It's out of his hands. Yeah. And he hopes to get a call back. And John C. McGinley, I like trying to get him to go out with him. Yeah, he seems like a good, like a pretty decent work friend. I mean, he's definitely like trying to get stuff from Bud, but he's also just like, hey man, come on, let's go, we're young, we're in New York City.

Steve

And he says he's a ballbuster, but he's a ballbuster with KNics tickets. So it's kind of like, seriously? Yeah, I'll take that.

Nic

Yeah, for sure, dude. I mean, that was like Ewing's rookie year. Like, that's a, that's a nice ticket there. Um, so he wants to take him out. And but, you know, right at that time, Bud gets a call, right? Gecko's office.

Steve

Yep. And he wants— Gecko wants to meet him. And, uh, and, well, actually, yeah, Gecko wants to meet him and is like, hey, we're gonna go ahead and buy, you know, this amount or whatever of that. And, and when he meets with Bud at a restaurant, he hands him a check for a million dollars. Um, and he says— and he gives him very specific instructions. You do $100,000 with this, you do whatever. And I love— there's a line in here where, you know, he's like, hey, so how much, how much of Teldar stock did you pick up after you left my office? Because they were talking about how they're gonna invest big in this Teldar Paper Company. And he goes, "Oh no, like, I didn't, sir, that would've been illegal." And the look Michael Douglas gives him when he says that is so full of disdain. Dude. It's so good. And this is one of the reasons Douglas won the Oscar for this role. Yeah. The acting he does with just his eyes is amazing in this scene.

Nic

It's like a combination of all of my friends' looks I've ever gotten where I opted to order like a non-alcoholic drink when we were out somewhere. Just this like, "What is wrong with you, dude?" It's very funny. Uh, two, two things in this scene I really like. One is a flex I really hope I can pull at some point in life because I feel like it's so cool, is just to tell somebody, get yourself a decent suit, and then like send them somewhere to like go get fitted for a suit. I love that.

Steve

Go here, tell them I sent you.

Nic

Yeah. And then when Bud's food came, what the fuck? It was like a pot roast with like an egg yolk on top.

Steve

What the fuck was that? It's beef tartare. It's literally raw beef. And here's the thing, the issue I had with it is I've seen beef tartare in restaurants and usually that egg yolk on top is only slightly smaller than the mound of beef. Right. This was huge. This was like a pound of tomahawk beef tartare or something.

Nic

It's insane. What the fuck?

Steve

But is there more '80s excess of a dish than beef tartare?

Nic

No, see, this is why I didn't think it was beef tartare because the thing was so big. Yeah, normally it's the size of like an Egg McMuffin egg. Right, yeah, little. Like one of those little things.

Steve

Yeah, a little bit, you know, and then you do put the raw, the egg yolk on top. That's normal. But like, yeah, it's very strange.

Nic

But so much great though, because Gordon Gekko so far is talking about his high blood pressure. He's clearly up late all the time, high stress environment, smoking, eating fucking beef and egg yolks, playing racquetball. I mean, he's dying to have a heart attack.

Steve

I don't even know if he ate lunch though. Remember the day before he said lunch is for wimps and we don't see him eat. He's just there at the restaurant waiting for Bud. So maybe he like wanted to treat him to a lunch, but he himself, no, no, no, no, no. He's got to get back to the office. He's got deals to do. What if he goes to brunch for 2 hours every every day.

Nic

People are like, yeah, he always says this bullshit, but he's at brunch for 2 hours every day.

Steve

I also don't buy for a second that a guy like Gordon Gekko wasn't at least having a liquid lunch every day, like 3 martinis, you know, something.

Nic

I was actually shocked by the lack of, like, cocaine and vodka that, that Gekko engaged in during this movie, because I thought he would— that would be like a key visual of the whole thing.

Steve

Do we see him drink alcohol? No, not really, because like we see him serve, you know, and offer drinks or whatever other people— I don't think we ever see—

Nic

he might have a sip. Even like his cigarette, it seems like it never really shows him smoking cigarette as much as just like holding it. Yeah, interesting. So yeah, so Gecko, Gecko and Bud, you know, all right, you came to the place, I got you a fucking giant steak tartare, go home and take a shit for 4 hours. And then the— someone knocks at the door and he has been sent a hooker by Gecko.

Steve

Amazing. This I had completely forgotten this was in the movie at all. Yeah, Gecko sent over a hooker, very, very attractive woman. Uh, they go into— she's got a limo waiting outside um, open champagne. She starts doing coke and, you know, asking if he wants some. He's like, sure. And it was just, you know, a very innuendo-laden conversation about a deal that was being made, but also was clearly, you know, her asking and him agreeing, yeah, yeah, a blowjob would be nice right now. Yeah. And doing that in the back of the limo. So he's getting a little, a little perk, uh, from, from making Gordon Gekko some money. Definitely.

Nic

And then the funny thing is that this, uh, this woman is hitting him up for stock advice. Yeah, that's right. So she's talking to him about Hewlett-Packard dummy either.

Steve

She knows who she's blowing.

Nic

It is funny because it's like her and Bud are doing the same thing. They're just like applying the skills that they have the best they can to exactly, you know, move towards closer to Gecko or whatever. Um, so Bud has been given this money by Gecko to put in his account. He's spread it around and he has all these kind of sure thing deals he's very confident about, and one of them just absolutely takes a dump. Yeah, so he lost Gecko a bunch.

Steve

I don't know, $100,000, couple hundred grand, something like that. Um, like, definitely not nothing, but not enough that Gecko is like writing him off forever or anything like that. So yeah, um, but yeah, so then Bud and Gordon get together to play racquetball. So it's like Bud goes to Gordon's, uh, club and they play some racquetball. It's clear that, you know, Gecko must play constantly. He's in great shape. He's not really even getting winded by the— but the much younger Bud Fox is like struggling to keep up.

Nic

My grandpa used to play, and I remember him taking us when we were kids, and like when we did sports and stuff all the and I would get my ass kicked by him 'cause he was used to it. And like, that wears you the hell out. It's a great, I love it.

Steve

To be fair, if Bud, if that was the next day and Bud spent all night on cocaine, champagne, and hooker sex, like maybe that was one of the reasons he couldn't keep up. It's possible as well. That's a very good point. But when Bud tells him like, oh, you know, I'm so sorry. Like we took a bath on this one thing. It was one of the, another airline, one of the dogs with fleas basically that, you know, Gordon and Gordon's comment is, oh, I guess your dad's not a union representative for that airline. Bud, you know, it's like, shit, because he didn't tell him that. Like, that's something he found out on his own.

Nic

Um, but yeah, so yeah, so, and I think that makes Bud kind of realize like, oh, you, you have a whole like web of shit.

Steve

Like, you know, this is like, I'm not gonna get something past you. I'm not getting it past you at all.

Nic

And you're not gonna just buy this dumb stuff that I'm selling everybody over the phone. Like, I gotta do something special for you. Uh, this is really funny. So I had this class in college and it was like a sports management class class, but the teacher was actually really interested in getting us real-life skills and stuff and talking about how jobs work and interviews and all that stuff. Mr. Coach Ferrer, great, great teacher at UCSB. But he had us read The Art of War as part of the class, right? And he has the personality of one of those read The Art of War guys. I'm sure I wouldn't love hanging out with this guy, but he gave us a lot as a teacher. And he's like, okay, then we're going to watch the movie Wall Street because if you watch Wall Wall Street, there's like, there's little bits of The Art of War in there. So me and my roommate PJ, we're like, okay, we're gonna watch Wall Street and see if we can like spot where The Art of War is subtly sprinkled throughout the movie. And then we get to this part where it's Gekko just saying, you gotta read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. And he just like directly talks about it a few times in this movie. That always cracked me up. Yeah. Um, so yeah, he's Art of Warring, which I think is like, you know, that it's important stuff to understand. Right? Everyone says it's like, it's good to understand it, it's bad to do this stuff.

Steve

It's— well, that's more The Prince by Machiavelli, I think, is the one that it's like good to understand but don't ever do those things. The thing about Art of War is it really is with you if you are in any kind of a competitive or zero-sum situation. You're playing a sport, you're doing a business deal where like somebody's gonna win, somebody's gonna lose. I mean, those kinds of scenarios, yeah, it makes perfect sense. Understand your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. You attack their strengths, you don't attack their weaknesses because it's like that's where they least expect to be attacked.

Nic

But don't treat life like that. So that's the thing is that Yes. The people who, who see this as like guidebook for how to live life.

Steve

Right. Bad people. Agreed. Yes.

Nic

But this is Gecko and this is like how he's become so, you know, financially successful. Absolutely. Uh, and he's telling Bud, he's like, look, you gotta stop sending me information. You gotta start getting me some. Right. So basically the same motherfuckers that found out your dad was the union rep, you, you gotta go be that for like some business deals for me.

Steve

Yep. Yep. And, uh, and he, he drops Bud off, uh, on the street corner and I love Bud. He's like, he's like, struggling a little bit during the conversation of like, because he knows he's talking about insider trading. He's like, he wants you to do stuff that's like insider trading. And he knows he could be, he could lose his license. He could be arrested. Like, this is illegal what he's talking about. So he's like struggling with it. But Gecko lets him out and he turns around and goes, all right, Mr. Gecko, you got me. You know, and it's like he's sold. He wants the boat. He wants the private jet. He wants the lifestyle. He wants to make $20 million a year or whatever it is.

Nic

Because Gecko's talking really about the difference between him and like someone who Bud would previously have thought of as like a success and someone to like shoot for.

Steve

Yeah. When you're talking, even in today's numbers, if you're talking kind of the difference between a very, very well-off person making like $800,000 a year and billionaires. Yeah. And the difference couldn't be bigger. The difference is bigger than the difference between the $800K guy and somebody who's like, you know, scraping by, has a job and a home, but like barely makes it. Those people are closer together than the $800K and the billionaire. Right. You know, and so it's, it's, it's that kind of thing. And it sells him. He's a young guy who wants in this industry, this business, this world of, you know, you don't build or make, you just buy and sell kind of thing. So he goes and he's tasked with following Mr. or Wildman, I believe, is the name of the guy. Sir Lawrence Wildman. Yeah. And it's— he's following him around, and he's like, he's gonna be in town, you need to find out where he's going, you need to find out who he's meeting with, you need to find out what he's up to.

Nic

Yeah. And this guy is kind of like Gecko's, like, just a rival, like, big shit investor guy, right? So Gecko's just like, there's something weird about this guy being in town. I love that Bud Fox is following him. He's driving a hog around, wearing sunglasses, acting so weird and rude in different situations, following way too closely.

Steve

He's not— it's like, try to be a little discreet. Like, at one point he walks into the dining room of the restaurant where Wildman is sitting down to eat and can be clearly seen, and then is also following one car behind on a motorcycle, making no effort to blend in. He does do a decent thing at the end. So he follows him to a private airfield, or at least the private part, like the executive part of an airport. And Wildman gets on a private jet and it takes off. So he rushes up to like a maintenance guy and goes, "Oh, is Sir Wildman on that plane?" And the guy's like, "Yeah." He's like, "Goddammit, my boss is going to kill me." You know, he's playing the whole like, I'm just an underling who needs you know, to help me save my job. You know, like, where's it going? I got it. You know, he goes, oh, it's going to Erie, Pennsylvania. And he's like, all right, thanks. He runs off. So at least he knows where he went. The funky part is then he reports this back to, uh, Gecko, all the information that he gathered on Wildman. And he mentions— and the both of them are going like, that's great. And Gecko's like, so what's he doing in Erie? Why does Bud immediately know he's gonna buy Anacott Steel? Like, is it the only company in Erie, Pennsylvania? That's a relatively large city for the Midwest.

Nic

I don't know, unless he's like hearing buzz about like different companies that are maybe in play or maybe subject to being taken over. But yeah, I mean, it was a bit of a leap there, but it felt very Sherlock, very just like it came to him.

Steve

Yeah. Yeah.

Nic

Well, because I think Oliver Stone's like, all right, I'm not gonna make this a fucking detective movie. Let's just get past this.

Steve

Subtly not Stone's strong suit.

Nic

Um, so, so Gecko, like, you know, sees this as an opportunity to make some money, but also like, fuck this guy. This is the guy that I'm, you No, he's my heated rival here. And Bud, you know, goes through and he has on Gekko's behalf purchasing all these shares of Anacott Steel. When it goes from like $46 a share to $50 a share, Gekko says, "All right, you can tell your friends about it." So they're like creating this mass buy of it to drive the price up, knowing that this Sir Lawrence guy really wants the company. And you know, you're gonna make him take a bath to buy this thing that he's decided he already wants.

Steve

Wants. And Gecko gives Bud a code phrase to use when he calls, like, a newspaper, I think it is, and just says, "Blue horseshoe loves Anna Kotzdiel." I'll be honest, I've, like, that's been, like, referenced between friends and stuff in the past. Everyone's like, that's like a phrase that, like, survives well past this movie, definitely, to just refer to sort of got some inside info or got the inside track on something. Like, hey, blue horseshoe loves Anna Kotzdiel, you know, it's like kind of things. I think I love that. Also, in the montage of people making phone calls and buying and all this kind of stuff, the— there's this montage of Annecott Steel purchasing. I don't know if you noticed, but Oliver Stone is one of the guys there, uh, making a phone call. Actually gave himself a few lines, I noticed. Yeah, which he tends to do in, I think, all of his movies as well. I do that.

Nic

Shows up somewhere. Um, oh, so, so Bud has, uh, just the kind of dynamic at the office where Bud's working. There's like the sales manager guy, this kind of older guy who's really like, what have you done for me lately? On everybody's ass. You're the best if you just did something good. You're a piece of shit if you just did something bad. And he's kind of one of Bud's influences. And then one of the guys who's like a partner at the firm, but they said he had lost his equity, so he's not the super wealthy guy, but just like a seasoned old trader played by Hal Holbrook. That's right. Who's always giving Bud like the exact fortune cookie advice that he needs at the given moment of the movie. Um, so that's kind of happening. So Bud is going around telling people, hey, you know, Anacott Steel, it's a sure thing. Yeah. And then the Hal Holbrook character will be like, you know, I've been through many markets in my— you know, just really—

Steve

no such thing as a sure thing unless it's, uh, like not clean or something like that, he says. Yeah, but, um, but anyway, so, uh, Bud is invited out to Gecko's house, I believe, to like deliver something or get— so he needs to get his signatures on some documents, uh, whatever. And so there's this house party going on, uh, at Gecko's place. I think it might— he's out on, uh, Long Island, so on the Hamptons, uh, because they mentioned— the wife mentions like, oh, you drove all the way up from the city, what a long drive, you know, kind of thing. So they're out in the Hamptons, it's a couple hour Um, and but he's got a robot. This is yet another like '80s movie with a rich person robot.

Nic

Okay, I think there are 3 instances of like high-tech gear, okay, in this movie that I wanted to bring up. But yeah, the robot's great because man, in 1985, like it was not that much cooler technologically to be super rich versus poor. It's like, oh, what the fuck is this thing? But yeah, I love that. I love the robot there. Um, yeah, so all the fancy friends are there, right? And he meets the Daryl Hannah character. Darian. Yeah, strange name for a woman, but yeah, Darian. But I guess Daryl is too, so she stayed in that range. That's a good point. Um, and, and she's like an interior decorator and like big in the art world. Yeah, you know, she knows the value, and she's talking to him about all these paintings that, uh, Gecko has, which are all aesthetically like atrocious. There's a couple decent ones, but some of these— this art here, and then the stuff that Bud ends up getting in his apartment, It's like, who the fuck wants to look at that all day, dude? Like, I get why it's good, but I can't stand looking at that.

Steve

We haven't gone there yet, but it looks like something Delia Dietz would have made.

Nic

Yes, yes, for sure, dude. Yeah, a lot of parallels actually. Um, the one funny thing, when Bud's like gets into cool guy mode when he's talking to Darian— oh my God— and he's like, whatever, and then he goes, but that's just conversation.

Steve

I, it's like, shut the fuck up. It's so insufferable.

Nic

Oh my God, he— it's funny because like he doesn't really have a baby face phase in this movie where you are like, oh, rooting for the little guy. It's always like, all right, kind of a douche. We already see him wake up with this hot chick who, right, you know, we never hear a thing about again. Yeah, so there's no like arc to him becoming like a pussy getta like he is.

Steve

And even like, even though we get a few moments earlier in the film, all of them passed by now by this point, but a few moments earlier in the film where he is sort of like, oh, that would be illegal, or I could lose my license, I'm not going to do that. Like he's seems to have some boundaries. Yeah, he just— he dismisses those so simply and so without much push at all. It's hard to even like give him credit for that early on. It's like, yeah, you were always just like a greedy dude trying to make his way to as much money as possible, right? It's not really a sympathetic character to root for.

Nic

No. And as he's getting like to see inside Gecko's life and these different things with like the club and the fancy restaurant and now his house in the Hamptons, all his like care about losing his license and legality is just shedding from him like fucking snakes.

Steve

He's basically seeing like, well, if Gecko can do it and not get in trouble, so can I. Yeah, there's no difference between him and me. He's a man, I'm a man. This is also the scene when, uh, uh, Bud quotes Sun Tzu back to— yes, Gecko— just to prove that he did his homework, basically, which is, you know, a little brown-nosing.

Nic

Yeah, right. Um, one quick thing about Gecko's house before we move on. Yeah, uh, would have loved some dangerous fish I would have loved a tank full of sharks or something. I feel like we're missing that either in his office or in his house.

Steve

Amazonian piranha, right? It would have fit very well with Gordon Gekko. But they do have— so Wildman shows up, Sir Lawrence Wildman shows up, and, uh, you know, it's basically talking. He knows what, what Gekko's been doing. You're driving the price up, whatever. But he basically makes him an offer, and they go back and forth a little bit. And the idea is that Wildman buys all of Gekko's shares at an inflated price. And yeah, Gekko's happy. I think he said he made like $800 grand in the day. Day.

Nic

Yeah, so he's buying the shares, uh, for $71.50 a share ultimately, and Gecko bought most of his at like $46, right? So however many times, you know, 50%, uh, profit there, right?

Steve

So there's that. Um, next scene we get is Bud getting woken up by a phone call from Gecko super early in the morning. It's clearly still pre-dawn, and you know, if this is summer, that means real early. Um, and this is when, you know, money never sleeps, pal, is what— yeah, which of course ends up being the subtitle of the sequel whole 30 years later, or whatever it was. But like, yeah, uh, you know, he's telling him how he was already making deals on the Japanese market and doing whatever, and he's got the, the huge Zack Morris cell phone, right?

Nic

Gigantic. Yeah. And it's funny, and he's, you know, talking to him about, hey, you know, Darian, I think she's on the outs with this guy she's dating. So he's like, I'll— I'm gonna make you rich. I'm gonna make you rich enough that you can afford a girl like Darian. So it's almost like she was there to dangle in front— it, like, who knows if Gecko intentionally kind of set up that type of or is just taking advantage of the situation and being like, this is going to get Bud more on my side if I tell him he can get her.

Steve

I feel like it's that second one because we do later learn that Gecko and Darian themselves have a relationship, right? So it's like he's not interested in Darian actually like falling for somebody or being with somebody or whatever. He doesn't actually care that whether Bud gets her per se, right?

Nic

You know, but he's more like a pimp, like dangling. Like she's not that much different than that first girl that got sent to Bud's house. Exactly.

Steve

Not that, not that much different. A little more autonomy, but not a whole lot, right? And, and, you know, he is absolutely willing to use her to make Bud more interested in helping him out. But I don't think that he necessarily planned it ahead of time. I think it was more just like she was at the party because she's in his social circle. Maybe they were even planning on like sneaking away from the wife that night and banging on a sand dune, who knows? But whatever, you know, the reality was Bud showed up and it became the kind of thing Gecko's like, oh, I can use that. Like, he feels like the kind of guy that's just always looking, how can I use this, how can I use that, here's a new bit of info, right?

Nic

Tiny inefficiencies, dude. He's moneyballing his way through life. Michael Lewis in it. So Bud, you know, planted a bug in his brain of like, I gotta really hustle. Like, yeah, I gotta find it there for me. Yeah, I just have to make it happen, you know. And, uh, and he goes to visit his old college buddy played by James Spader, which in a movie full of scumbags, for Spader to not be one of the scumbags, is that kind of remarkable? It really is. He's, he's, he's like a friendly Spader. He's Fred Rogers in this fucking movie compared to the other piece of shit.

Steve

Still, Martin Sheen is still the goodest of the good people, right? Smaeder's not bad, but he is willing to give up information eventually. He's willing to be involved in Gecko's scheme later on. He's willing to be part of the legal team that like decimates a couple companies and just destroys them. He is a lawyer, which just like, you know, no offense to our buddy Bart out there, but like, you know, lawyers are lawyers. So there's that. But like, you know, he's better than Gecko or Fox, but— He does—

Nic

Smaeder's normally like extra slimy, I think. And he seems more like he gets duped, you know, a little bit, or he— a lot, whatever.

Steve

He, he, he gets a little bit of the, the green-eyed monster and sort of like, oh, we can make a lot of money doing this. He gets enough of that that he goes along with it. But you're right, he's not— he, I don't think, has a full understanding of what he's getting himself into, right? And Bud takes advantage of that.

Nic

Yeah, so Bud, you know, he's traded in his list of preferred, uh, cold call clients for just people that he personally knows where he can leverage like personal relationships Yeah. To get them involved in his Gordon Gekko scheme. Because one of the things about it is that he can't be seen as directly trading that volume of money for Gordon Gekko. Otherwise, like, alarm bells are going to go off. Yep. So it's got to get spread around among other people's accounts and stuff. And James Spader, his old friend, he's like, hey, you're going to make some extra dough, whatever. And Bud's really trying to corrupt him. And again, this is Oliver Stone hammering everything over the head, is Bud being like, nobody will know. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody ever gets hurt.

Steve

The good old victimless crime of insider trading, right? Yeah.

Nic

So, so Bud's like, okay, he's leaving the office thinking, well, I could probably get my friend to tell me some shit. But then as he's walking out of there, he notices like the file room and the maintenance company that's vacuuming and cleaning it up. And as he walks out of the building, notes the, uh, the name of the company on the side of the van and works some big scheme to disguise himself, which this is a lot of We're talking about little bits that could get cut out. Yeah, it's like, but like, I don't want to try to get the information and he said he would give it to you and then you're like, yeah, I'll just go take—

Steve

I guess, I guess Spader didn't really say that. I think he said he didn't commit to anything, that's for sure. So that's why he felt like he had to go a different route and he wouldn't give him that specific— he was looking for something specific. Yeah, he wouldn't give him that. But this whole thing, like, so he went to the guy who runs the maintenance company and like what, offered to partner with him with what money and then why the guy agreed. And was it, was it just a ruse to get the disguise, get the uniform? Maybe.

Nic

Because I'd like to point you to a man named Richard Kimball, and he really figured out how to get the maintenance uniform and the badge way easier than that shit. Yeah, there is that.

Steve

You could have just swiped it. But, but yeah, it was a very weird kind of way to do it, but apparently it worked. And then I'm guessing this is one of the other pieces of technology you wanted to specifically call out, but Bud's got this handheld scanner.

Nic

Yes. Like, what is this thing? Dude, it's crazy. And how are you gonna parse anything that you scan with it? 'Cause he's basically like reading the page with this thing and it's the size of, I don't know, what do you call it? Like a deck of cards, basically a little thicker than that.

Steve

It looks like a skull chandelier, frankly.

Nic

Yeah, and it's printing like receipt paper scans of everything, but it's just all one big line. So if you had a sheet of 8.5 by 11 paper, you have to scan it probably 3, 4 times and then you just end up with this long sheet.

Steve

So I guess you then cut and then tape together, I guess, to make the documents.

Nic

I guess there's people to do that for you. Yeah, great, great piece of tech that seems like, boy, you're gonna get really crappy copies out of that when everything's said and done.

Steve

But it got him the info he wanted. He's getting the info.

Nic

Yeah. Um, yeah, so great. And I even have in my notes here, gadget alert, handheld copier. So that's an important one. So this is like a scene here that is not huge in the movie, but I think is kind of important with the, the characters. He's now having a meal with Darian, and they're kind of talking about like, what are your hopes and dreams, or whatever. Yeah. And, uh, what Bud says is that I want to basically stack enough money that I can go ride my motorcycle across China. So his values haven't completely shifted to like Gecko mode yet. There's still something that he wants to— because Gecko would be like, what, fucking motorcycles are for wimps? China's for wimps. Like, he, he wouldn't have like an aspiration like that. So Bud still sees this as like the means to an end, as opposed to like, I just want to keep stomping on face Yeah, for the rest of time.

Steve

The idea is there is an enough for Bud Fox still. He could get enough when he gets to a point where, you know, it's the standard kind of point for anybody who's not maniacally greedy and trying to be a billionaire. The point is like, where can you, at what point do you have enough money that you don't have to work again and you can live the lifestyle you wanna enjoy? And for everybody, that's gonna be a different amount of money, but for nobody is it as high as $1 billion. You can absolutely do that for less than $1 billion no matter who you are. You know what I mean? So it's like worst case scenario, it's like, like 9 figures, you know what I mean? Like absolute worst case scenario. But yeah, but so he's still got that. And I love her thing is that she says in this, I wrote this down 'cause it's the dumbest line I've heard in my life. She'd like to produce a line of high quality antiques. Yeah. How do you produce antiques? Is she gonna hold the stock? She's gonna make things and then hold onto them for 25 years so they become antiques? Yeah. Is that the number? I know there's a threshold where a piece of furniture becomes an antique and I was 25. Or longer. But this is a terrible business plan.

Nic

Yeah, it's, it's really, really bad. And I, and I, maybe that's why Bud decided, like, otherwise his plan was, no, I want to marry you and live in New York. And then she tells him that shit, he's like, I would like to ride my motorcycle very far across a huge country and never see your ass again.

Steve

I'm interested in having sex with you, but not anything. You go do that and produce your antiques. That's a great idea.

Nic

And then she's talking about that, and Bud's like, I'll take you, punk.

Steve

Public. It's like, oh, shut the fuck up, dude.

Nic

Um, so, so Bud goes to visit his dad now again at work, and, uh, you know, previously he'd been hitting his dad up for money, and, you know, he's just there, hey Dad, I'm just telling— he's kind of there for info a little bit, you know, to see if there's anything. But he's also just, hey, I want to show you how good I'm doing. Yeah, yeah. And all the other mechanics who are all dudes who are probably over at their house when he was a kid, and like people he'd grown up knowing um, they're giving him a hard time, you know. I didn't— they didn't call him, but they had the spirit of calling him college boy.

Steve

Well, you know, yeah, it felt like very tommy boyish in a lot of ways. They like him, but they also kind of like ribbing him a little bit, you know. There's that thing.

Nic

Yeah. Um, and then Bud ends up handing his dad $5,000. Yeah, he's like, oh, I must have borrowed at least $5,000 in pocket.

Steve

So just, just to flex, just to, uh, but also it's nice for both parties to be able to be making things right.

Nic

For sure, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and one another thing that Bud says to his dad, he said, Dad, things are good and they're going to stay that way. Foreshadowing. Thanks, Ollie.

Steve

Yeah, so I think the next thing we cut to is, uh, we're back in the Hamptons. We're at the gecko's place out in the Hamptons and riding dune buggies, I believe, through the sand dunes. Probably illegal, I don't know for sure, but like, maybe it's a private beach.

Nic

Rich people love to just drive little vehicles around. That's like one of the main things that they do, and I've gotten to do do it before and it's very fun. But yeah, that's like one of the main hobbies.

Steve

That's interesting. So yeah, we're getting that.

Nic

Yeah, so we're at the— and now we're kind of, uh, with the lawyer out, out back. Um, Gecko's little 3-year-old son— yeah, pumpkin pie haircut alert. Real bad. This kid has one of the wildest looks I've ever seen. I don't under— he looks like, like a Tweedledee, Tweedledum, like even the way he's dressed and everything. God bless this child. He's probably about my age. I hope he's having a wonderful life right now.

Steve

But the kid looks like also he's either about 3 years old or about 10 years old, but short. It's really like hard to pick. It is super tough, dude.

Nic

It looks like you painted a kid on an egg. Like, it's, it's weird. But, uh, and it's kind of off-putting because it's like, this is too distracting. Just put like a— don't even show the kid. Who cares, right?

Steve

If you have to make it, can you have a more normal looking kid? Why does this kid have to look so interesting? Like, don't make him look so interesting. Make him look like background. Yeah, you know, exactly.

Nic

He's a prop. So, uh, so they're signing these contracts with the lawyer that are basically legally distancing Gekko from Bud Fox. So disavowing you, Bud Fox, you're Jason Bourne now. Yeah, we don't know you. If something happens, you realize you are on your own, you know, you're not trading on behalf of Gordon Gekko, you're trading on behalf of all these companies, these like shell companies, right? Move the money to these accounts and stuff.

Steve

A bit of a blind trust idea, right, is that Gordon doesn't, you know, officially he doesn't know where the money's going or whatever, but of course will be directing things from behind the scenes.

Nic

So yeah, he's working for him, so he's unofficial, so he's in now. So he's feeling good. A little scene with, uh, him and Darian on the beach, you know, again talking about their stupid fucking hopes and dreams. Yep. Uh, and Spader, uh, now calls and tells him like he's in, he's in to help out.

Steve

Yeah. And because I'll be one of your accounts. Yeah, Gecko's lawyer basically. So I mean, it was Gecko, one of them said something about— so you've probably got some "Can you find other investors whose accounts you can use to park this money and do this trading?" And they get a cut, basically. And he's like, "Yeah, I'm sure I can find some friends who are willing to get rich," or whatever. 'Cause he's still thinking there's no risk here, right? He's like, "Yeah, whatever." But he ends up, because he brought so much money from Gekko into the firm he's at, he's been upgraded to an actual office. He's out of the bullpen, off the main trading floor, or whatever, and into an office with a secretary. Secretary who gives the boss, not Charlie Sheen, but like Charlie Sheen's boss, she gives him a look like, I am gonna fuck this man. Like, she is DTF. This secretary is like, it is kind of wild, like the way her eyes go, like, like, like she does the like, uh, Tom Selleck at the beginning of Magnum P.I., like eyebrows up a couple times.

Nic

It's like, really?

Steve

Jesus, that's forward. Good God.

Nic

Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is huge because he didn't even have a cubicle before. There they were just crammed in. Oh yeah, row of computer stations and stuff. So, you know, big deal for him to have the office here. Yes. Um, and continuing Bud's success, he's now being shown this, this really nice like condo. Like, I don't know if it's the pen— it's not the penthouse, not the whole floor probably, but way up there, beautiful view of the cities and stuff. The real estate agent says something about, uh, you're gonna like this when you're finished wolfing for the day. She says wolfing as a verb, which I wonder Like I never heard that except for Wolf of Wall Street.

Steve

So I think she's referring to when you guys settle down or when you settle down and have kids after you're done wolfing, which is like being a tomcat going out and like, and like, like picking up different ladies every night. That's, I think, wolfing. Okay. It's like being a player out on the town, but someday you'll want to settle down. I've never wolfed before, folks. Well, nor I, but I do believe that is the impetus of that term.

Nic

The other thing she says is my husband, my husband might be able to get you a 10% mortgage.

Steve

Right, which is so insanely high.

Nic

It is, it's wild. I mean, that was normal back then, right? So his place, $950,000, he says, to offer. Yeah, so Bud's got some cash rolling.

Steve

Yeah, or at least some future promises of cash, right, which is just like cash. And he sets Darian to task on redecorating this place after he buys it. And she is doing— I mean, it's not— it's showing, you know, craftsmen and workers doing it, but it is the worst, grossest, like, just, uh, all the excess.

Nic

Yeah, it looks cheap. There's like There's like Styrofoam Doric columns in there. There's like fake marble painted on the wall, like it's just stuff attached. And Dorian said something earlier in the movie like about her being a decorator, and she was talking bad about, oh, you're from that neighborhood. Oh, the home with exposed bricks and houseplants. Like, that's bricks and houseplants look fucking good.

Steve

I forgot about that too, but then she does his apartment with brick, and then Dorian makes it into fucking Caligula's playhouse.

Nic

It looks like shit.

Steve

It's so bad.

Nic

It looks like— it's like the, um, the Brewster's Millions remodel, as if Bud Fox was just trying to burn through as much cash as possible, and she's putting this terrible art up on the wall. So yeah, it's so bad. But another good gadget alert here, okay? Not quite as— not quite as big. I do like that he had a stick blender to make the cocktails. That was probably a new thing then. And, uh, number 2 is he had this little like sushi rice roller thing. Oh yeah, so you cook the rice and then you roll it and it gives you a perfect bed of rice to lay the, uh, sushi over. Yeah, that's really good. Um, so, and they, they were sitting there just talking about how their life is just so perfect and it's too perfect and we shouldn't even eat this food because things are perfect and they're never going to change.

Steve

Never going to change. Um, I believe we then get a shot of him woken up in the morning. He's out on his balcony and he literally is. And again, Oliver Stone, your subtlety, it just wows me. Who am I? Just, you know, literally wondering out loud who has he become? Like, Jesus Christ, man. So good. So good.

Nic

But he's having some crisis of conscience.

Steve

Conscious and/or of identity at this point. Yeah, yeah. So, but then, then I think we get the scene where Darian and Gecko are chatting, and it's made clear to us that they do have some kind of a relationship.

Nic

Yes. Yeah. Um, and, you know, and we hadn't been shown really anything about that to this point. Yeah. So it's like, damn, Bud's finally settling down, everything's perfect, and then, yep, oh, she's with the, the boss is kind of taking advantage of Bud. Uh, but, uh, Gecko says to her, he's like, you know what I love about us? Like, we're the same. We're smart enough not to buy into the oldest trick running. Love.

Steve

Like, oh man, it's so bad. But yeah, that's giving us more insight into Gecko, I guess, at that point. Yeah. Um, we get a really quick moment where StockWatch, which is like, I guess, the, the sort of, uh, auditing and alerting arm of the SEC. Yep. They clearly see something.

Nic

Don't worry, folks, they've been defunded for 40 years. Jesus.

Steve

Um, but they, but they see something, uh, in a, in one of Bud's purchases related to Teldar, where it's like maybe it was like a huge volume or something. It just was out of the that they noticed, but that doesn't— we don't get anything more just then. We then cut to the Teldar shareholders meeting where Gekko has basically, you know, put to vote a takeover. This is a hostile takeover, so, you know, the board has a fiduciary responsibility for the shareholders, and the shareholders can vote on whether or not to accept this new ownership deal or if the current management will stay in place. And this is like probably the most famous speech in the movie is here. It's pretty long. Yeah. But, you know, the gist of it or the crux of Gekko's argument is that greed Greed, for lack of a better word, is good, right? Greed for land, greed for money, greed for knowledge, greed for love, like whatever it is that has driven his claim is that has driven basically all human innovation over all of humanity has all been driven by greed. This is his thing. And it's basically his argument to the shareholders that he should be the one running Teldar and not the current management.

Nic

Yeah. And he gets into, I mean, this is a technique that guys like this will do a lot is gets into like the payroll details of management stuff, because that'll always raise everybody's ire, even though it's like he's going to take a cut equivalent to 10 years what those guys will ever make, and they're actually doing work for it, you know.

Steve

But, you know, he meant like 18 vice presidents or whatever, and it does sound bad.

Nic

So, I mean, he's good at like cherry-picking details to make it sound like, hey, I'm just trying to solve this bloated company here, we're gonna get to the bottom of this. Yeah, so his speech about greed being good and everything, and, um, Um, you know, greed will save this country. And, uh, 40 years later, did it? I think he was wrong.

Steve

I gotta be honest, I think he was wrong. Um, but yeah, so, uh, after this whole thing, we get a scene where Bud is talking to Gekko about Blue Star Airlines again, and he's basically just like, I think we could buy this and I could run it, you know, like, it'll be amazing, you know, the, the union, you'll have union concessions, like, there'll be all this kind of stuff where it's like, we could make this if we, if we cut a little bit of fat here we could open up new lines. I mean, he actually seems like— Bud does— has an idea of like how to actually run the company. Yeah. And he wants to like basically get it— be able to come in and like set it straight.

Nic

He values those people like still having jobs because the risk is that the company's not doing well, uh, it's potentially going to go into bankruptcy, which means that the union contracts are going to be voided. Those people are going to be way more fucked than they are under Gekko's proposal of like a 20% wage cut. Exactly.

Steve

So, so this is the idea that Bud and Gordon is sold on it, and he, he goes— but I love there's a line Bud gives him in here that I gotta be honest, makes no sense whatsoever. When he says, Gordon, what I want, and I have never asked you for anything. Bitch, you called him 96 days in a row asking for stuff. Like, what do you mean? You've spent this entire movie doing nothing but asking Gordon Gekko for things. It was the most like unself-aware comment in a movie full of unself-aware people.

Nic

Like it's a very sales guy asshole kind of thing to do though, where they just immediately forget. Yeah, um, I like that they're on, uh, they're on a private jet discussing the excesses of airline unions, right?

Steve

Those greedy unions. Yeah, there's all those pensions and all this. So greedy. Jesus Christ.

Nic

Um, so Bud has arranged something now with, with his father and the other union representatives.

Steve

Yeah, like stewardesses and pilots and one other group, I think. Yeah, four of them there.

Nic

Yeah, so they're gonna come to his apartment his horrible fucking really ugly weird diary-looking apartment.

Steve

Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho would be embarrassed by this apartment, and he had terrible taste.

Nic

Seriously, it's wild. It doesn't make any damn sense. So his dad feels like he's getting kind of ambushed into this because he didn't think it was this kind of a meeting. Like, Gekko's lawyer's there, and he's like, a lawyer? I thought this was kind of a meet-and-greet, whatever. Yeah. And then Gekko tells the lawyer, he's like, oh, why don't you go walk around the block a couple hundred times? Yes. Um, yeah, so basically the deal is, uh, Gekko says if you guys will agree to 20% cut of your wages, you have to add more hours every month, we could save the airline. Otherwise it's going down, nobody's getting anything. Yeah. And this is all, you know, this is going to work out ultimately. Like, I have a 3-year plan, you'll be back up to your rates that you are, blah blah blah, we can open up new routes. And the other people are into it except for Martin Sheen. He sees right through Gekko. Gekko, not even based on what he's saying so much as just like knowing what kind of guy he is immediately.

Steve

Well, and I think, look, Gordon Gekko is not an unknown entity here. Yeah, true. This guy is probably in the area of notoriety, you know, today, not of like Elon Musk or anybody that large, but like the Koch brothers or Warren Buffett. Like I think people in this universe know who he is. If you have any idea about how the financial world works, you've heard the name Gordon Gekko, right? So, you know, he is, in Billions parlance, he is Bobby Axelrod, right? This is a known quantity. So there's that element where, yeah, I think like Bud's dad is just not— He just is too suspicious of Gecko's ultimate goals to think that he has anything but greed in mind, and he'll tear the company apart. But Bud is like, "No, you're kidding. Like, this is gonna be great." He like confronts his dad after his dad goes to leave, and they have a shouting match, full-on fight between father and son over like whether this is the right call or not. Not. Um, and you know, it seems that's a nasty—

Nic

I mean, yeah, Bud is a shithead during this. Like, he's telling his dad like, oh well, you're just— his dad's like, this guy's using you. Yeah. And Bud's like, you just can't stand to see me more successful, like that I've actually made something of my life, right? He's getting into this kind of shit. He says, uh, you were never there for me to his dad.

Steve

It's like, the guy— he had— we were here, we watched the beginning of the movie, we saw him lend you money and offer to have you come home and stay with him to save on rent. Like, this is the thing is normally I'm very much of the mind of like, hey, if an adult child, you know, is, is pushing back that hard against their parent, there was probably— yeah, the childhood wasn't great. Like, there was, you know what I mean? It's more on the parent than the child, you know, even as an adult. But in this scenario, we've literally seen his dad like be generous. Yeah, be offering. And so it's like, it doesn't work really, you know? It's like not— you can't sell the audience that Bud actually has any reason to be mad at his dad. And I think that's the point. I do think, again, this is Stone not being subtle, right? This is supposed to drive home further how Bud is a piece of shit. Yeah, that's, you know, what we're getting here.

Nic

Yeah, and it may be good by Oliver Stone because you end up with these movies sometimes that have shithead characters like Bud Fox, but it's made in such a way that you leave the movie thinking, oh, that guy's cool, right? That's how cool people act. Yeah, the number of people— it sounds like we're not doing that.

Steve

The number of people who misread Wolf of Wall Street and Jordan Belfort and stuff.

Nic

Yeah, exactly. Yep. Um, okay, so, so now we see we're back at Stockwatch. Yes. And we They're on the case. They have some information that's worth them pursuing. They're going to make some calls. They call up James Spader. I think the SEC calls him or something. And he calls Bud in because he's worried about this. And Bud is so fucking arrogant. He comes in with sunglasses on.

Steve

Keeps them on the whole time. Keeps them on the whole time.

Nic

And then when he sits down in the office chair, he spins around 3 times. I think he's high on coke.

Steve

I'm assuming he's high on coke at that point. Yeah. Um, but he basically tells him everything's fine and whatever. And then Spader's like, so are you here for the Blue Star meeting? And he goes, wait, what, what, what meeting? He's like, well, you're the new head executive of the company. Like, cause they've done the purchase apparently. Right. And they've installed Bud as president because that's what he wanted. That's what he and Gordon agreed to. So he's like, oh, what? Okay. So they go into this like big meeting at Spader's law firm where they're over, you know, on a call with apparently some of Gekko's people talking about how they're going to liquidate the company, sell off the planes, you know, all this kind of stuff, like sell all the the, the— I guess they have some land for like maintenance bays, whatever, sell that off, like all this stuff. And it's like, oh, holy shit, he didn't realize the place was being fire-sold off, you know. And so this is, this is Bud's wake-up call, uh, about what Gordon Gekko really is like. Um, and Bud confronts Gekko about it and asks him— and this is kind of back to what you're talking about when he was talking to Darian about like, oh, I'd like to ride my motorcycle across China after I stack enough cash. He keeps asking Gordon how much is enough, and it's like, you're asking the wrong question, pal. Like, that's not, there's no answer to that. Yeah, like there is no enough, like it doesn't exist.

Nic

Yeah, and Bud, you know, saying like, how many yachts can you water ski behind? Like, I wouldn't want to, you know, water ski behind something that large that doesn't move fast enough.

Steve

Yeah, one of the things I loved in the scene though, we're in Gordon's office while this is happening and he gives Bud a glass, a kind of cocktail, or like just like whiskey, but it's on the rocks. And, and, and this is actually where we do actually see Gordon sip alcohol, is in this scene for sure. He's got a neat brown liquor glass whiskey or scotch or something. But Bud's has got rocks in it. And the reason, you know, is you can hear it rattle through this entire scene. Through the whole scene, Bud is so angry that he's shaking, and he. Can you slightly hear the. Of his rocks glass? You know, at least I was watching with headphones on, so, no, that's awesome. I could definitely hear it. And I was like, what is that sound? And I realized the one or two times you could see his hand, he really is shaking. Ooh, I like that. Really, really carefully. So, you know, A, great audio, you know, sort of like production and audio editing and Stone's, you know, use there. But also great job, Charlie Sheen, to be able to subtly shake for that long of a scene to where you're not going crazy with it, but it's audible. Like, that was impressive. I've never really thought of Charlie Sheen as a particularly skilled actor, but this is a great scene for him.

Nic

Sounds like a few early episodes of this podcast where I had my big iced water here.

Steve

Yes, I finally have a bottle with no water in it. In it. See? Or no ice in it. You can't hear that, can you, people? I'm shaking my water.

Nic

It's really cool to see, to see Bud, you know, go off on Gekko here because, I mean, the power imbalance is still crazy there. So for— he's throwing a lot away. He's risking a lot by coming in here. But, you know, this meant something to Bud, and he did think, even though his plan was to make money off the deal, deep down he did think he was like doing something good for his dad and for all these people that, you know, depend on his dad. One of the lawyers in the meeting says Gekko makes about $60 or $70 million on this deal. Deal. Not bad for a month's work. That's crazy. So it's only been a month, you know, not a lot of time here. Um, Gecko says, uh, you know, he's going through this big speech about what he is, and, you know, the richest 1% in this country owns half the wealth, but— which I'm glad we fixed that. Oh my God, um, in the wrong direction. He says this, which I, which I think is really like important. He's like, I create nothing, I own. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Steve

You're not a producer, you're not a creator, You're not a manufacturer. You're not a maker of any kind. You're just a buyer or a seller and that's it. It's just, you know, it's gross. Yeah. Yeah.

Nic

Like you're not adding any value to the transaction. You're like, you're a middleman. You're, yeah. Yeah. So—

Steve

And then I think Bud and Darian have a conversation and she basically lets him know, if you're going up against Gordon Gekko, I'm out. Yeah. Like I don't, I'm not, I can't be with you to do it.

Nic

Darian's wearing a crazy fucking outfit in this scene. It's like an all leather and checkered red leather. She looks like Lightning McQueen or something. Something. It's really weird. You know, it's funny, I didn't notice.

Steve

And the reason I didn't notice, I felt like she was wearing crazy shit the whole movie, and I think I stopped noticing what she was wearing.

Nic

This was the pattern switched on me, so I had to, I had to comment on it. Yeah, so she's like, not like, that's her line, like, but as much as I've talked to you about a future and caring about you and stuff, like, this is my meal ticket. Like, his money's not going away. Yep. He's figured a way to not get caught, wink wink. And like, you know, that's a— it's a more reliable thing to hitch her wagon to.

Steve

Yeah, well, and she— and she is— I mean, he— she doesn't admit it.

Nic

She has sex with him too, right?

Steve

Well, she doesn't admit to him here, but it seems like they're still in a physical relationship and he— she hasn't told Bud that. And that would maybe— maybe he never even would have talked to her about his plan if he knew that. True.

Nic

Um, so yeah, so he's— he's pissed and, you know, this is it. And now we have a scene of like the— he's selling his condo and everything. Yeah, the ugly styrofoam columns are coming down and they're making it look nice like it looked like when he first got it, right? Um, but then we have like a, like a traumatic news for Bud is he finds out his father has had a heart attack and he's gonna go visit him in the hospital.

Steve

Yeah, where he sits down next to his dad on his dad's hospital bed and lights a cigarette because it's 1987 and apparently you're crazy. Smoke, not just in the hospital, but like in the— like, he's not in the ICU, but he's like in the recovery room after like a bypass. It's crazy. And he's smoking a cigarette. Like, it's wild.

Nic

Like, um, and you know, Bud, there's, there's part of it that seems like, you know, he's, he's obviously really shook by this, and especially with the way things ended with him and his dad. Yeah. Uh, and with this shit, you know, about to happen. So it hasn't happened happened yet, it's just imminent. Like, the deal's being discussed and we're gonna execute on it, and couple days or whatever, you know, business opens on Monday or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Um, but his dad kind of knows what's going on. Bud tells him, uh, he says, I don't think I've ever told you this before, but I love you.

Steve

We're just like, it's just like, ah, you know, it occurred to me, I never really thought of it before, but, uh, I'm so glad we're of the generation that constantly says I love you to our kids and back and forth they say it to us.

Nic

Like, honestly, it's like so crazy. 100%. It's taken me a long time to get them to squeak out of my parents once in a while. They're big. I'd be— we'd be like, I love you, and they're like, see ya. Like, all right, cool.

Steve

At least they don't say deuces.

Nic

Um, so, so Bud, you know, he tells his dad like, I love you. He said, you know, you're the only honest man I know. Yeah. By the way, I think I have a deal that's gonna work for us. Can I speak to the union for you? Like, can I speak on your behalf to the union?

Steve

And he does say your words, not mine. Like, like, like, I'm not going—

Nic

I'm gonna be as you.

Steve

Yes, like, I'm coming from your perspective now because I see it. So there's that. So his dad— and again, this is, you know, Martin Sheen's a fantastic actor. This is a great scene between these two. It's, it's, it's even better knowing, right, that the actors are father and son. They're obviously drawing on that relationship to do this scene. Sheen breaks down in a very realistic way where he's trying so desperately to hold back any kind of tears or emotion, but it just bursts out of him enough that it's visible. It's a really great scene for, for both actors, dude. And a lot of that stuff.

Nic

I mean, even the, you know, dad, you're just— you can't stand to see me more successful than you. Like, this is probably rooted in some real shit during that time, for sure. Um, yeah, definitely, definitely helped. Yeah. Um, so Bud's plan is that Sir Lawrence, since he's like, all right, kind of like a Trading Places type, hey, I got a way we can get back at this and, you know, uh, make this guy go bankrupt. And he tells him, you know, Gekko's making a play for this airline Yep. Like, I can get the union to tell him to fuck off, that they don't agree to the deal, and I can get them to agree with you. You can buy it, whatever. Yeah. So you gotta run it, you gotta buy it, right? You're not flipping this thing, you're not tearing it apart for, uh, pieces. Exactly. Uh, so yeah, he's, he's got it to work. I mean, it's crazy, the logistics, how quickly they can gather together all these people, like, on a given night, you know.

Steve

I would say unrealistic, but yeah, it is impressive. It doesn't, doesn't make a lot of sense, but Bud starts making moves moves, and they are buying Blue Star. He's getting people to buy Blue Star stock, basically, and it's raising the price, which is gonna cut into Gecko's, like, stuff, whatever. I, I— and here's the thing I would say: this plan that, like, hurts Gecko is so much more complicated than the ending of Trading Places. Yes, I can't follow any of it. Yeah, but there are moves being made, and whatever is happening is both good for the workers of Blue Star and apparently very, very bad for Gordon Gekko. Like, whatever they're doing, they're making him lose millions of dollars. Yeah, it appears he's on a phone call at one point, like, talking to, I think, to Bud basically. And Bud's like, oh, sorry, Gordon, you know, kind of thing. He like— and, and I think when maybe it was when Gekko hangs up, he says, I'm gonna tear his eyeballs out and fuck and suck his fucking skull. Yes. What the fuck?

Nic

Who's sucking a skull? That's so like—

Steve

like, I'm imagining, like, you know, sucking the pimento out of an olive or something. So it's like, that's how you're getting the eyeballs out, but you already said you'd tear the eyeballs out, right? What's in there? You can suck the brains. Very strange threat, but it does sound scary, I guess. Yeah, but yeah, this is the hardest to follow little ploy. Yeah, whatever it is, because then they're all waiting for the 4:30 bell or whatever it is, a 4 o'clock bell. And, and yeah, it's a good thing for everybody but Gordon. Whatever happened, Gordon lost money. That's all I really know. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And it just had to do with them being able to manipulate the stock price during that day so that the times at which Gekko bought in were like disadvantaged advantageous. He either did like margin calls where he had to like true up at the end of the day, kind of like the, the Duke Brothers. Um, so yeah, so it's looking good, you know. Gecko lost a shitload of money. Sir Lawrence has the company, and it seems like, all right, the good guys have won. And then Bud goes into the office the next day, and the mood is extremely grim. It's very somber.

Steve

It's really crazy how everybody's looking at him with this mixture of like disgust and sadness and whatever. And, uh, and I think he walks by Marv and goes, what, somebody die or something like that? And Marv goes, actually, yeah. Yeah. But he is, he walks into his office and there are representatives there from both the SEC and the NYPD and he's being arrested for insider trading, wires and securities frauds, et cetera. Like several charges. It's clear basically that Gekko sold him out. Yeah. Like a part of it's the StockWatch stuff, but I think it's clear that Gekko like did something.

Nic

He was able to push that because it seems like a StockWatch type investigation would have taken forever. And Gekko was able to kind of shove that along.

Steve

And again, because of that, the whole scene at the pool where the lawyer was telling him like, you're on your own, like whatever. If Gordon just dropped the anonymous tip on like everything Bud had done, because he would be aware of all of it, it wouldn't trace back to Gordon and Bud would be in deep shit. And I think that's basically what happened here. But I will say, because we're not quite to the end to end yet, but the ending of this movie, like the last 10 minutes of this movie, feels like it goes way too fast. Like this movie is kind of a slow burn for a while and like some things are happening, but there's definitely a lot of setup. And you get to the end here and it's like so many things happen in the last few minutes. The third act just sort of falls on itself. Yeah, because we get Bud getting arrested, then we have a rainy day meeting in Central Park between Bud and Gordon where, you know, whatever, they're chatting, and then Gordon punches him, you know, or whatever. They get like a physical altercation. Bud walks away to then walk back to his SEC or FBI, whoever they are, buddies, to take his wire off because he was wired the whole time. Um, we don't actually see any resolution to exactly what happens to Gordon. We just hear them listen to the thing where he says is like, I gave you this, I gave you that, I did all this.

Nic

Punching him and admitting to crimes. It's really good. Like terrible offset Gordon Gekko.

Steve

Very, very Hegseth. But yeah, but he was wired. And then the last kind of the very last scene is Bud's dad driving him to the courthouse. Dad and mom, I guess it's both his parents driving him to the courthouse. And he says something about like, well, you know, like you'll get to, 'cause like he's gonna lose his license. Obviously not gonna be a lot of trading. So he talks about getting him hired at Blue Star to like work or whatever. And he's like, dad, you know I'm going to jail. Jail. Like, yeah, like, stop.

Nic

And the dad's just like, well, you know, maybe that's the price of this. Like, he's very— like, he's not like, I'm gonna do what I can to get you out of jail. Like, very— do for one thing. No, like, good. And he said, uh, something about, you know, you, you got to get out there and create instead of living off the buying and selling of others, uh, which I think is a great, a great lesson. So yeah, we, we end with Bud just kind of walking up the steps to the courtroom. Yeah. And, you know, we don't have a definite like Bud Fox was sentenced to, whatever. Which is kind of— it's kind of cool. But like you said, for as long as this movie was, to just kind of get a little at the end—

Steve

I feel like my issue with the ending is more that a lot of— too much of it felt inferred, where it's like we're just supposed to understand that, like, you know, and I guess we— which I guess we do, like, but it's, it's just like, okay, so apparently Bud cut some kind of deal with the SEC, or why did he go get Gecko on, on wire, right? Right. He wouldn't have risked it if they didn't offer him something.

Nic

And it lets you be confused for a while because he gets arrested and then he's talking to Gecko right away. You don't see anything about the wire until that whole scene is done.

Steve

But you do kind of have to wonder, why is he even out in public if he's been arrested for this? You'd think, true, they wouldn't—

Nic

you know, you can get out on bail for a crime like that. That's not a stay-in-jail kind of crime.

Steve

That's fair. That's a good point. Um, but anyway, that's, that's Wall Street.

Nic

That's the end. And we get, uh, we get a very weird effect of like the new New York skyline where— and it says 'The End' in such a way where it's like, did a third grader make this? Like, that's, that's crazy. Uh, and they play, uh, the great, um, 'This Must Be the Place' by the Talking Heads. Oh, there you go. And the movie. Yeah. So yeah, that's, uh, that's Wall Street. That has been Wall Street for us.

Steve

All right, Nic, this was your pick. Why don't you give us your, uh, your breakdown first?

Nic

Yeah, so as predicted, I think this was a really fun one to talk about, and there's so much stuff that's seeped into the culture, uh, that I think was important to get from this movie. Um, I like the performances in it. I do kind of agree. I mean, the Daryl Hannah worst actress— I don't know if it's worst actress so much as just worst character. Yeah, fair. Like, I just don't— I don't know who could have turned that character around to make it a likable, uh, performance. Um, Oliver Stone hammering you over the head with stuff is interesting because is— it's a choice, right? Right. But it reminds me a lot— I used to always make fun of, uh, they made this like made-for-VH1, uh, dramatization about MC Hammer. And you know, the whole thing about MC Hammer is that he went bankrupt. And during this whole movie, the first half, he's just like, I'm never gonna run out of money, you know, I'm gonna be too legit for the rest of my life. And I, I remember thinking like, God, this is so stupid. But in this movie, it worked a little bit better. I like Sheen's performance. He's not a likable guy, but I think it's a, it's a good view of like that type of guy. Sure. And Oliver Stone, I mean, he had a few like great ones in a row around this time. Like he was really in the zone here. I am going to give Wall Street a 3 out of 5. I think it's a little long. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth seeing. And I think the view inside that type of like stockbroker high end— and there's so many people who are getting fucked over in these deals. So every time Gekko's making money, a bunch of nameless, faceless people, getting fucked over in this, you know. And I think it's a decent view of like America at that time and, and pretty fair portrayal of those guys. That's— so yeah, I'm giving it 3 out of 5. What about you, Steve? Not too bad.

Steve

Yeah, I'm in the similar ballpark. I think that the movie is interesting. It's not too long. It's a longer movie, but he kind of, kind of couldn't cut anything out really because we only get so much information Stories like this take more storytelling than I think Oliver Stone was able to give us, just in the constraints of like being a feature-length film and the number of kind of like detailed, you know, there are several parts of this movie where a lot of planning ends up in this particular kind of stock deal and it means this thing and it happens like 3 times and that's too many for us to understand. Like the reading Trading Places, the reason Trading Places works is it's all based on one insider trading problem, you know, through the whole movie that resolves at the end. This has like 3 because it has like the initial blue star thing. It has the Teldar thing and it has the second blue star thing, right? And it's like they get progressively harder to understand as you go along, which is kind of a problem for the movie. It makes the movie less understandable the later you're in it, which is really bad. If it was the other way around and the most complicated one was up front, that'd be kind of thing of like if you got through it, the rest of the movie makes more sense as you go. This feels a little like backwards of that. I'm not sure exactly, but I don't know that I would fully recommend like, oh, if you haven't seen Wall Street, go see it. I'd say go watch Boiler Room.

Nic

Honestly, I will say go watch Boiler Room. Yeah.

Steve

You know, that movie's great. Its illegalities are much more easily sort of like understood.

Nic

Well, and they have the voiceover explaining how that stuff works, which I think this could have benefited from for sure.

Steve

I was going to mention that the reason that one works so well, because I've got two examples, but the reason Boiler Room works better is the, the voiceover, the narration from Giovanni Ribisi's character helps explain things that are going on that maybe aren't as obvious. The other thing that I would watch instead of Wall Street is the series billions. And because they have 10 to 13 episodes of a season to like set all these things in motion, you get detail and you get understanding of the crimes and how they're committed and like why they're bad and what's actually happening because they've got 13 hours or whatever to tell you over the course of a season. And there's like 7 seasons or something. So there's all these things that are just like, you have time to actually ingest what's happening and understand it. And Wall Street suffers from not having that. Um, I'm a 2.5 out of 5 on Wall Street, just kind of like the highest thumbs down basically that I can get. Like, I'm not really a fan. It's got a couple of great lines in it. Michael Douglas is amazing. He really earned the Oscar and his great performance as Gordon Gekko. I've never seen the sequel, so I have no idea if it was any good or not.

Nic

I don't— yeah, if it only has like 30% of the original people and it's made like 30 years later, it's like, nah. Yeah, so never—

Steve

don't even worry about that. But yeah, I'm a 2.5 out of 5 on Wall Street. So that makes us 5.5 out of 10, uh, for The Two Dads on Wall Street, which is, you know, a little lower compared to like some of the ratings we were talking about earlier, but that's where we land. Yeah.

Nic

So, all right, well, 5.5 out of 10 for Wall Street, and, uh, that was 1987. Yes. As we go through the two decades here, uh, what do you have coming up for us for 1988, Steve? So I had picked—

Steve

I'll be honest, I had originally picked Bull Durham for us for 1988, but we pivoted away from that with the incredibly sad passing of Catherine O'Hara O'Hara, who's like one of my favorite actresses. I know somebody who's been important to you, very, you know, one of your favorites as well. Um, love Miss O'Hara so much. I, I'm a huge Schitt's Creek fan. That's one of the things I've always loved. I've, you know, loved her in since I've seen it, but she does so much going so far back, you know, in the entertainment that we love and we've seen already in Home Alone. Um, but, um, we're gonna go and we're gonna watch another Catherine O'Hara movie next week. And I think what we're gonna see, um, is, you know, it's not just her. There's a lot of, you know, we're talking again sort of about, you know, maybe people we haven't seen yet. There's several people in this we have seen, but, you know, actors we need to make sure we cover in this era, right? So this movie stars Geena Davis, who we have seen, but Alec Baldwin, who I don't think we have yet. No. Um, we've also got, uh, Winona Ryder. We've unfortunately have to watch Jeffrey Jones again.

Nic

I'm so sorry, but back to back JJs.

Steve

Well, not quite back to back, but too close for my comfort. Catherine O'Hara and Michael Keaton as the titular Beetlejuice. So we are going to go watch another Tim Burton Danny Elfman Lemon Joint, by the way. All right. And we're going to watch 1988's Beetlejuice next week. Rest in peace, Catherine O'Hara. Absolutely. So that's a wrap. If you like what you hear, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a 5-star review. It helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check out our website at twodads1movie.com. That's the number 2 and the number 1. There you can explore the movies we've covered, sign up for our newsletter, The Rewind, and even get sneak previews of upcoming episodes. We'd also love it if you followed us on Instagram at @twodads1movie. Once again, this has been Wall Street, another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks, everyone.