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.
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 Mick Briana.
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve
and I'm Nick, 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 Nick, 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? 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. 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— 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Gordon Gekko wouldn't be happy with that result.
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 Nick, why don't you kick us off, man? 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. 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. 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. Yeah, basically, if I can sell an investment idea to Gordon Gekko,
that's going to open up so many doors for me. And it validates his whole,
like, life progress to that point, right?
Yeah, everything— 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. I swear every time
I watch a movie, you know, it is like, dude, I feel like
we're seeing this a lot. 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. 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. Like 90-something, yeah, it's like, yeah,
long time. 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. 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. 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. 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. And that was the player whose glove my parents could afford.
There you go. So I had a Dave Winfield glove for sure. The other kids
had Ken Griffey Jr. And, you know, yeah, that's out of my range. Yeah,
I think I had a Jose Canseco. 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. Yeah, maybe the only good guy in a sense, the only kind of like
somewhat innocent, not trying to put something over on somebody.
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. He's like, I'm in finance. Yeah, I'm an account executive, Dad. Like, what do
you do then? I sell things too. Fuck, shit. Like. You're selling financial instruments
instead of vacuums, buddy. But like, it's basically the same thing. 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. 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. 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. So it's not going to make
me a good guy, but it's not my fault, right? It's the world. Yeah,
it's not me, Dad, it's the world. 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. And having that hanging over the head
would have like suppressed the stock price even for the meantime. 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. 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. 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. It's like Pacific Heights.
I think they had good nudity at the beginning. That was
in the cold open. It was while the credits were running and then not
Nothing. And it's just such a tease. 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. 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— yeah, he's not being entitled. He's like, I think
this is where it'll take me to get a little face time. 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. 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. 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. 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. And he says he's a ballbuster, but he's a ballbuster with Knicks
tickets. So it's kind of like, seriously? Yeah, I'll take that. 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. 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. 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. Go here, tell them I sent you. Yeah. And then when Bud's
food came, what the fuck? It was like a pot roast with like an egg
yolk on top. 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. It's insane. What the fuck?
But is there more '80s excess of a dish than
beef tartare? 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. 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. 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. 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. People are like,
yeah, he always says this bullshit, but he's at brunch for 2 hours every day.
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. 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. 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— 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. 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. 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. She knows who she's blowing. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Like, you know, this is like, I'm not gonna get something past you.
I'm not getting it past you at all. 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. 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. 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. Right. Bad people. Agreed.
Yes. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Yeah. Yeah. 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. Subtly not Stone's strong
suit. 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. 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. 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— 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. 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. We haven't gone there yet, but it looks like something Delia Dietz
would have made. 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. I,
it's like, shut the fuck up. It's so insufferable. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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? 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? 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. 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? 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. 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? 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.
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— 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. 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. 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. The good old victimless crime of
insider trading, right? Yeah. 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— 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. 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. 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. 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. It looks like a skull chandelier, frankly. 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.
So I guess you then cut and then tape together, I guess, to make the
documents. 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. But it got him the info he wanted.
He's getting the info. 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. 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. 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. I'm interested in having sex with you, but not anything.
You go do that and produce your antiques. That's a great idea. And then she's
talking about that, and Bud's like, I'll take you, punk. Public. It's like,
oh, shut the fuck up, dude. 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. 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. 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. So just, just to flex, just to, uh, but also it's
nice for both parties to be able to be making things right. 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. 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.
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.
That's interesting. So yeah, we're getting that. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. It's like,
really? Jesus, that's forward. Good God.
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. 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. The other thing she says is
my husband, my husband might be able to get you a 10% mortgage. Right,
which is so insanely high. 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.
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. 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.
I forgot about that too, but then she does his apartment
with brick, and then Dorian makes it into fucking Caligula's playhouse.
It looks like shit. It's so bad. 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. 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. But he's having some crisis of
conscience. 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. 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. 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. Don't worry, folks, they've been defunded for
40 years. Jesus. 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. 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. But, you know, he meant like 18 vice presidents or whatever, and it
does sound bad. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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?
Those greedy unions. Yeah, there's all
those pensions and all this. So greedy. Jesus Christ. Um,
so Bud has arranged something now with, with his father and
the other union representatives. Yeah, like stewardesses and pilots and one other
group, I think. Yeah, four of them there. Yeah, so they're gonna come to his
apartment his horrible fucking really ugly weird diary-looking
apartment. Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho would be embarrassed by this apartment,
and he had terrible taste. 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. 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— 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. 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. 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. The number of people who misread Wolf
of Wall Street and Jordan Belfort and stuff. 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. Keeps them on the whole time. Keeps them on the whole
time. And then when he sits down in the office chair, he spins around 3
times. I think he's high on coke. 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.
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. 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.
Sounds like a few early episodes of this podcast where I had
my big iced water here. 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. 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.
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. Like you're not adding any value to the transaction. You're like, you're a middleman.
You're, yeah. Yeah. So— 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. 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.
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. 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. Yeah, well, and she— and she is— I mean, he— she doesn't
admit it. She has sex with him too, right? 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. At least they don't say deuces.
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? And he does say your words, not mine. Like, like, like,
I'm not going— I'm gonna be as you. 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. 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.
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? Who's sucking a skull?
That's so like— 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Punching him and admitting to crimes. It's really good.
Like terrible offset Gordon Gekko. 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. 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— 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. 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. 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— you know, you can get out on bail for a
crime like that. That's not a stay-in-jail kind of
crime. That's fair. That's a good point. Um, but anyway, that's, that's Wall Street.
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. All right, Nick, this was
your pick. Why don't you give us your, uh, your breakdown first? 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.
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. Honestly, I will
say go watch Boiler Room. Yeah. You know, that movie's great. Its illegalities are
much more easily sort of like understood. Well, and they have the voiceover explaining
how that stuff works, which I think this could have benefited from for sure.
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. 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— 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.
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— 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. I'm so sorry,
but back to back JJs. 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.
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us on Instagram at @twodads1movie. Once again, this has been Wall Street, another episode of
Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. Thank you so much for listening,
and we'll catch you next week. Thanks,