Real quick – I finally managed to see The Wolf of Wall Street today, thought I’d write up some impressions…
For starters, I began in the business on Long Island at the tail-end
of that era and I had met a lot of the guys depicted in the film while
cold-calling at Duke & Company during the summer after my freshman
year. They really were dumbasses and savage maniacs, but to the young
guys who didn’t know any better, they were Ferrari-driving gods.
Duke & Co was the boiler room spin-off opened and run by
ex-Stratton Oakmont guys who had broken away during the regulatory
troubles. I’m fairly sure that the Asian character in the movie,
“Chester Ming” is meant to portray Victor Wang, one of the founders of Duke (Jordan
refers to him as “the depraved Chinaman” in the book). The big irony is
that Duke & Co’s office was on Third Avenue in the 50′s, next door
to the Lipstick Building where, even then in the late 1990′s, Bernie
Madoff was running his secret (but much larger) fraud all along.
I’ve known ten or twelve guys who worked at the Lake Success
headquarters of Stratton during its heyday; all the stories are true and
there’s very little embellishment in the movie. It all happened and
then some. I’ve been hearing these stories for fifteen years. There was a
diaspora of sorts that happened after that firm went down, a thousand
others had opened up shop as the brokers were scattered like seeds in
the wind. Boiler room brokerages had sprung up from Westchester to New
Jersey to Staten Island to the Financial District in Manhattan to Boca
Raton, Florida. But nowhere was there as heavy a concentration as there
was on Long Island. At one point, there was a nickel broker-dealer in
every glass office tower in Suffolk and Nassau Counties (and many big
buildings had several firms housed on different floors, imagine the
stairwells).
The scripts used in the movie were the exact same ones taught to
every NY metro area broker in the late 1990′s. I printed the entire
Belfort pitch (which itself had been stolen from the Madison Avenue
office of Lehman Brothers) in my book Backstage Wall Street,
I’m fairly certain the producers got their hands on it for the film. I
doubt Jordan had a copy lying around from twenty years ago. They also
used the term “Wildebeest” which is something I use on TV a lot to
describe runaway stocks. My friend Paul and I made it up in a finance
context five years ago, so I’m flattered, I guess.
The great irony that’s not discussed is that Belfort, had he done
Wall Street brokerage the legitimate way beginning in the late 1980′s,
would probably have become a billionaire by now. I could picture him
running a hedge fund of funds business or being a brokerage CEO and just
selling the shit out of it while other people did all the real work. He
could have been a major player legitimately if he wasn’t in such a
rush.
Leo’s Long Island accent was perfect, so was Jonah’s. And I should
know. Don’t be surprised if they start talking like that in real life
now, it’s kind of addicting after a while
Margot Robbie as Nadine. Oh my god.
The drug stuff was sad/hilarious. Leo’s scene on Lemmon quaaludes
might have been the most humorous thing he’s ever done on-screen.
The real Jordan Belfort has a cameo at the end where he introduces
Leo as Belfort the motivational speaker. He’s tan and fit and
undoubtedly having a great time. Not sure how anyone consulting on a
biopic of their own life starring and directed by Oscar winners could
even be capable of remorse.
I found it pretty shocking that they didn’t incorporate one scene
showing the victims of this systematic theft. They don’t show the face
of a single one, although we hear a handful on the phone. These scenes
are played so that the audience is meant to laugh at the “customers”
whilst high-fiving with the Wolf and his crew. It’s pretty ugly.
The female boiler room broker character was based on a woman I knew
named Chrissie. Only she wasn’t just an ordinary “single mom,” she was
actually a stripper who was so aggressive that the Strattonites figured
she’d be a killer on the phones. She was, until they hauled her out in
cuffs from another firm years later over Stratton-era IPOs.
There are still a handful of wannabe Belforts and mini-Strattons out
there to this day. There are a handful of firms still holding out and
doing the whole yelling into the phones while wearing Armani suits
thing. A big one was taken down this past summer, but the brokers simply
jump to a new firm and start all over again. These days, they can’t
take inside rips in penny stocks, so it’s more about churning accounts
using real stocks or selling clients private placements. There’s a good
chance you’re talking to a boiler room broker if his office is actually
located on actual Wall Street. But these guys are dying out. Their
licenses are swiss cheese and potential suckers don’t answer their
landline phones anymore anyway – hard to con someone over the phone you
can’t get in touch with. It’s been over for a while but what else are
they going to do? They think Stratton’s coming back someday and they’ll
get rich again selling shit over the phone.
The movie itself if extremely well made and entertaining. Lots of people are saying it reminds them ofGoodfellas and I agree. Maybe even a little more like Casino given
the theme – guys who had no business running something that lucrative
could never be smart enough to hold on to it without going too far.
100% of teenage boys who see this movie are going to want to grow up
to be Jordan. I’m sure Scorsese didn’t set out to accomplish that but
it’s inescapable. Oliver Stone didn’t think he was inventing Gordon
Gekko to be the role model for a million young would-be finance guys,
but that’s exactly what happened. Don’t think Belfort and Danny Porush (on
whom Jonah’s character Donny Azoff is said to be based) didn’t have
serious Gekko envy, that was the blueprint. Gekko’s like Billy the Kidd
in that regard. He’s still quoted, revered and even emulated in every
corner of the business world.
I recommend seeing it, if you can get past the real moral issues that some have raised. I get the argument against going to see it, but I couldn’t stay away.
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