Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

[Gold Trumpet]

Wall Street 3 sounds interesting because if it's a sincere thought, it means there is much more to this project than meets the eye. Vanity Fair said this film is very ambitious so hopefully Stone has elevated the series into another gear. And sequels aren't a new idea for him either. He was very close to doing a sequel to JFK and had some excellent script work done for the film but legal issues took over the project and he had to shut it down. Also a third Wall Street would mean this new one would have to be a hit and since it cost $70 million to make, that could be unlikely.

[cinemanarchist]

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/05/reversal_of_for.php

Fairly positive review from Jeffrey Wells (SPOILERS)

[MacGuffin]

Cannes 2010: Oliver Stone: Financial system is suffering from congenital heart failure
Source: Los Angeles Times

Few Hollywood figures are as polarizing as Oliver Stone. But few messages go down as smoothly as the one the "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" director offered about the financial sector, and the attempts to overhaul it, at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday.

"It was a triple bypass," Stone said of the financial crash of 2008. "They put a stent in it but I don't think they solved it."

Like Michael Moore and other polemicists, Stone didn't have all the answers for how to fix the financial system that has brought the economy low (while leaving many in the banking sector untouched) — a system that continues to vex and divide both Congress and the White House. But in his Cannes news conference, the filmmaker — who since his "Wall Street" came out back in 1987 has been a one-man chronicler of greed and the system's ill-fated attempts to curb it — had an impressively level-headed assessment of what's broken, drawing from the personal as well as the philosophical.

"My father was a real broker and he was a real economist," said Stone of his father, Louis Stone, who worked as a stockbroker. "He believed in serving his clients. And that's gone. There are no clients."

Stone added that bankers were initially supposed to serve as intermediaries but wound up with too much power. He also spoke knowledgeably about a number of Wall Street issues, including the eroded firewall between research and investment divisions; love him or hate him, he's a director who does his research. (In fact, the production sought access to, or conversations with, several major U.S. investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, but were turned down by all the biggies; only a smaller outfit north of the border, the Royal Bank of Canada, welcomed the production.)

In the from-the-hip session, Stone also spoke about his desire to make a documentary about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an effort that had gained some traction before negotiations with the Iranian president became "ridiculous."

Stone wound up going on to make "South of the Border," a film about Latin American leaders, instead — as well as, he revealed at his news conference, a third installment in his interview series with Fidel Castro, which he said found the Cuban president physically ailing but mentally lucid. But the taste of his previous effort lingers. "It's an ugly situation," Stone said of the discussions to shoot Ahmadinejad. "I don't know who's lying and who's telling the truth."

[Pubrick]

now this is a guy who knows what he's talking about.

i wonder what he means about ahmadinejad. is he talking about the internally convoluted business negotiations between his producers and ahmadinejad's ppl, or some bizarre allegations by the iranians about the US that he's starting to believe? probly not the latter, altho he's been hanging out with so many of those crazies that their super-villian worldviews might start to make sense. and we know from his affiliations with Shia LeBeouf that he's not averse to sympathizing with ignorant jackasses.

[Gold Trumpet]

It's the former. In this clip, at the 8:10 moment, a question is asked that begins Stone's history with the Iran project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JGCWzLAqU&feature=related

It's continued in part 3 of the press conference clip.

[Gold Trumpet]

The Guardian is a good constant critic of Stone and I have no problems with their disagreements, but now they are articulating a dumb idea by someone else to say why the Wall Street movies not only have nothing to say about a supposed financial crisis (which the author believes if exists, could do so for natural reasons), but Wall Street and other films are what to blame for the financial situation in America because they changed how people see businessmen. This is rationalization, oddball thinking, and associating at its worst, but just because this guy was able to take his idea out of left field and make it sound, he got an article published in a journal. Awesome.


Improbable research: It's movies that made the crisis a financial one
Filmmakers have encouraged us to see the present crisis as financiers' handiwork
Source: The Guardian
by Marc Abrahams

Don't blame financiers for the recent financial crisis, Professor Larry E Ribstein says in his monograph, How Movies Created the Financial Crisis. The true villains, he reveals, are Hollywood moviemakers. Their films, Ribstein tells us, "created the 'financial' crisis by presenting a particular narrative of recent economic woes in which finance played a starring role". Their motive: to "help audiences accept not only [the movie] Wall Street 2, but also the regulation of hedge funds and the prosecution of financiers."

Ribstein is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones chair in law and the associate dean for research at the University of Illinois college of law. His article was published in the Michigan State Law Review.

He unmasks the film-makers' hidden legal strategy — a strategy so deeply rooted in their own psyches that they themselves may not be fully aware of it: "Resentment of business is pervasive ... Film-makers have prepared society to treat the crisis as financiers' handiwork. This view helps shape the legal aftermath of the crisis ... Film-makers' focus on capitalist villains could also help explain why financiers figure so prominently in prosecutions of businesspeople during crackdowns on corporate crime".

Professor Ribstein's article explains how the film-making community as a whole bears responsibility.

But some more than others. "The prime example," Ribstein says, "is Oliver Stone's 1987 film, Wall Street, which portrayed an evil insider-trading company-destroying takeover artist. The film was followed by the prosecution of Drexel Burnham and its key trader, Michael Milken, and the latter's sentencing to 10 years in jail for technical violations of a federal anti-takeover statute, widely misinterpreted as insider trading".

Ribstein goes on to explain that popular films are largely responsible for the legal actions taken against business executives who might otherwise be seen as admirable citizens. Those who were treated most unfairly, he says, include "Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, of Enron ... and financiers Bernie Madoff and Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin".

Ribstein wants to correct the public's misperceptions. The crisis, he writes, "might have been nobody's fault", or it "might have been the government's fault", or it might be due to speculators, or to the public in general.

He points out that, despite all those possibilities, blame was heaped on to "the financiers who created and sold financial instruments such as collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps, that crashed in the economic crisis". Through little fault of their own, those individuals were tagged as "perfect villains for a narrative about the 'financial' crisis".

The movie Wall Street 2 [actual title Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps] starring Michael Douglas, is scheduled for release on 24 September. If Ribstein is correct, we owe it to ourselves to ignore not just the film, but any suggestion that there's been a "financial crisis" or that any financiers would have had anything to do with it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/31/improbable-research-financial-crisis

[Gold Trumpet]

Stand alone clip:

http://www.latinoreview.com/news/new-wall-street-clip-brings-out-quite-the-bear-11040

Four short clips:

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/4-Wall-Street-Money-Never-Sleeps-Clips-20497.html

Spanish TV spot:

[Gold Trumpet]

A decent and short featurette with few spoilers. Just gloss.

[Gold Trumpet]

A thorough interview with Stone on Wall Street 2 and other things.

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2010/09/23/oliver_stone_interview_by_mzs

[Gold Trumpet]

Gut reaction: It plays a lot like the original Wall Street. The talk in the film is deft and technical, but the story structure is straight forward. Like the original, it becomes a morality play. Stone was able to break down structure in W. and make smaller moments extend out more to impact the themes and make everything feel more ambiguous. I could go back and watch this movie and notice a lot of a small technical moments which deepen the character context (linear editing) but I don't think it will be that extensive. Stone still has an amazing filmmaking pulse to see the next scene and make scenes dance with each other. The effects in this movie are sizzling, but it's when his effects are crowding the comfort zones of traditional scene-relaying is where he does his best work. The original Wall Street isn't very good to me, but it was ahead of its time with its cultural ideas of Wall Street. This film still has a good pulse in that fashion and will survive. It's an even better movie than the originally technically. First viewing, I'm just not sure it ranks up with Stone's better storytelling methods. However, later viewings could change my mind. Any Given Sunday grew amazingly over time.

Edit: A good ambiguity in the film is the role of money, finances, and capitalism. The film comes to no conclusion and purposely sets up a row of characters to represent different sectors of our economic interest. However, the question is, whether the film is provoking much with the constant contrasts and abstraction. I think so, but I will need to watch the film a lot to more to get a working philosophy on it.

[Derek]

MINOR SPOILERS


What a dud.

I never thought I'd be bored by an Oliver Stone film....oh wait, I did walk out of Alexander....

I wouldn't say this is an unnecessary sequel because its interesting to see Gekko updated to these times. Where they take him as a character though, ughhh...I thought Sarandon's character could have been excised with nothing lost...Charlie Sheen cameos not as Bud Fox but Charlie Harper...pretty pointless too...This movie lacked the excitement and energy that came with the wheeling and dealing of the first film. I suppose just by the nature of the economy in the story that would affect that aspect, and the music didn't help...but this movie just sits there.

And what's with the weird superimposing of characters (using wipes and dissolves) to make characters appear in settings they are not in? The car scene is especially distracting.

Missed opportunity.

[MacGuffin]

Q&A: Oliver Stone
'Wall Street 2' director talks about Gordon Gekko's return
By Gregg Kilday; THR

LOS ANGELES -- The son of a stockbroker, director Oliver Stone returns to the scene of the financial crimes he first explored in his 1987 "Wall Street" with his new feature "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." Once again, Michael Douglas plays the iconic financier Gordon Gekko — he won the best actor Oscar for his original performance — as Gekko is released from jail into a new world of complex financial derivatives. Stone spoke with THR film editor Gregg Kilday about his decision to make a sequel, how Wall Street has become even more ruthless since the first film and whether Gekko is a hero.

What was your first reaction when Michael Douglas and producer Edward Pressman first proposed a sequel in 2006?

Stone: I was open to it. I didn't see the need for it. But they commissioned a script from Stephen Schiff. It had many good things in it, including the daughter of Gekko's character, Winnie. But at that time, it just seemed out of context, a celebration of wealth. So I passed on it. Then around early 2009, Ed and Michael reached out to me with a new script written by Allan Loeb, which was very interesting. It hooked me. It had more elements, but it was still around the hedge fund world. We did a lot of research, and we moved it to the banking world and changed quite a bit over the course of the next eight to nine months, during the shooting and during the editing. The script for me is an ongoing thing. Even after Cannes [where the film debuted in May], we were doing some changes.

How deeply did you research the subject?

Stone: I read William Cohen's book on Bear Stearns, that was the first big book I read. But the Rolling Stone article that was so famous by Matt Tai, that came out just as we were going to shoot, but I'd received something similar in terms of information from Eliot Spitzer, the ex-prosecuting attorney who took on a lot of the Wall Street cases, especially AIG. And he said to us take a strong look at what Goldman Sachs is doing here. He said Goldman is playing it both ways, they are going long and short. It's a very interesting concept for a script, because as we say in the movie, it was like a bookie who books bets going in and out. That was quite something. He said look at this nexus of Goldman/AIG as an evil empire.

The first "Wall Street" dealt with insider trading, which was relatively easy to dramatize. The current financial system is so abstract, did that present problems for you as a dramatist?

Stone: It's much more complex. Derivatives have blossomed into a new industry, way beyond the bond market. It's a huge thing. We certainly didn't push it, but we did cover it. It's talked about, but it doesn't have to be known by audience. It's in there, especially in the Federal Reserve Board meetings — the concept of being too big to fail. What you get from the movie is that the banks are really running the show. They are counterparties to each other. In that Federal Reserve Board scene, you see right at the beginning that Frank Langella's bank is dependent on all the other banks. In a sense, inside information doesn't mean anything anymore, because they all know each other's business and trade with each other. With computers being so high-frequency in the trading, let's say you go to market with some inside information, well another computer can pick up that information and beat you out by seconds. It's what Goldman has been doing. They can beat you by a few seconds and make a few pennies on a trade, and they do so much volume, they will trade for a half-a-penny profit. That would have been inconceivable in the 1980s, or in my father's era before that.

What else has changed on Wall Street since the first film?

Stone: It's gotten 10 times bigger, 100 times bigger. No one can control the beast. I think this movie is the opposite of first movie. The first movie was going into the '80s when that sense of greed was infinite. Then we had deregulation for 30 years with Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes. But we're coming to the end of an era. No one can control it, it's so deregulated. No one knows where it's going. We don't know if a market will collapse tomorrow or a currency will collapse. There's constant insecurity. As a result, our economy is complete uncertainty and on medication.

How did Michael Douglas like slipping back into the role?

Stone: Michael was great in this. I thought he was really comfortable, like an old shoe. He loved it.

Do you have any updates on the state of his health?

Stone: At the premiere, about two weeks ago, he looked great. I know he's suffering, it's hard. But he was certainly lifted up by the premiere and the reception to [the film].

How did you decide how Gekko would fare in this new environment?

Stone: We felt our way towards it. The idea was we would go in a complete opposite direction. In the other movie, he was a one-note villain, just interested 24/7 in money, money, money. In this movie, he has no money at the beginning. He's coming out of prison and no one will talk to him. So the idea is he's a smart guy and survivor, a sly fox and a bastard, too. So he makes his way back from nothing. He was always a contrarian, so he makes his fortune in a down market. If you pay attention to the movie, you see that he's buying when everyone else is selling. As a result, he takes the 100 million given him by Shia [LaBeouf's character], and he makes a billion-one. He builds up the beginnings of a large, large hedge fund. At the same time, because he's an older man, he's closer to death. Who's he going to leave his money to? I think some of the critics have gotten it wrong, frankly. They say that he goes soft. Hardly. He's smart. I think that's a Gekko trait. I think he wants to be a father and a grandfather, but it's about his ego, too.

Even though Gekko was the villain in the first film, his greed-is-good speech became a kind of rallying cry for those who admired him. How do you make a film set in a world of wealth and privilege without glamorizing it?

Stone: You know, Gekko was a crook. I don't think anybody went to Wall Street with the idea that they would go to jail. But I think people related to the fact that he's successful, he's smart. They still do. He's very sly in this new movie — he's older, he's more mature, he waits. He's very passive in the first part of the movie, he's waiting for his opportunities. At the end of the ball game, he's pretty sharp. People are against Wall Street now, so it's easy to be simple and say it's all black-and-white, but it's not. This is a gray movie. It's really about six people in a shark tank, each one has a different set of values. It's very hard not to glamorize it. I was criticized for the same thing in the first movie. When I did "World Trade Center," I was underground, in a hole, in the dark after 9/11. In this movie, you look down on New York from the sky. The intention was the same as the old movie — it was to make it slick and glossy. We wanted it to look very sexy, because it does to these people. They like this world and its surfaces.

[Stefen]

I liked it. Sure, it didn't make much sense and was pretty silly since you can't really make a convincingly badass revenge flick with a bunch of square ass uptight white Wall Street dorks, but overall, I was highly entertained.

I loved all the technical talk. It kind of scared me, really. Shit, is THAT actually happening? It's sickening to think that I have to decide between Pabst Blue Ribbon or the cheaper Old Milwaukee to save 15 cents when I hit up the liquor store, and then those jerks on Wall Street are getting million dollar bonus checks.

I still can't take Shia seriously as an adult.

Carey Mulligan was completely wasted, and the Gordon Gecko character really served no purpose at all except to allow this to be a sequel. Would have really liked to watch two hours of Brolin (who was excellent) and Shia trying to one-up eachother.

It was a fine way to spend a Thursday afternoon.

[Alexandro]

So this film is frustrating.
You have the old Oliver Stone at some moments: visual flourishes, weird editing techniques, to notch craft and a lot of great acting.
After about an hour I was saying to myself: "damn, this film is not half bad, is not bad at all!"

I was thinking that Stone had finally come full circle into a new kind of filmmaking persona. Between W. and this it felt like he was now finding a voice as a director of adult dramas. By no means this was a film like the ones he used to make, the big, loud and bombastic epics of the fall of the 20th century, but a softer, more mature voice about what is going on in the 21ts...

SPOILERS

Well, the last 20 minutes this film goes so fast down the drain it managed to anger me in that small amount of time.
The "twist" is just terrible, and everything that came before quickly manages to become a joke. Douglas, who had by that time created a new layer of humanity for his classic character, is reduced to a simple bad guy. Josh Brolin and everyone around him, along with Susan Sarandon, are all turned into caricatures. The ending is almost a slap in the face. Did the film ended with a kiss? Are you fucking kidding me?

Shit.