Oliver Stone has said it before and he’ll say it again: nobody was supposed to see Wall Street and think “Hey! I wanna do that, too.” And yet, for the last twenty odd years, you people and the people you work with have never failed to approach Stone or Michael Douglas when they’re out to dinner to tell them you went to work on the Street after being inspired by the 1987 flick, ruining their evenings. Idiots! You were supposed to see movie and say Gekko, bad. Prosecution of “values underpinning American capitalism,” good. See? Simple little equation. And yet. And yet. That all kind of went over your heads, didn’t it? If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone.
As a vehicle for social change, however, the movie was a catastrophe. It did not show Wall Street in its best light, yet Wall Street was, by far, the movie’s most enthusiastic audience. It has endured not because it hit its intended target but because it missed: people who work on Wall Street still love it. And not just any Wall Street people but precisely those who might have either taken Stone’s morality tale to heart or been offended by it. To wit, not long before hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias was found dead in his Florida swimming pool, with an unlucky mixture of cocaine, Ambien, and alcohol in his bloodstream, he gave an interview for Wall Street’s DVD bonus reel, in which he said, “I remember when I saw the movie in 1987. I recall saying, That’s what I want to be. I want to start out as Bud Fox and end up as Gordon Gekko.”
So it’s because of people like you, and Seth, and his gay lover Tiger, who probably loved Gordon Gekko that Stone had to make this movie again. If you don’t figure out the message this time around, Part III is just going to be a still shot of Michael Douglas wearing a sandwich board that says “Blow me, assholes,” on the floor of the exchange. Maybe that’ll penetrate.
Greed Never Left [Vanity Fair]
Now I’m confused. Are you saying that Oliver Stone killed Seth Tobias?
Well, the Godfather made me want to eat more cannoli, so I can’t see how this frustrates him.
I still want to be Bud Fox. Holding a knife to your second wife’s throat is the new almost killing it.
Hi, I am Dr. Tobaggon, Dr. Mantis Tobaggon.
Where in the world is Annabelle Vartanian?
So, no more Buzz This option? Is that the piece of crap functionality that brought this site to its knees?
I also would still like to log in and get that cool red font. Guess that’s not gonna happen absent me developing some william gibsonesque hacking skills.
@7 join the club.
It currently says 6 comments but only 4 show. I’m pretty sure that once I comment the other missing two will show. Top IT guys.
@AB or by simply resetting your password.
Bess: Tried without success many times. I blame myself.
me thinks oliver doth protest too much…little beyatch! word to the wise: don’t bite the hand that feeds you (a la soho house), just sayin’
@11/AB I am logged in and still get the grey scale.
hey where’s my red font? I reset my password and everything! boo hoo :(
@11/13 Ditto that. If I try to log into my profile, the page crashes. So I’ve stopped trying. I also miss the recent comments feature. Damn you progress!
HOLY SHIT. We can use emoticons now. ;)
Bring back that one dude and show him how DAZZLING we can be
Tax chick. I’ve figured out the system. You need to request a new password 24 times. The first 23 times they just send you a useless link. The 24th time they send you a new password. It screens out those who don’t care enough to keep trying.
@16/NS – emoticons excite you?! Are you 14?
@tax chicky – don’t be a hater! and no NS is not cluzo…if you don’t know, now you know.
@NS – I didn’t know we could do emoticons, but it just popped up. hat tip to the IT nerds that fk’d the site for 3 days to get this functionality.
@18/TC apperently the sarcasm feature of the website is not functioning properly. B-)
8)
@17/AB – got my new password, took 2 days to log in. Still gray scale.
@19/Cluzo – being cranky b/c I work with retarded fuckwads and if I drank at my desk I would be fired. I will try to adjust my attitude at lunch.
@20/NS – :-P
Ah $hit Cluzo and Tax about to start dry humping in public again? Is this what we get after the IT slaves worked so hard to fix this site they built that has always been broken…
@18 – unfortunately, there is little advertising for iq enlargements.
12- soho house only exists coz the r&t doesn’t take proles or artsy douchbags
“I had to get my shit together,” says LaBeouf, “because I’m just this dude from Transformers. So I opened an account with 20 grand and started trading. I figure, Fuck it. If I lose it, I can deduct it, because I’m preparing for a movie.”
:-P
Saw a pre-screening of Wall St. 2. This portrays all of us who work in the markets as cocaine binging, greedy, leveraging assholes. Listen, I know I personally set up a AAA natural disaster derivative so I could raise capital for my Benz and alcohol expenses, which was slightly unethical but come on!
Saw a pre-screening of Wall St. 2. This portrays all of us who work in the markets as cocaine binging, greedy, leveraging assholes. Listen, I know I personally set up a AAA natural disaster derivative so I could raise capital for my Benz and alcohol expenses, which was slightly unethical but come on!
Saw a pre-screening of Wall St. 2. This portrays all of us who work in the markets as cocaine binging, greedy, leveraging assholes. Listen, I know I personally set up a AAA natural disaster derivative so I could raise capital for my Benz and alcohol expenses, which was slightly unethical but come on!
People are greedy, evil little fuckers (yes, people, not just bankers). And if they are not, no one trusts them (See the Mormons) If Stone believed his own morality crap, he would donate all the proceeds from his films and live a monastic life style.
Attitude still not checked.
Good to see the triple post functionality remains intact. Kudos, IT-folks
so this site’s functionality sucks more then the DMV and all we have to show for it is emoticons?
Bess when are you publishing the new name- COCKLICKER
WALL STREET II: http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/03/wall-street-ii.html
@32 – you had an opportunity to choose a nickname, and all you could come up with is Anonymous? Short-bus, prob. investor relations/marketing (which kind of explains the language – it comes naturally to your sub-set).
Hey 33 how do you like my new nickname?
-32 (aka fuck you 33)
I wanna pee in your food
@ 35 – tools belong in a shed. why are you here?
Bess does not need defending, she can handle you self-handedly.
@37 I’d like Bess to handle me, if you know what I mean.
After I saw Wall Street, I knew I had to work there to make enough money to afford unlimited lap dances with a male stripper named Tiger.
- Ghost of Seth Tobias
A morality play for an industry that needs to take courses in Ethics a bit redundant no
—Having made BILLIONS upon BILLIONS catering to the
franchise slum denial needs of history’s –MOST– awesomely
genocidal regime ACROSS the Pacific —and having once again
‘mysteriously overlooked’ the staggeringly relevant 60th
Anniversary of the KOREAN WAR —Hollywood generally,
and STONE in particular, certainly should have the last
word on ‘greed’.
—–LOL