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>The money was used to buy a Picasso painting, diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.” A s
by murph-almighty 8y ago
>The money was used to buy a Picasso painting, diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
A scam that funded a movie about scams? True life is stranger than fiction.
- Avshalom 8y agoA movie that spent two hours depicting the luxuries bought by scams and zero minutes depicting the real consequences for those that got scammed. With a quick reminder at the end that you can to this day go pay somebody to teach you how to do it yourself.
- camjohnson26 8y agoBoiler Room did a much better job showing both sides of the coin.
- meddlepal 8y agoThat movie is rather unappreciated. Definitely worth a watch for folks that haven't seen it.
- rchaud 8y agoThe screen adaptations of Gordon Gecko, Patrick Bateman and Jordan Belfort's stories make me think that a lot changes between the time production starts on a screenplay and when the cinema reels roll off the assembly lines. Studio execs do test screens and decide to glamorize the debauchery to extreme levels and give it tons of screen time, because "that's what the people want". So at the end of the movie, you no longer merely empathize with the antagonist, but end up idolizing him. Why else do college bros know the "Greed is Good" speech by heart? Or Bateman's opening monologue in his apartment?
- toyg 8y agoIt’s always easier to scapegoat “studio execs” whenever a production has ethical problems. In reality, smart folks like Coppola and Stone know how to play to certain audiences while still selling tickets to the less sophisticated. Most of their movies can be read in opposite terms and it’s absolutely on purpose.
- rchaud 8y agoI'm scapegoating the audience. They're the ones lapping this shit up. Bateman, Gecko and Belfort (I'll throw in Tyler Durden here as well) were all cautionary tales, they are sociopaths you want to avoid, not emulate. But just the opposite has happened; they are revered by fans specifically for their lack of ethics because of how "badass" it came off on screen.
- jungler 8y agoThis is a problem that is somewhat well-known: If you send your message in esoteric terms it will be read by the great majority as a face value validation. Even some very direct statements tend to be read preferentially. Whether this is problematic or not depends somewhat on your view of the world. I recommend Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines for a much more thorough historical treatment of the subject. By his reckoning it goes back to the ancient Greeks, at least.
- pjmorris 8y agoProbably true. But I'm reminded that when Michael Lewis wrote his first book, 'Liar's Poker', he viewed it as a cautionary tale and a polemic against the behaviors he saw on Wall Street. He was surprised that its readers took it more as an instruction manual and an invitation to participate. EDIT: Found the link to the interview I'm misquoting. Here's the original passage: "I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea. Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual." https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/12/11/michael-lewis-big-short-conde-nast-portfolio.html https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/12/11/michael-...
- eecc 8y agoIt's not the students that are hopelessly greedy I'm afraid. It's just that they're conditioned - living in such a competitive, second is first of the losers kind of society - to go with whatever provides them the safest path away from poverty and destitution.
- pjmorris 8y agoI don't think it's restricted to students. To go back only a little bit in the history of things, I think Maslow was on to something with his hierarchy of needs. When you're safe and fed, and cared about, you have some room to work on self-actualization. Not so much when you're scared and hungry. Money's not safety or food, but a steady stream of it is a good proxy in these days. To go back a little further, I'm thinking of John Adams quote "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
- cycrutchfield 8y agoUnlike the others, American Psycho is clearly satirical in intent. I don’t think that anybody is ever reciting Bateman’s lines unironically.
- citrablue 8y agoHis personal aesthetic care mantra has been repeated, unironically, all the time amongst some people I no longer hang out with. It's the "Gym Tan Laundry" (GTL from Jersey Shore) of its day.
- beager 8y agoWell said. There were numerous reports of insiders cheering and feeling reinforced after watching that movie in theaters. Whereas the public, by only their sensibilities, saw the ill effects of that kind of business.
- coliveira 8y agoThe book this movie is based on was written by Belford himself. What would people expect as a result? They decided to create a movie depicting the point of view of the thief.
- gear54rus 8y agoReal consequences which were? 22 months for those atrocities feels like nothing. What is there to depict? To children: no shit they felt reinforced, the history has shown that this type of stuff goes almost unpunished.
- Gys 8y agoThank you. I downloaded it a long time ago but never was motivated enough to see it past the first 10 min or so. You confirmed my unconsious expactations. I just now deleted it.
- bduerst 8y agoThe ending where he was at a sales conference asking people to sell him a pencil was rather poignant about how far he fell, but you're right in that that message is missed by most audiences. Scorsese crime dramas (e.g. Goodfellas, Casino) tend to have a flair for showing the the up-and-up side of crime with a very brief ending in reality. The Departed is an exception in that you saw the story from both "rats" sides, and the undercover cop had it much worse than the mole cop.
- georgeecollins 8y agoFor a sense of the consequences I recommend Margin Call, which is my favorite Wall Street movie.
- base698 8y agoI took it as taking you along the ride and showing how easy someone could get caught up. Everyone has some kind of evil inside them, and you shouldn't be quick to judge. Kind of the message of "Gulag Archipelago".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AznHisoka 8y agoFor some reason, that movie never ever resonated with me, compared with other Wall Street movies like "The Big Short". What is it that people like about it?
- camjohnson26 8y agoI agree, The Big Short was insightful and you come out of it with a better understanding of the financial industry. The Wolf of Wall Street glossed over the financial information to focus on the debauchery, which to me is far less interesting. Boiler Room and The Smartest Guys in the Room are my other go-to business movies.
- coupdejarnac 8y agoYou might check out Rogue Trader if you haven't already.
- Eremotherium 8y agoOr watch "830 million pounds" which is also on Nick Leeson with the added bonus of being a documentary by Adam Curtis
- walshemj 8y agoThat is supposed to be a bonus?
- Scoundreller 8y agoMargin Call is a bit dry, but still entertaining.
- billfruit 8y agoDramatically Margin Call was better than Big Short/Wolf, I thought. It was extremely tense, and and almost claustrophobic in its depiction of the ambience.