He’s Baaack! Gordon Gekko Released From Prison For Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
After serving a long stretch in the Big House, Gordon Gekko is a free man and returns to his old tricks just in time for the Big Bank Meltdown of 2008. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits the silver screen September 24th.
Unlike the first time around, when he was a reluctant third choice after Richard Gere and Warren Beatty, Michael Douglas sat in the driver’s seat. For the 1987 movie Wall Street, director Oliver Stone was advised by Hollywood insiders not to hire him. The common wisdom: he’s a producer, not an actor. Kirk’s son won his first and only Academy Award for the role.
Stone originally decided not to direct Money Never Sleeps. The stock market-banking crisis of 2008 proved too juicy a context not to mold the film first-hand. He said Douglas was “an open wound on the set” due to his son’s arrest for drug trafficking. He described the actor as “struggling” through the production.
Gordon Gekko is more complex in the sequel, an anti-hero rather than a villain. He tries to warn Wall St. of impending doom and returns to his cutthroat ways only to help catch an evil murderer/stockbroker, Bretton James (played by Josh Brolin, whose last two big roles were controversial characters, as well: Harvey Milk assassin Dan White and President George Bush.) The first pick for the role of James was Javier Bardem, who chose instead to tumble with the lovely Julia Roberts in "Eat, Pray, Love."
Like Wall Street, Douglas and Stone immersed themselves in real financial world tutorials, meeting with stockbrokers, bankers and criminals, including Samuel Waksal who spent 5 years as a federal prison guest for securities fraud.
Will this film define a generation, as did the first? At the time, the so-called “Me Generation” of baby boomers was moving into the leadership of government and business. Gekko’s yuppie character represented a composite of the financial high-flying bad boys of their day; the signature line of the movie — “Greed is good” — was a paraphrase from soon-to-be-convicted “inside trader” Ivan Boesky. The movie became a symbol of an Era of Excess. When the 1990 cover of Newsweek asked: “Is Greed Dead?” we all knew the source of the reference.
If he can survive recently diagnosed throat cancer, Michael Douglas might return in yet another sequel, perhaps titled “Wall Street Can’t Wait,” where he is sent down from heaven to rescue the world from its next Great Financial Crisis.
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