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Wall Street has been the name of two movies, one released in 1929 and the other in 1987.
Coincidentally these years featured the two biggest stock market
crashes in American history (Black Thursday in 1929 and Black Monday in 1987).
1929 movie
The 1929 movie was produced by Harry
Cohn and starred Ralph Ince,
Aileen Pringle, Sam De Grasse, Philip Strange, and Freddie Burke Frederick.
1987 movie
Rated R
The 1987 was directed by Oliver Stone and features Michael Douglas in perhaps his most famous role. The movie has come to be
seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas as the archetypal "Master of the
Universe". Wall Street was written by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone. It won the Academy Award for Best
Actor in a Leading Role (Michael Douglas).
Warning: Plot details
follow.
The story involves a young stock broker, Bud Fox (played by Charlie
Sheen), who is desperate to get to "the top". He settles on a plan to become involved with his hero, the extremely successful
businessman Gordon Gekko (Douglas).
After succeeding in meeting Gekko, Fox gives him a stock tip based on insider information he happened to come across while
talking to his father, Carl (played by Martin Sheen, Charlie's real-life
father). Carl is a maintenance chief at a small airline, Bluestar and learns that they will soon be cleared of a safety concern
after a previous crash.
Carl's character represents the working class in the movie, he is the union leader for the maintenance workers at Bluestar.
The conflict between Gekko's relentless pursuit of wealth and Carl Fox's leftward leanings form the basis of the film's subtext.
This subtext could be described as the concept of the "two fathers," one good and one evil, battling for control over the morals
of the "son." In Wall Street the hard-working Carl Fox and the cutthroat businessman Gordon Gekko represent the fathers. The fact
that Bud and Carl Fox are played by real life father and son Martin and Charlie Sheen make the conflict all the more interesting
on screen. The producers of the film use Carl as their voice in the film, a voice of reason amid the destructive actions brought
about by the unrestrained appetite for money of Gekko.
Gekko uses the information Bud reveals to him about Bluestar to make a small profit when the stock jumps after the verdict on
the crash is released. Fox quickly learns that this is the "secret" to Gekko's success—insider information—but the illegalities and ethical conflict involved bother him only slightly
as he is quickly admitted into Gekko's "inner circle". Fox quickly becomes very wealthy and gets all the perks—the fancy
apartment, the (as it turns out, streetwise and wary) trophy blonde (Darryl
Hannah), the cars.
However this changes when Gekko decides to do a corporate raid on
Fox's father's company. At this point he must choose between the rich insider's lifestyle offered by working outside the law, or
his father's more traditional blue collar values of fair play and hard work. He chooses to try to preserve the latter by
utilising what he has learnt from Gekko. To achieve this Bud uses a business rival to break the deal, being indicted for insider
trading in the process. He gets his last revenge by turning state's evidence against Gekko, going to jail himself in the process.
The movie is significant in terms of reflecting the public's general malaise with the current state of affairs in the "big
business" world both in the late 1980s and in the wake of the late 1990s post-internet bubble scandals.
Gekko clearly represents Donald Trump, and those like him, whose
dealings were being reported on daily. Stone was not trying to point out illegal dealings, but to illustrate the corrupt
lifestyle of everyone involved in the financial system, legal or no. The system values The Deal more than what the deal
represents, people and goods—a system Stone apparently believes is without value.
Perhaps the most remembered scene in the movie is a speech by Gekko to a shareholders' meeting of Teldar Paper, a company he
is planning to take over. Stone uses this scene to give Gekko, and by extension, the Wall Street raiders he personifies, the chance to justify their actions, which he memorably does, pointing out
the slothfulness and waste that corporate America accumulated through the postwar years and from which he sees himself as a
"liberator":
- The point is, ladies and gentleman, greed is good. Greed works, greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and
captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms, greed for life, money, love, knowledge has marked the
upward surge in mankind – and greed, mark my words – will save not only Teldar Paper but the other malfunctioning
corporation called the USA.
His catchphrase from the speech, "Greed is good", came to symbolise the ruthless, profit-obsessed, short-term corporate
culture of the 1980s and 1990s and by extension became associated with the neoclassical, anti-union economic policies that made
slash-and-burn capitalism possible.
(The inspiration for the "Greed is good" speech seems to have come from a 1985 commencement address at UC Berkeley, delivered by stock speculator Ivan Boesky, in which he said, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is
healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.")
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