Slate Money: Movies: Wall Street

Summary

Slate Money: Movies – Wall Street

Podcast: Slate Money
Episode: Slate Money: Movies: Wall Street
Date: March 9, 2021
Host: Felix Salmon (A), with Anna Szymanski (B), and guest Josh Brown (D/E)
Special Focus: Review and discussion of Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street (1987)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Slate Money: Movies dives into Wall Street, Oliver Stone’s iconic 1987 film about ambition, insider trading, and corporate raiders. Felix Salmon, Anna Szymanski, and guest financial expert Josh Brown discuss the film's realism, its relationship with 1980s finance, the glamorization of greed, and its ongoing cultural relevance. The episode also explores the moral ambiguities of finance—then and now—through the film’s lens, with comparisons to real-life figures, other finance films, and the evolution of financial markets.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Film’s Context and Cultural Impact

• Wall Street would not have been greenlit without the success of Stone’s Platoon and the cultural focus on financial excess and scandals in the ‘80s ([04:14], [05:09]).
• The film’s September 1987 release coincided with a historic market crash, amplifying its resonance ([04:39]).
• Scandals like Ivan Boesky’s and the rise of corporate raiders created the backdrop for the film ([05:22], [06:10]).

Quote

“You had moviegoers who had no idea how the stock market works. Gotta remember: almost no one has a 401k at this time. Individuals are not generally interested in Wall Street... the market crash, I feel like, gives this thing a pop culture urgency.”
— Josh Brown [04:39]

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2. Glamorization of Greed – Gordon Gekko & Moral Ambiguity

• Although intended as a cautionary tale, Gekko’s “greed is good” persona became an aspirational anti-hero ([06:40], [06:46]).
• Parallels are drawn to modern financial pop culture—the idolization of morally compromised figures like The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort ([06:59]).
• The film largely omits the impact on regular people—unlike later films, it shows few visible victims ([08:01]).

Quote

“The wrongdoers are the protagonists. We’re rooting for them.”
— Josh Brown [06:00]

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3. The Realty (and Myth) of Wall Street Jobs in the ‘80s

• Josh relates first-hand experience: “smile and dial” cold-calling was then the entry point to finance, mirroring Bud Fox’s job ([08:49], [09:06]).
• The broker’s business model: 2.5% commissions on each trade, incentivizing high churn and risk for retail clients ([21:01]).

Quote

“You pay a two and a half percent commission on each trade. It was a great fucking business for decades and decades.”
— Josh Brown [21:01]

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4. Shareholder Capitalism, Activism, and the “Greed Is Good” Speech

• Gekko’s iconic “Greed is good” speech is dissected for its roots in real-life figures like Carl Icahn and for both its seduction and accuracy ([22:37], [26:50]).
• Discussion of how the rise of shareholder capitalism addressed bloated, inefficient corporate management—but also created its own problems ([26:50]).

Quote

“There are parts of it I was like, he's kind of right... Shareholder capitalism developed because US industry was bloated and uncompetitive.”
— Anna Szymanski [26:13]

Notable Moment:

• Gordon Gekko’s famous speech: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works… and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.”

— Gordon Gekko [22:37–23:29]

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5. Film’s Moral Trope: Success vs. Soul

• The narrative of compromise—gain wealth, lose your soul, regain it by renouncing money—is critiqued as a tired Hollywood trope ([13:48], [14:19]).
• It’s suggested the film might be more interesting if Gekko’s actions were legal but morally questionable ([15:48]).
• Discussion around how insider trading law is, and was, far from clear-cut ([16:08], [17:05]).

Quote

“There's no law against insider trading. There is no statute. It's all just a cobble together bunch of random jurisprudence that no one really understands.”
— Felix Salmon [16:08]

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6. Changing Nature of Financial Markets

• The “smiling and dialing” retail brokerage model was ultimately obviated by technology and the rise of the internet and discount brokers ([18:45], [20:28]).
• Modern finance—SPACs, tech, and venture—generates wealth vastly exceeding that of ‘80s “corporate raiders,” legally ([46:39], [47:01]).

Quote

“There are ways to make so much more money than those characters made back then that's completely legal… Why would you ever need to resort to insider trading?”
— Josh Brown [46:39]

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7. Realism, Plot Holes, and the Mechanics of Takeovers

• The actual mechanics of hostile takeovers are more complex than depicted—big banks, lawyers, lengthy processes are omitted for cinematic simplicity ([33:10], [34:09]).
• Activities that appear obviously illegal in the movie are, in reality, often legal or at least ambiguous, further dramatized for clarity ([42:48]).

Quote

“If you work something out and buy a thesis, that's how efficient markets are supposed to be efficient.”
— Felix Salmon [44:38]

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8. Female Characters & 1980s Gender Tropes

• Daryl Hannah’s character is critiqued as a “naked ambition” gold-digger, but, as Anna notes, is given consistency and parity with Bud Fox’s own mercenary ambition ([36:14]–[39:39]).
• Her choices reflect the limited options available—and are written with a rare, if problematic, honesty about ambition ([37:51], [39:20]).

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9. New York as Character & Nostalgia

• The film is lauded for its authentic depiction of New York City in the late ‘80s ([53:47]).
• The visual details (on-location shots, office life, pre-9/11 skyline, crowded subways) evoke nostalgia for a lost era ([54:27]).

Quote

“It gets the geography of New York City right... It's not one of those movies which… gets filmed in Toronto and they have back alleys... There’s none of that.”
— Felix Salmon [53:53]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

Gekko’s Greed Speech:

[22:37–23:29]

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works…”

Lou Manheim’s Wisdom:

[11:45]

“Man looks into the abyss and there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character, and that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”

Josh on The Evolution of the Business:

[18:59]

“The heyday of the smiling and dialing cold calling stock brokerage kind of thing was probably 1985 to 2000... and the Internet obviously ended up killing that…”

Anna on Shareholder Capitalism:

[26:13]

“There is a reason that shareholder capitalism developed... managers were not acting in the interest of shareholders... businesses were not working in their interests.”

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Key Timestamps

• [00:10] – Introductions & guest background
• [02:19] – Overview: Gekko as corporate raider, themes for discussion
• [03:08] – First encounters with Wall Street
• [05:41] – The film structure: anti-heroes as protagonists
• [08:49] – “Smile and dial” brokerage life, compared to film
• [22:37] – Gekko’s “Greed is good”
• [26:13] – Shareholder capitalism, activist investors discussion
• [33:10] – Film’s depiction of takeovers vs. reality
• [36:14] – Daryl Hannah’s character & gender tropes
• [42:14] – Insider trading: what’s actually illegal?
• [46:39] – Rise of modern legal mega-wealth (SPACs, Silicon Valley)
• [53:47] – New York-as-character, authenticity
• [52:17] – Final verdict: star ratings and lasting legacy

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Final Verdicts & Ratings

• Josh Brown: "Four and a half stars. It's just a great movie—eminently rewatchable. I don't think there's a better movie about Wall Street." [52:24]
• Anna Szymanski: "Four out of five. ...It is just a well made movie and it holds up surprisingly well." [52:55]
• Felix Salmon: Agrees with the high rating, credits the film’s “repeatability” and “sense of New York.” [53:20]

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Conclusion: Why Wall Street Endures

The hosts unanimously praise the film’s style, energy, and enduring relevance—despite (or perhaps because of) its plot holes, glamorization of financial ambition, and quirks of late-1980s finance. With its memorable lines, engaging anti-heroes, and honest portrayal of moral risk, Wall Street remains a cinematic touchstone for discussions about money, ethos, and the evolution of American capitalism.

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[Listen to the episode for a full deep dive! Skip Wall Street 2, but don’t skip this classic.]

Transcript

[A]

Hello, and welcome to Slate. Money Goes to the Movies, the Wall street episode. I'm Felix Hammond of Axios. I'm here with Anna Szymansky. Hi, Anna.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

We are here with, I have to say, on this entire series of movie.

[C]

Reviews or recaps or whatever you want.

[A]

To call them, only one person has shown up on a zoom call wearing a tie. So, Josh Brown, who are you and why are you wearing a tie in a pandemic?

[D]

I work in the wealth management industry, and my days these days consist of many zoom meetings with ties. Sometimes I'll wear two different ties during the course of one day.

[A]

So you run wealth management company.

[D]

Yes, I'm the CEO of a registered investment advisory firm. We're a national firm with about 1.9 billion in assets under management, serving somewhere around 15 or 1600 client households.

[E]

Pensions, endowments, etc.

[A]

And so basically what you do is you phone people up and say, I've got a hot stock for you.

[C]

You should go into this. Right? That's your job.

[D]

No, in a previous life, that was. That was my job. These days, most of what we do.

[E]

Involves financial planning and really giving people a sense that the money that they've earned throughout the course of their lives can be employed in the way that they want it to be and showing them the satisfaction they can get from having investments tied to actual goals and objectives.

[D]

So we work with people on everything.

[E]

From portfolios to insurance to medical issues, the whole gamut of things that people are concerned about.

[A]

But my big question is, is any.

[C]

Of those goals and objectives ever, like, I want to rip apart a paper company or an airline?

[E]

Not yet. I'm still waiting.

[D]

That client come through my door who wants to do a little financial planning and a little corporate rating. We haven't come across that yet.

[A]

Hasn't happened yet. So, anyway, we are going to talk about the greatest corporate raider in the.

[C]

History of the movies, Mr. Gordon Gekko himself, as indelibly portrayed by Michael Douglas. We're going to talk about how realistic.

[A]

It is, whether it was even illegal, what most of.

[C]

What most of he does in this movie is. Is that grammatical? Probably not.

[A]

But we're going to. We're going to talk about the legality of insider trading. We're going to talk about the way that Wall street has evolved. We're going to talk about this movie.

[C]

Is a time capsule and there's a.

[A]

Portrait of New York. It's a fun discussion. Stick around for it on Slate. Money goes to the movies. Okay, so, Josh, I'm going To kick this off the same way I kick.

[C]

Off nearly all of these, which is to ask you, where were you and how old were you when you first saw this movie?

[D]

Okay, that's a great question, because I saw it years after it originally came out.

[E]

And first of all, thanks for having.

[D]

Me on to talk about Wall street, one of my favorite movies. And in preparation for this, I just.

[E]

Did a whole bowl full of cocaine.

[D]

So I feel like I'm ready to. I'm on the level for this. I'm ready to go.

[A]

All right.

[E]

No. So I was 10 years old in 1987. And so I really.

[D]

I don't think I got around to it till it popped up on television, probably in the early 90s.

[E]

But that was, I feel, like, the perfect timing because I was in my. Let's say, early to mid teens and.

[D]

People started quoting the lines.

[E]

And it was one of those movies that came out around the same time, I guess, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. And they were just these movies that every teenager was not supposed to have seen but saw.

[D]

And this was one of them.

[E]

And so we were all walking around.

[D]

Acting like we even knew what any of these terms were and quoting the lines. But it was definitely influential for me.

[A]

And I should probably just jump in here and say, this movie would not have been made were it not for.

[C]

The success of Platoon. Right.

[A]

All of us, like, making a movie about a bunch of guys in suits.

[C]

Moving money around where, like, no one dies. And, you know, like, the closest thing to any sort of physical action is a slightly implausible scene in Central Park.

[A]

It's not cinematic. And you needed Oliver Stone to have.

[C]

The massive success of Platoon, presumably in order to get something like this greenlight.

[E]

I think that's a big part of it. And then what's really interesting is that the movie comes out in late September and the. One of the greatest crashes anyone has ever seen takes place, like, within a couple of weeks, which I think lends it even more urgency and more immediacy. And you had moviegoers who had no idea how the stock market works. Gotta remember, almost no one has a 401k at this time. Individuals are not generally interested in Wall street, so you're dead.

[D]

Right.

[E]

But then the market crash, I feel like, gives this thing a pop culture urgency that it otherwise would not have had.

[D]

Might have been a much more obscure movie.

[B]

Wasn't it also in 1987 that the Ivan Boesky scandal was.

[D]

Yeah, that probably was a little bit.

[E]

Less well known about by most people, you know, versus the crash. But, yes, I do think the Zeitgeist was really important, like an important backdrop to the film.

[D]

It's not like it just randomly, you know, dropped out of thin air into some year where nobody cared about the stock market.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And to Anna's point, like, this is.

[C]

Not a cat and mouse movie.

[A]

Right. We are not seeing the wrongdoers being chased by a bunch of noble people.

[C]

At the New York Attorney General's office or the SEC or whatever.

[A]

They turn up at the end.

[C]

And it's not a major part of the.

[E]

The wrongdoers are the protagonists.

[D]

We're rooting for them.

[C]

Exactly. But the bigger picture, Zeitgeist is very.

[A]

Much this thing that was going on.

[C]

At the time with Rudy Giuliani coming down on Mike Milken, Ivan Boesky, all of those, like, corporate raiders.

[A]

It was a big thing. And we talked about this a little bit in terms of when we were covering the Devil Wears Prada as well, or for that matter, the Michael Lewis.

[C]

Book about Wall street, which is like.

[A]

On one level, they present themselves as being sort of cautionary tales, but in.

[C]

Fact, what they are is like they glamorize it.

[A]

And Gordon Gekko became this hero to millions.

[D]

Well, I've seen Oliver Stone give interviews.

[E]

About this where the intent was not.

[D]

To have Gordon Gekko be somebody that everyone wanted to be for Halloween the next year. Like, it was not. It was not meant. The character was not written.

[E]

But that. That happens all the time. And in the current generation, when you go on WallStreetBets and other Reddit forums where young, aggressive young men, as I once was, are discussing the stock market, it's amazing how much resonance the Wolf of Wall street seems to have. And then what the interesting part of that is, they say they want to overturn Wall street and they want to go after the hedge fund managers, but they worship DiCaprio's portrayal of one of the worst pump and dump artists, someone who literally went to jail for pump and dump and taking advantage of the average investor. So I think, like, these anti heroes, it's not about what they do in the movie. It's about what they represent. And often what they represent is someone who's powerful and unafraid to take what they want. And they have the beautiful girlfriend and they. Then they have the nice car. And I think, like, that's really what.

[D]

People are responding to with Gekko as well.

[A]

And what we don't see in this.

[C]

Movie is anyone losing money. Right.

[A]

In the Wolf of Wall street, you know, in Pump and Dump schemes.

[C]

What you have is the insiders, like, pumping and dumping and making lots of money and a bunch of schmucks losing it.

[A]

Here the victims are, you know, hardworking.

[C]

Union members at an airline. They're not mom and pop investors.

[D]

Right.

[E]

Actually, the retail aspect of investing doesn't even come into play in this film.

[A]

But it's also at the heart of it, Right. It's his job. That's what all of. Amazingly, like, while he's running around, like.

[C]

Seemingly working for Gordon Gekko the whole.

[A]

Time, he actually has a day job. And the day job is like trying to put retail investors into stocks.

[D]

Yeah, I did that job. So they hand him the phone book at one point, and they tell him, smile and dial.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And 10 years later, when I'm coming out of, I guess, my sophomore year.

[E]

Of college and I have a cold.

[D]

Calling job for the summer, they literally hand me, instead of a yellow Pages, they hand me a stack of index cards with business owners, but they say, smile and dial. So that is. You're right.

[E]

That is his job.

[D]

He's a retail schlep broker, basically a nobody.

[E]

However, what sets him apart from, I.

[D]

Forget, the actor who plays, like, his buddy in the bullpen.

[E]

What sets him apart is he's not.

[D]

Content to go through the Yellow Pages.

[E]

He's elephant hunting.

[D]

He only wants to talk to Gordon Gekko, which is. He knows his birthday. He's got the box of cigars.

[E]

He's ready to show up on the birthday and do battle with the secretary.

[D]

To get through to the. To the elephant or the whale. And that's what separates him from the other retail brokers in the firm.

[B]

Yeah. And I think this is similar a little bit to what we saw when we were talking about Working Girl, where it is showing you these different levels of finance, that it's not one thing, and that he doesn't want to be really part of this everyman retail. He wants to be on the other side, as he says, with the Anna.

[D]

He doesn't want to be his dad.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He doesn't want to be his dad who has the noble calling.

[C]

And his dad has that little speech about, I don't care about money.

[A]

Similarly, though, he looks around at the.

[C]

Bullpen on Wall street, and, yeah, he's making decent money on Wall street, but it does feel very Glengarry Glen Ross. Right. And he's like, I don't want that either.

[A]

I want to be in real Wall.

[C]

Street in, like, M and A and financing, and.

[A]

And. And he gets the whole speech in.

[C]

The Back of the car from Gordon Gecko, about like, you need to be liquid, you need to be 50, $100 million. And he's like, okay, now I can.

[A]

See the brass ring.

[D]

Yeah, he's.

[E]

He's in search. He's in search of guidance to get.

[D]

To where he thinks he deserves to be.

[E]

He's got that, like, innate ambition. And like a lot of these types of stories, you find out like, oh, in order to get there, I have to compromise a lot and I have.

[D]

To do a lot of things that.

[E]

I wouldn't ordinarily do, and then am.

[D]

I willing to do them?

[E]

And that's actually.

[D]

That's actually the best line in the movie is from Lou Manheim, which comes at the end. Hopefully we're not spoiling this for anyone, but Lou Manheim is.

[A]

All of these episodes are nothing but spoilers, right?

[D]

So Lou Manheim is kind of like.

[E]

This old school version of a Wall street survivor.

[D]

Like somebody who's been around for multiple cycles, multiple generations. He's seen young men like Charlie Sheen's.

[E]

Character, Bud Fox, come and go, and he takes him aside. It's a very strange. It's actually a very strange scene. And before, in preparation for this, I looked it up. He. So he takes Charlie Sheen aside, who's clearly unraveling at this point, having committed.

[D]

All of these insider trading violations. And he says, man looks into the.

[E]

Abyss and there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character, and that is what keeps him out of the abyss. So Charlie Sheen looks at him like, what the fuck are you talking about?

[A]

And then don't quote Kierkegaarden Nietzsche at me, right?

[D]

He walks into his office and he gets handcuffed. And the actual Nietzsche quote is a lot less involved. But I looked it up. It comes from will to power, and it's a misquote. But we know that Oliver Stone probably knew the real quote. But he said, if you look long enough into an abyss, the abyss looks into you. So Stone embellished it a little bit.

[E]

But basically the movie, to your point, it's not cat and mouse. It's character.

[D]

It's like, you know, what did you do to yourself to get to where you got.

[F]

But I like you just remember something. Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character, and that is what keeps him out of the abyss. This, I think I understand well.

[B]

And I think that this film is also very much about a period where finance was changing, where America was Changing that, you're shifting from the stagflation of the 1970s to the Reagan era and this very new era of finance. And Oliver Stone's father, who he dedicates the film to at the end, was someone who had worked on Wall street in finance for a very long time. And I think it's supposed to kind of represent this older style of finance that was giving way during this period.

[D]

Yeah. And definitely the union versus capitalism thing was a very big part of it.

[A]

But I want to ask you about.

[C]

This idea of the sort of moral trade offs involved in making money, because this is a theme that we've encountered many times in this season.

[A]

And there's the standard Hollywood trope is.

[C]

Always like, on the one hand, you make lots of money, but on the other hand, you give up your soul. And then the way you purify yourself is by giving up the money and by selling the apartment and by losing the girlfriend. And then you come out like a better man at the end of it.

[A]

And Anna, I know that you object in principle to this trope, but in this particular instance, do you think it.

[C]

Works or do you think it's still the same trope and it's still as annoying as it always is?

[B]

I mean, this is obviously a good movie, but still. Yeah, I do think this trope is a little bit annoying. I think that it would almost have been a better film if the Gordon Gekko character hadn't been doing anything illegal, but was just involved in things that were morally complex. Because I do think that there's. There is a tendency in a lot of. Even though Hollywood is all about money, Hollywood always has this idea that if you are very, very wealthy, you must have done something wrong to get there.

[C]

Every billionaire is a policy failure.

[D]

Hollywood is so full of shit. Like, I doubt you guys are gonna do an episode on the Lego Movie. So I'm just gonna. I'm gonna very quickly.

[A]

We should totally have done the Lego Movie. It's such a great movie.

[D]

But I'm gonna very quickly veer into the Lego Movie, which is probably eight years old now, but Will Ferrell's character as the Lego villain is Lord business. And I remember reading something probably in the New York Post or whatever, it was like some hardcore right wing libertarian ideologue railing against a Lego Movie.

[E]

I'm like, what is this guy all upset about?

[D]

But actually, when I finished reading what he said, I'm like, you know what?

[E]

You have a point. I took my kids to see this, and it's about how making money is evil. And anything that has to do with building a company inevitably leads to compromising your morals. And I don't see life that way, and I don't see business that way. So I totally agree with what you're saying, Anna. It would be more interesting if Gekko was a straight shooter and living by.

[D]

The letter of the law, but violating the intent of the law at, you know, taking the pushing the envelope, like, right to the edge morally, would have been way more interesting.

[A]

Well, one of my favorite things about this movie is the way that it actually creates a law that doesn't exist.

[C]

In the scene where he gets arrested in his office, the guy from the SEC or FBI or whoever, it's like.

[A]

We are charging you with, quote, violating the Insider Trading Sanction Act. And you're like, there is no such thing as the Insider Trading Sanction Act. As anyone who knows anything about insider trading knows. There is no law against insider trading. There is no statute. It's all just a cobble together bunch of random jurisprudence that no one really understands. And there's this sort of thread running.

[C]

Through the movie about, like, well, everyone understands that this is illegal, but it.

[A]

In reality, like, it took. I mean, it took until Dodd Frank.

[C]

For a lot of this stuff to become, like, you know, truly illegal in places like the futures market.

[A]

And it was probably illegal back in.

[C]

87 in the stock market.

[A]

But even then, it was not easy to prosecute.

[C]

And there wasn't a bright line.

[D]

Yeah, I think even if you look at the recent.

[E]

The prosecution of Steve Cohen, like, so.

[D]

Much of what he was doing was the same thing other people were doing.

[E]

He was just better at it. And there weren't explicit rules against it in some ways. There were some aspects.

[A]

And he was never found guilty of anything. He kind of agreed to settle.

[B]

Matthew Martoma was.

[C]

Settlement.

[D]

Yeah. No, the kid went down.

[E]

And the organization basically had to pay a huge fine, or they had to.

[D]

Say they were guilty of one thing but not another.

[E]

But it doesn't matter because they're managing.

[D]

$20 billion with a name change. You know, to your point, because of.

[E]

How hard that stuff, like, if everyone is trying to get an edge, like the characters on Wall street, and we.

[D]

Clearly know that there is a line somewhere, but we don't all agree with.

[E]

Where that line is, or it's hard to prove how far over the line someone's been, or the line moves with different generations.

[D]

Right.

[E]

What's kosher and what's not tends to rise and fall with the stock market. And in the aftermath of A crash. Everyone's looking for a villain.

[D]

And so maybe the line gets a.

[E]

Little bit closer rather than further. Right. So there is an element of that.

[D]

I definitely agree.

[A]

So tell me about your days smiling and dialing. This is. This is.

[C]

As a foreigner, as an English person.

[A]

I, like, I literally never had a.

[C]

Conception of the idea that you would, you know, someone would phone you up and try and put you in a stock or, like, how you would buy it or why you would buy it. What would happen?

[A]

Like, what was the. What was that business?

[C]

I feel like that business went away, what, like 15, 20 years ago? Like, it hasn't existed for quite a long time.

[D]

I would say it died 20 years ago, but nobody told a lot of the participants until maybe 10 years ago. And I was like somebody who figured out very late, but I started late. The heyday of the smiling and dialing.

[E]

Cold calling stock brokerage kind of thing was probably 1985 to 2000. And sometime around 1989, 1990, that's when Jordan Belfort comes around and basically weaponizes what originally was a fairly benign process.

[D]

The original book about calling people up and telling them a story about a.

[E]

Stock and having them open an account.

[D]

Actually had nothing to do with Belfort. It was. It was a book, I think the first version of which probably came out. It was called Telephone selling in the.

[E]

90S, but it was written by a stockbroker. But the guy was basically picking blue chip stocks and just very calmly calling people up around the country and saying, hey, here's a stock that I'm buying for my clients in New York, if you're interested. I know you're not in New York.

[D]

But I can open an account for.

[E]

You here at Lehman Brothers, which, by the way, pioneered this. A lot of people don't realize the. The Water street office of Lehman Brothers is where cold calling was born. But now, Felix, picture, picture. You're a business owner somewhere in Ohio. You have no access to the stock market. There might be a brokerage firm somewhere nearby, but nobody's calling you with trading ideas. Why would they? So if a stockbroker from Lower Manhattan calls you and they work at Lehman or Shearson or whatever, and they say to you, here's what I'm buying for my clients. Do you want in? And you're rich. Yeah, I want in. Open me an account. And then you go to the country club later that day and you tell all your friends, I have this hotshot.

[D]

Broker in New York.

[E]

So that's what that whole thing was about. And the Internet Obviously ended up killing that because it looks ridiculous in the aftermath of people being being able to access the market by themselves and do their own research. But none of that existed. If you wanted in, that's how you got in.

[A]

And then like. So I was writing.

[C]

I've been writing quite a lot about.

[A]

You know, payment for order flow and.

[C]

All of these ways that people make money these days.

[A]

But that's like literally 0.1 cents per share.

[C]

Tell me, what's the business model here when you're selling these blue chip stocks?

[E]

2 and a half percent commission, 2.

[D]

And a half percent, 2 and a.

[E]

Half on the sell.

[D]

So you would call somebody up.

[E]

And you got to keep in mind there's no Internet, there's no ETFs. If you want to be in the stock market and in the 1980s, you.

[D]

Definitely do, you have to do it through a broker or you like, if.

[E]

You'Re very knowledgeable, you have a Charles.

[D]

Schwab account where you call up by telephone and pay a discount.

[E]

But most Americans, access to the stock market is through a broker just, you know, the same way as it is in real estate to some extent now. And you pay a 2 1/2% commission on each trade. So if I call you and I say, felix, we're going to buy Texaco.

[D]

Because they just discovered a new oil.

[E]

Find or whatever, you go, great, I'm.

[D]

Going to give you $20,000.

[E]

I'm going to take two and a half percent of that buy. I take the 20,000, I turn it into 30,000 because I'm right, and we sell. I take another two and a half percent on the sell. And even better, I'm buying you the next stock as I'm selling the last stock. And in most cases, I'm using margin. So actually, the 20,000 you sent me, I'm buying you 40,000 worth of stock, doubling my commission. My two and a half is on the 40, not the 20. So I am now convincing you to take the risk of leveraging and I'm doubling my commission. So that was the business model. It was a great fucking business for decades and decades and decades.

[B]

One thing I think that we should probably talk to about a little is the greed is good speech. And also this whole idea of the rise of shareholder capitalism and activist investors, because that is obviously the center of this film.

[G]

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the usa. Thank you very much.

[D]

Well, they say that Gekko was loosely.

[E]

Modeled on Icahn, which I guess makes sense. Icahn is probably in the headlines and somebody like Oliver Stone is reading the New York Times every day. And I would imagine Boesky is in there. I would imagine, you know, all the Drexel stuff is in there. And I would certainly guess Michael Milken plays a.

[D]

You know, so a lot of these.

[E]

Characters like amalgams, like people. I'm the technical advisor for the show Billions on Showtime.

[D]

And a lot of people ask Brian.

[E]

And David, the creators. Is it Ackman? Is it Einhorn? Is it, you know, who. Who is Bobby Axelrod? But it's always an amalgam of just different characters, different aspects. So I think the greed is good thing. You know, Icahn had been involved at that time in some very high profile.

[D]

What they called corporate raids.

[E]

Pan Am. I mentioned Texaco just now. That was actually one of them. These were companies where he basically said, you middle management nobodies are not listening to shareholders. I now have enough shares that I can vote you the hell out of the building. And that was really attractive to people reading the newspaper who weren't players in this game. It's like almost like a version of, like, fighting for democracy and freedom, but with money. So I think that was a big inspiration for Oliver Stone. And actually Icahn has that famous quote about tyranny that I think is on his website. And he said this. He said, a lot of people die fighting tyranny.

[D]

The least I can do is vote against it.

[E]

That's like his famous quote. That's from the Tex. That's from the Texaco annual shareholder meeting in 1988. He said that shit. Now that was a year after Wall Street.

[D]

So did he take his cue from Gekko?

[E]

Did life imitate art?

[A]

Definitely. And one of the things which I.

[C]

Think probably isn't clear to most of.

[A]

The viewers of this movie is that.

[C]

That central subplot of the movie about Telstar and activist investing and Gordon Gekko trying to take over the company.

[B]

No, Telstar is the one.

[C]

Telstar, the paper. The paper company.

[D]

But it's the airline that he tries to take over.

[A]

But he also is also trying to.

[C]

Take over the paper.

[B]

Yeah, that's where he makes the greed is good speeches. The paper.

[A]

The greed is good.

[D]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

[A]

And as far as we can tell, like, he's doing nothing illegal actually in either of those. Like what he's doing with Telstar and what he's doing with Bluestar is standard issue corporate raider shit, which while maybe.

[C]

Is of dubious morality, depending on where you stand on shareholder rights and stuff.

[A]

Is clearly on the right side of the law.

[B]

Yeah. And also, honestly, I'll be perfectly honest, as I was listening to that speech, I watched the film yesterday. There are parts of it that I was like, he's kind of right about it. In the reality, it's like there was a reason that shareholder capitalism developed. And part of it was because US industry was bloated and becoming uncompetitive. And you did have a lot of managers who were not acting in the interest of shareholders. And while we all know that shareholder capitalism has gotten out of control at the same time, yeah, shareholders do own the company and businesses were not working in their interests. And then that wasn't good for the long term health of the business.

[E]

Well, there's a much better version of.

[D]

That, which is called Other People's Money.

[E]

But that's a film that comes out.

[D]

1991 and it's Norman Jewison directs, it's Danny DeVito as a corporate raider going, I think maybe upstate New York or some like, you know, falling apart industrial company.

[E]

And really the whole movie is about this one thing, this one small aspect that they cover in Wall Street. But just walking into a company that's way past its best days, pulling out whatever still has value, shoving aside everything.

[D]

That made up the soul of that.

[E]

Company, cutting costs, throwing people out, changing the business model, maybe even moving the headquarters, closing the plant, whatever.

[D]

The best version of that, I think, is other people's money. And it's really a great movie.

[E]

So I think they kind of like gloss over it just to get that greed is good scene in Wall street. But I think it's very effective. And I do think people in that time, in that place, keep in mind what the markets look like, the stock markets, they are actively dismantling a lot of these 1960s and 70s conglomerates. That's like a very big part of what people are doing for a living in that era. They're taking things apart, they're taking things over and extracting new value.

[D]

So I think it was, it was really like perfectly timed and very well done for the audience.

[A]

So the guy who's, like, the expert.

[C]

At that in this movie is Terence Stamp, right? The Englishman who kind of the white.

[A]

Knight who takes over Allegheny Steel and.

[C]

Then ends up taking over Blue Star Airlines.

[A]

And he's probably the sort of.

[C]

I don't know how to put this.

[A]

But he's the good guy, right? He's the good financier. There's not a lot of evidence in this movie that anything that he's doing.

[C]

Is problematic, even though on some level, everyone understands that what he's doing is exactly the same as what Golden Gekko is doing. Like, maybe just a little bit less illegal.

[D]

I'm so glad you. I'm so glad you went there.

[E]

I think his character. Well, I think Gekko needs a foil who's at the same level that he's at in order to make certain aspects of the plot work. He needs somebody to be up against, but I think he represents also an older generation and a more genteel approach.

[D]

To what Gekko is doing.

[E]

Gekko is like this American, newer, younger, brasher version, and you can't picture Larry Wildman posing for the COVID of a magazine with a cigar in his mouth right after crushing a company's management and selling off all the parts. I think that's what he's meant to.

[D]

Really be emblematic of.

[E]

And it works really, really well because it show.

[D]

It gives you that much more of.

[E]

A relief against which Gekko can be.

[D]

Gekko and be even more larger than life.

[B]

And I also think that this speaks to one of the things that you see in a number of films about finance, which is this belief that it's okay if you're building something tangible, but other forms of finance Hollywood is very suspicious of. It made me think of the movie Pretty Woman because these two characters are basically Richard Gere at the beginning and the end of Pretty Woman, because at the beginning, he's the corporate raider. And the point is that he's trying to take over and take apart this, like, shipping company. And then the end, his salvation is that he's like, no, we are going to build big, beautiful ships. And it's something that the Martin Sheen character in this film kind of speaks to over and over, is this idea of the importance of something that's tangible that he can understand, and that there's somehow more value to that than something that you can't understand. That's just saying, well, this thing has more value broken up than it does together.

[D]

It's the difference between playing games with money for a living versus Actually creating.

[E]

Something and constructing something. And of course, in movie speak, one.

[D]

Is always going to be this is wrong, and the other one's always gonna be right.

[E]

And of course they're not gonna get into the fact that creating an airline.

[D]

Is a huge mistake to begin with. It's a business that can't literally earn money and reward shareholders over any appreciable period of time.

[E]

Warren.

[D]

One of Warren Buffett's jokes about the airline industry is that he wanted to take a time machine and assassinate Orville, and Orville Wright would have saved capitalism.

[E]

So I think like, oh, and then the other aspect of just this idea of like playing games with money, it's very new. In 1987, the American public, they're not aware of what investment banking is. Maybe they read did Bonfire. The Vanities predate this. Probably not. I know it's a best selling book, but probably a year or two later, the public doesn't understand how much money there is to be made by shuffling a deck of cards, which is essentially what people are waking up every day and doing on Wall street now. It's quaint. Like everyone understands.

[D]

Everyone who's a billionaire is playing games with money.

[E]

But I think that's such a great point, Anna. Back then it was almost mystifying. What do you mean? Somebody could be just as rich, you.

[D]

Know, moving money back and forth as.

[E]

They can be building an airline. It makes no sense.

[A]

It is interesting to me that there's basically no banks in this movie. You can contrast it to Working Girl.

[C]

Where there's like more banks than you know what to do with. Like, you're like, who are all these banks? What are they all doing? It doesn't make any sense.

[A]

In this movie, there's one law firm.

[C]

Which is the sort of deus ex machine. And like that whole weird plot twist is just bizarre.

[A]

But, well, where he breaks, where he.

[D]

Breaks in to steal legal documents.

[A]

No way. He breaks into his own meeting. He goes in to meet James Spader to say, like, oh, like, you know.

[C]

We have to stop doing the insider trading thing.

[A]

And then James Spader says, oh, I'm just going. I just happen to be walking into this meeting where we're going to talk about breaking up the airline.

[C]

Do you want to come and join the meeting?

[B]

It's a weaker plot point. Yeah.

[A]

But effectively the way this works, if you are Terence Stamp, whose character.

[C]

I can never remember his name, or.

[A]

Gordon Gekko, if you just think to.

[C]

Yourself, I want to buy a company, and then you get some lawyers and then you Buy the company and you have a shareholder meeting.

[A]

The banks aren't there, which is kind of crazy.

[E]

Yeah, they're not, because they're not borrowing.

[D]

They're accumulating the stock to the point where they have the ability to hire and fire.

[E]

And of course, it's like, not really.

[D]

Like that in real life. Like, you could be Gordon Gekko and you could acquire a 5% position in.

[E]

A company, but then you spend the next year rallying other institutional shareholders to your cause. And then all of a sudden there's.

[D]

An election which might be a year away, where you have to, like, put up your own slate of directors against the existing directors.

[E]

And then when you have some board seats, then you might be able to fire the CEO. Like, cinematically, that time frame doesn't work.

[A]

But also. But also you have like, you have.

[C]

Like the corporate finance department of Goldman Sachs or whoever on speed, and they're like doing a lot of the grunt work for you there.

[E]

Yes, right.

[D]

And it's not mano a mano, but mano a mano is big in the movies.

[E]

But it's.

[D]

It's like teams of lawyers and accountants having, like these long drawn out. And lenders having these long drawn out negotiations.

[E]

It's not quite as cinematic, but again, it's entertainment.

[D]

And nobody wants to watch meetings with lawyers.

[A]

But the cinema is great in this movie. Like the absolute height of 80s yuppie conspicuous consumption, the sushi machine.

[D]

And that scene on the beach with the cell phone. The giant cell phones.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

And then the thing which I realized.

[C]

Actually rewatching this movie that I missed like the first two or three times I saw the movie is the.

[A]

A few, like maybe sort of 20.

[C]

Minutes later, after the famous scene where Gordon Gekko is on the beach on his brick size cell phone, you see.

[A]

A scene with Bud Fox in his.

[C]

Office on a brick sized cell phone.

[A]

Like, he's now got the cell phone and he's on the cell phone in.

[C]

His office, and you're like, what?

[E]

Yeah, and that. Just that exchange where he calls him up.

[D]

It's like dawn on the beach.

[A]

This is your wake up call.

[E]

Yeah, it's in the Hamptons.

[D]

And he calls.

[E]

And, you know, Bud Fox is, I guess, living in like an exposed brick shithole apartment, and he just gets this call from the Hamptons. And, you know, Gekko is just like.

[D]

I wish you could see what I'm seeing right now or whatever. And I don't know if he's on Egypt or what. What beach? That, you know, what. What beach he's looking at or what.

[E]

Street he's on, but just that Hamptons call to Manhattan.

[D]

Like, how are you not out here? Like, it's so good. That scene is so powerful. And you really understand what could drive.

[E]

Bud Fox to just want to do.

[D]

Anything to get there at all costs.

[E]

Make it to that lifestyle.

[B]

One other thing I would say about the lifestyle and the kind of yuppiness that they describe is that one of the things I noticed was they kept showing shortcuts. Like, every machine they had was to make a shortcut. Like, no one was cooking. They were just putting things in a machine and it was doing the work for them. And when they were putting the apartment together, it was all fake. They would literally put up a fake brick wall.

[E]

Wait, are we gonna talk about how problematic Daryl Hanna's character is and how this movie could never be made because they would never have the lead female.

[D]

Role in a film.

[E]

Like, you could not greenlight this movie right now with her playing the character she played because she's basically naked ambition and like 100% gold digger. Like, there, there. There are very. There's almost nothing redeeming about her.

[D]

And she's the only notable female character.

[E]

In the whole film.

[A]

The one thing I will say about the Daryl Hannah character is she has extremely good taste in art. Like, assuming that she buys all of Gordon Geico's art.

[C]

He has the Schnabels, he has the Picassos, he has the Miro's, he has.

[A]

Like, you know, a long list of.

[C]

Like, genuinely blue chip art. And when he points to his Miro and he's like, I bought this for 60,000 and it's now worth 600,000, it's.

[A]

Like, yeah, that's about right.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it's funny because we just watched the Social Network and I watched this right after watching that, and honestly, I actually found this less problematic than the Social Network and the depiction of women in the Social Network. Yeah, it is definitely true that this film falls into a lot of the 80s tropes in the way it uses women. But I will say there's something interesting about the Gerald Hannah character. Partly because she's not like a hooker with a heart of gold or a perfect character. You can tell she does genuinely like this guy, but she also.

[E]

But she's for sale to the highest bidder and she says it. And I don't think that they would ever write a woman's dialogue in a film today with that level of just naked ambition and just like, I don't care about anything except what I can get for myself out of these relationships.

[D]

I just don't think they would ever do that.

[B]

I agree. But I actually think that in a way, she's exactly the same as Bud Fox. He's for sale too. Right. It's just a different, you know. And so I completely agree with you. I don't think that would be allowed today. But I almost think that. I don't think that that description is necessarily bad in this film because I do think it shows you that look. That female character was probably not going to be a broker on Wall street in the 1980s. Her way to make money, her way in her career was to align herself with this man in the exact same way that Bud Fox's character was to align himself with this man.

[E]

Right. That was the lane that was available to her in that day and age was to be like a museum to.

[D]

A corporate raider rather than be one herself.

[A]

And from her point of view, I.

[C]

Have to say that, like, you know.

[A]

She gets herself set up.

[C]

She finds someone who's just as ambitious.

[A]

As she is, who loves money as much as she does. They wind up moving in together, or.

[C]

Quasi moving in together into this glamorous apartment on the Upper east side.

[A]

And then she comes back one day to find this schlub, like, drunk, surrounded.

[C]

By pizza, and suddenly having got an attack of the morals and saying that.

[A]

Like, they can be poor together. And she's genuinely upset.

[C]

She's like, I don't want to be poor with you.

[A]

Like, go fuck off. And that's like the one sort of bit of honest emotion that I believe. Like, there's a lot of scenes of.

[C]

People crying in this movie, none of.

[A]

Which seem have any real believability except for that I believe her getting upset.

[C]

And saying, I thought I had a soulmate here and we were gonna be greedy and rich together. And now I find that you're just another schlub like your dad.

[D]

Who are you? Right.

[A]

I find that to be much more believable than Bud Fox, like, rocking up.

[C]

To the hospital and having this sort of moral clarity all of a sudden.

[H]

Why are you doing this? You've worked hard to get where you are. We're so close. You don't want to throw it all away.

[F]

Look, I. I can stay with the firm and you're doing fine. We can survive without Gordon Gekko.

[H]

I'm not looking to just survive. I've been doing that all my life. Cut this self pity crap, Bud.

[F]

What the hell's that supposed to mean?

[H]

It means if you make an enemy of Gordon Gekko. I can't be there to stand by you.

[A]

Oh, yeah?

[F]

Do you really mean that? What'd he promise you? Take you public? I guess without Gordon's money and seal of approval, I'm not such a hot investment anymore. He's just the best money he can buy.

[H]

Darian, you're not exactly pure.

[G]

Bud.

[H]

You went after Gekko with the same vengeance you went after me. Look in the mirror.

[F]

I'm looking, but I sure don't like what I see.

[D]

I like that they wrote it that way, though. I like.

[E]

I like that they had her not be like, oh, you're having this epiphany. I'm having it, too.

[D]

I agree with you. I like that they went in that direction and they let her be true to herself from the beginning of the film to the end.

[B]

Also, you know, look, Bud Fox, if he can have the morals to a certain extent, because he's a guy, you know, he's a white man at that point, who, frankly, like, even if he went to jail, he'd still probably be fine. Like, really, we don't know much about her background, but it doesn't seem like she potentially has a college degree. We have no sense of her family, you know, really, what were her options?

[D]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And to be honest, like, so the.

[C]

Final scene of the movie is Bud Fox walking up the steps of the.

[A]

State Supreme Court in lower Manhattan with the expectation that he'll get a jail sentence, but also with a job offer.

[C]

To be a senior executive at Blue Star Airlines.

[A]

And if he doesn't go to jail.

[C]

Then he'll probably wind up running the airline, which is not exactly a bad outcome for him.

[A]

And there's a good chance, as we.

[C]

Discussed in terms of insider trading laws and whatnot, that he wouldn't go to jail. Depending on what kind of evidence they had. He was doing some pretty blatantly illegal spying on companies and stealing confidential data and stuff. So that would send you to jail. It wasn't clear that they had that on him.

[A]

And in general, I feel they needed to.

[C]

They needed that whole subplot of him, you know, using the cleaning service to steal information in order to make his activity be much more obvious illegal, because otherwise there wouldn't be any obviously illegal activity.

[D]

Like, he wasn't being charged with breaking and entering.

[C]

Right, Exactly.

[A]

That's my point. And, like, when he wears that wire and goads Gordon Gekko into admitting stuff in the middle of Central park, like, there's nothing illegal that Gordon Gekko is admitting to in that.

[C]

In that speech, it's just like, you.

[A]

Know, I taught you the ropes. It's just like. It's weird how it's considered obvious in.

[C]

The movie that all of this stuff is illegal. But if you actually want to point to what they did that was illegal, you kind of have to just point to that weird breaking and entering stuff.

[A]

Which was not even necessary to the plot.

[D]

You know, they show him on a.

[E]

Motorcycle trailing Sir Larry Lawrence Wildman to a private jet, and then asking, where is that jet going? And then in his mind, putting two and two together that a corporation is based there. And that's how he figures out what Wildman's next investment is going to be. Gives the information to Gekko, and Gekko buys it first. If you did that shit now, you would be, like, the most celebrated analyst in all of hedge fundament. Because no. No analyst at a hedge fund is going to that.

[D]

Those lengths.

[E]

But not. None of what I just described is illegal. It's edge. It's. It's. I mean, it's like, very. Of course it is. I ascertained that this person was flying to a meeting to meet with this company. I'm not an insider. I'm not involved in that. I just figured it out before the stock market did. That's.

[D]

It's actually legal.

[A]

This is.

[C]

I mean, this is not legal advice. Right.

[A]

I mean, like, I wouldn't bet my.

[C]

Career on that being legal.

[D]

Like, oh, no.

[A]

As I said, do it. Insider trading law is not a law.

[C]

Like, you can't read the statute and work out whether it's legal or not.

[A]

There is a case to be made.

[C]

That what he had was material, nonpublic information of some description that he, you know, and he wasn't allowed to trade on that.

[A]

So it's a very gray area.

[C]

And for Hollywood reasons. You know, Hollywood doesn't like gray areas. But I'm. I'm kind of with you on that one. That if you. If you work something out and buy.

[A]

A thesis, that's how efficient markets are supposed to be efficient.

[E]

Right.

[D]

It's what you get paid for.

[B]

It just reminds me of, like, the financial crisis where everyone was like, why aren't people going to jail? And it was like, well, because it's hard to point to anything that was actually illegal.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, not to relitigate that whole thing. They had something that was so illegal that people can't even process that it was illegal. Which was literally moving debt off of.

[E]

Lehman Brothers books, reporting earnings, and then.

[D]

Moving it back on, like, there's on.

[E]

No planet is that not, like, blatant fraud.

[B]

Right.

[D]

But I think by the time they figured that out, the ball had moved, the puck had moved, and they were already looking at other stuff. But nobody actually went to jail. A couple of people went to court.

[E]

The thing that separates Wall street, the movie, and that era from now is.

[D]

How many people did actually go to.

[E]

Jail in the late 80s, early 90s. Like, a lot of people who were very powerful, Milken being the best example, but they literally, like, did jail time. And they weren't stealing. It wasn't made off stuff.

[D]

It was just stuff where they were.

[E]

Seen to be a malignant part of the market that the regulators wanted less of.

[C]

There was definitely a time back in the 80s, at the height of these Giuliani prosecutions, that people like Milken and Boesky were considered the unacceptable face of capitalism. And that was clearly the Oliver Stone view as well.

[A]

He creates this character as, like, an.

[C]

Exemplar of everything that is bad and going too far about 1980s capitalism.

[A]

Where do we stand now?

[C]

I mean, like, with. With. Given where we are and given hindsight.

[A]

And do we now nowadays look back.

[C]

And look at what Milken did and look at what Boesky did and look at what Gordon Gekko did and say.

[A]

Yeah, that was a crazy excess.

[C]

Things went too far and they deserve to go to jail?

[E]

Well, I just think now there are.

[D]

Ways to make so much more money than those characters made back then. That's completely legal on Wall street in Silicon Valley.

[E]

Like, there's no need for those types of petty, little bullshit insider trading crimes.

[A]

Gordon Gekko would just have a SPAC, right?

[E]

Dude, in the last 72 hours, there have been 53 SPACs filing. I didn't make that number up.

[D]

That's a real number.

[E]

So how does that work? Well, think about this. Every SPAC, $300 million, $500 million, a billion dollars. The way that the sponsor makes money is they lent. They're lending their face or their name or their resume to the spac. That's what the investors are buying into. And in exchange, that sponsor is getting 20% of the company. When the deal is finally consummated. That's the biggest carry in the history of Earth for having done nothing. At least a hedge fund taking 20% of the profits. Well, they actually produced profits. This is literally, we're handing you 20% of this company for putting your name on the prospectus. It's a pile of cash. Go find a company, buy it, and you are 20% ownership from day one. This is unheard of levels of wealth being created. The guy from JP Morgan who I read on this topic, Michael Sembalist, looked at who's making money from SPACs and calculated that sponsors. The person that issues the spac is making on average, average 958% since between 2019 and now. So imagine making 1000% inside of two years on a project like this where you haven't even actually done anything yet or run a company or generated returns a thousand percent for waking up in the morning. Why would you ever need to resort to insider trading? What a fucking waste of time. It's. It's like. It's like Madoff stealing a candy bar. I think that is a huge change. The numbers are so big for legal moving and shaking on Wall street that these kind of petty little crimes like I'm gonna find out something about a company's FDA approval and make 100 million on it. What a waste. What a total waste of time. So I always find that funny. And when you look at old heist movies, I watched this movie with Gene Hackman and I think it was a Mamet movie where they're like, there's this heist to like steal these gold bars or whatever. I think the dollar amount is like $3 million or something.

[D]

And Felix, 19 people had to get killed in. In the course of the. We live in an era where people are making $19 million a month just for putting their name on something or like just because they made a seed.

[E]

Investment in a venture backed startup eight.

[D]

Years ago that comes public today. So it's just funny to like think.

[E]

About how big the numbers are versus the late 80s.

[B]

Yeah, it's going to be hard to make spac cinematic though.

[D]

I feel like someone will find it.

[B]

I'm sure it's coming. I'm sure it's coming.

[A]

I mean we have to mention that the Bill Ackman spec is called.

[C]

Has the word tontine in it. And tontines are cinematic. Tontines by their nature involve killing everyone off until you are the last person standing.

[E]

Yes.

[A]

If only the Bill Ackman spec was an actual tontine where like everyone, you would get all of the money so.

[C]

Long as all of the other investors died. You know that would be a movie right there.

[D]

Right? It's a survivor game.

[A]

All right, so we have the sequel Wall Street 3.

[C]

There was a Wall Street 2, which I. Which we shall pass over in silence.

[A]

But Wall Street 3 is all going.

[C]

To be about a tontine spec.

[D]

I always Thought a great plot for a movie would be Wall street versus Silicon Valley.

[E]

And no one has really done it to my satisfaction. We've seen real versions of that involving Icon versus Andreessen, for example. And, you know, over ebay. And Icahn in 2014 invests in eBay and says PayPal should be a standalone company, create huge value. And all the tech people on ebay's board fight back and say, no, you can't dismantle this. And icahn was right. PayPal now has a $300 billion market cap. It's way bigger than ebay, and it's compounded at 40% a year over the last five years. So that's a corporate raider going against not an airline, but a very powerful, entrenched, cutting edge technology company and forcing some sort of corporate raid there. But that one that actually benefits shareholders. They would never make that movie. But that should be Wall Street 3. What happens when old school Wall street faces off against new school capital in the Valley? And I'd love to see somebody.

[D]

I feel like.

[A]

I feel like.

[C]

The reality, though is that ultimately there's so much money. They just look at each other and go, let's make lots of money together.

[A]

This happens in both directions. You have Chamath creating spacs and becoming.

[C]

A billionaire off his spacs at the same time that you have Ruth Porat moving over from Wall street to become the CFO of Alphabet.

[A]

And you can move in either direction. And so long as the numbers are big enough, the sheer quantity of money.

[C]

Smooths over the differences.

[D]

Well, they would end up having a bidding war over like an NBA franchise like that. That would be, that would be. The plot point is that they both demand to own $1 billion basketball team. Meanwhile, there's like trillions of dollars on the line. But that's the, that's the MacGuffin that they all want to fight over. It'd be pretty funny.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So, Josh, how do you rate this? What's. What's the final verdict on Wall Street?

[D]

What are we doing stars?

[E]

Like five stars or one to ten?

[A]

Give me, give me a star rating. Whatever you want.

[E]

I think it's four and a half stars. It's not a perfect movie.

[D]

It's just a great movie, eminently rewatchable. You can watch it once a year.

[E]

And find something new in it. And I think it says as good as any other movie about Wall Street.

[D]

I don't think there's a better movie about Wall Street.

[E]

There are other four and a half.

[D]

Star movies, but I don't think there's a five star. It might be unattainable.

[E]

So I would give this my highest ranking. I could give it without saying it's perfect, Anna.

[B]

I say four stars. Four out of five. It has, you know, some plot holes and some of that, but. But it really is. It is just a well made movie and it holds up surprisingly well.

[D]

Yes, I agree with that. Despite the clothing and the music.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Oh my God, the clothing and the music. I'm going to sort of basically agree with Josh on this one. There are structural weaknesses that might make.

[C]

It a four star movie, but it.

[A]

Gets that extra half a star basically for two reasons.

[C]

One is that it holds up on repeat viewing. I watched this movie about four or.

[A]

Five months ago for a different podcast.

[C]

And then I was like, oh God.

[A]

I need to watch it again for this one. And then I watched it again.

[C]

I was like, wow, it's actually better than the SEC that, you know, on rewatching.

[A]

It does hold up. And then the other reason I love.

[C]

This movie so much is it is one of the great New York movies.

[A]

It is so beautifully located in New York City. It gets the geography of New York City right.

[C]

It gets the feel of New York City right. It's not one of those movies which like, you know, gets filmed in Toronto and they have back alleys, you know, like, we're calling it New York. There's none of that.

[D]

They filmed in the. In the 21 Club, which was like filming in the 21 Club in 1987.

[E]

I mean, that's like it. That's like the pinnacle. And they got in there with cameras.

[D]

Like, I totally agree with you. They nail New York so well.

[B]

Yeah. And the opening of this movie is really great. It's like the Sinatra song playing and they're showing you like the World Trade center and all of these kind of images.

[A]

And then the final helicopter shot. This is long before drones of like.

[C]

Just scanning over Wall Street.

[A]

There's always that pang seeing the World Trade center.

[C]

But like, I get that pang with that final shot of seeing cars driving.

[A]

Up and down Pearl street where you're like, oh my God, remember when cars would drive up and down Pearl street and it was an actual street that.

[D]

You could drive on then. There is no Wall street left, by the way.

[E]

There's nothing there. There is no remnant of that left. Even all of the firms that dominated Wall street are now their operations have moved out to Jersey City. The.

[D]

The professionals.

[C]

Goldman still down there.

[D]

Down there. But you think about, like, where all the action.

[E]

Is that, like, Gekko personified? That would all take place. Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue. These days in Midtown. Like, 40s, 50s Greenwich.

[D]

Well, these days in people's living rooms in Greenwich.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Palm Beach.

[B]

I felt a pang watching this film. Like watching the subway with actual people on it.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

A crowded elevator. Remember elevators? Yeah.

[E]

Oh, man.

[A]

So we can recommend this movie. Go watch it. And thank you, Josh, for appearing.

[D]

This was so much fun, guys.

[E]

Anytime. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Thank you for listening to Sleep when he goes to the movies. Next week we're back watching the Social Network with none other than Paul Ford.

[E]

Sam.