Oliver Stone

By: Never Sleeps | Written by Beau Willimon | April 12, 2010 |

Truth be told, I have no idea what Oliver Stone’s sleeping habits are, but with his new feature film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps being released this fall, work underway on a 10-part mini-series for Showtime called Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America, and plans for his third documentary about Fidel Castro, I’d be surprised if he was clocking a full eight hours per night. I met with Stone last February to discuss all of these projects and more.

When I first arrived at Stone’s production offices in Santa Monica, the receptionist told me that he was wrapping up a previous meeting and would be ready in a few minutes. In the waiting room, my eyes wandered over the walls. There were framed newspaper cartoons both celebrating and mocking Stone (mostly the latter), a black-and-white photo of Pat and Richard Nixon accompanied by Nixon’s grateful letter to the photographer, and two colorful oil portraits — one of Che Guevera and the other of Jimi Hendrix, beside which was a reproduction of Hendrix’s death certificate. Standing proudly on a nearby side table, much to my amusement, was Colin Farrell’s breastplate armor from the movie Alexander.

I heard footsteps approaching and looked over to see Stone emerge from the doorway. “Hi, I’m Oliver Stone,” he said in a deep baritone. We shook hands, and Stone led me down a hallway decorated with posters of his films. Needless to say that with more than 40 years of filmmaking under Stone’s belt, there were a lot of posters. The feeling wasn’t so much of vanity as of perseverance. Posters from his more obscure efforts and box-office flops hung side by side with his more iconic films, as if to confess, “Here is what I’ve done, good and bad, for better or worse.” Stone’s office itself was workman-like and unpretentious — a cluttered desk, modest furnishings. The alleyway view out of the third-story window was neither expansive nor inspiring. This felt like the place where one comes to toil, not to luxuriate.

Stone has been toiling away ever since he dropped out of Yale in the mid-’60s and volunteered for infantry duty in Vietnam. Upon his return to the states, Stone worked in Hollywood for more than a decade as both a screenwriter and a director before becoming a household name. While winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Midnight Express (1978), it was the critically acclaimed Platoon (1986) that proved to be Stone’s big breakthrough, earning him his second Academy Award, this time for Best Director. He built on Platoon’s success the following year with Wall Street, solidifying his reputation as one of America’s most exciting new directors. Wall Street told the tale of stockbroker Bud Fox’s (Charlie Sheen) rise and fall during the ’80s’ bull market at the hands of uber-tycoon Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). The film immortalized Gekko’s proclamation that “Greed is good” and has since become a modern classic. That was 23 years and 15 movies ago. So why a sequel now?

I posed that question to one of the film’s producers, Eric Kopeloff, who also worked with Stone on the Bush Jr. biopic W. “I think that the crash of the economy and the aftermath was inspirational in deciding to want to push forward and make a project like this,” said Kopeloff. “It was clear to Oliver and myself that it was an amazing time to actually go and make a film that will mirror what’s going on in the system and help people understand what happened ... at the same time make it entertaining and make a Wall Street film that everybody knows and loves. “

The more cynical among movie goers might speculate that Stone and his fellow producers are merely exploiting the recent financial crisis to cash in on a past glory. But Stone wouldn’t characterize the film as a sequel at all. Early on during our interview, he admonished me for calling the movie Wall Street II. “That’s not the title,” he said. “The actual title is Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” In fact, Stone has quite a track record of revisiting certain subject matters: Vietnam (Platoon, Heaven and Earth, Born on the Fourth of July), U.S. presidents (JFK, Nixon, W.), the media (Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers), Latin America (Salvador, South of the Border, the script for Scarface) and Fidel Castro (Commandante, Looking for Fidel and an upcoming third Castro documentary). One could even cite his period epic Alexander as an example. After the movie’s initial box-office disappointment, Stone re-edited the film before it was released on DVD in 2005. Unsatisfied with his own director’s cut, Stone released yet a third DVD version in 2007 titled Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut. “It’s three hours and 45 minutes with an intermission. It’s the correct version. It’s the one I should have done, fought for. It’s the whole kit and kaboodle,” said Stone. “I always struggled with that film because we were rushed. But it’s my fault and I accepted it.”

In this context, there’s nothing surprising about Stone’s decision to direct another film about Wall Street. As with Alexander, Stone isn’t interested in repeating his subjects so much as expanding on them, approaching them from new angles, attempting to portray “the whole kit and kaboodle.” What intrigued him about Money Never Sleeps was how much Wall Street had changed in the last 20 years.

“There were no middlemen. There were no middle earners. You were in or you were out,” said Stone. “Artificial intelligence was ruling the market. I don’t have an interaction with you. I sell to a computer; I buy from a computer. I saw these kids all day — they’re at the computer. They don’t even go to lunch. They don’t even interface until four o’clock.” Later he added, “We lost the banks, and we also became crazy as a country. Now the government has a lot to do with that. Clinton and Bush both made us pay a price. They made dumb money. Clinton started with the mortgage program. He started in the ’90s. They wanted to give free mortgages away, basically. And that’s what happened. And it got crazier and crazier. And then consumers, credit cards, interest on credit cards, and it all went crazy, and student loans went crazy, everything went crazy. Money became impossible. So when I was dealing with millions of dollars in ’87 — which was an enormous amount of money — all of sudden in 2008 when I returned, it was stunning to see billions of dollars. To start a hedge fund took a billion dollars.”

Money Never Sleeps once again stars Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. But it also stars newcomers Carrie Mulligan as Gekko’s estranged daughter, Winnie, and Shia LaBeouf as her fiance, a young trader named Jacob Moore. The story revolves around Gordon and Jacob’s efforts to warn Wall Street of impending financial doom while simultaneously tracking down the person responsible for the death of the young trader’s mentor (played by Frank Langella). Rounding out the cast are Josh Brolin as an investment banking exec and Susan Sarandon as Jacob’s mother. Charlie Sheen makes a cameo as Bud Fox. Highlighting the generational gaps on Wall Street was key to Stone. “You have Gekko in his 60s, Brolin in his 40s and Shia in his 20s. So I think you have an amalgam of three generations.”

Of course the big draw to many fans of the original Wall Street is the opportunity to see Gordon Gekko on the big screen again. In the film’s trailer, we see Gekko emerging from prison after a long sentence and retrieving his belongings, including his famous giant cell phone. But echoes of the original end with the phone. The consummate insider in the original, Gekko is anything but that at the start of Money Never Sleeps. Stone stressed the importance of Gekko being relegated to outsider status in the new version: “He doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t have anything. He doesn’t have shit. His daughter is alienated from him. His son has committed suicide. He’s a drug addict. His wife has gone mad and left him. He’s got nothing. He comes out with nothing. And that’s what makes him, in a weird way, empathetic. Not to say Gekko’s not a weasel, not a reptile at heart. He’s charming, but the question is ‘What is he?’”

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