Life and Leisure

It's all about making money at all costs

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-19 07:56

Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas and Jake Moore by Shia LaBeouf in Oliver Stone's new movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Provided to China Daily

The knives are out on Wall Street.

Oliver Stone returns to the financial world, together with Michael Douglas to reprise, 23 years later, the glory of the riveting Wall Street.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Douglas' iconic Gordon Gekko has been released from prison, after serving a sentence for securities fraud, money laundering and racketeering. No longer the king of Wall Street, he seems focused instead on re-establishing a relationship with his estranged daughter. But a battle between him and his daughter's fianc Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a smart young trader, evolves.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a story of making money at all costs, and the people who will do anything to gain an entre into that exclusive club of great wealth and power.

The film hit Chinese screens on Oct 15. In an e-mail interview with China Daily, Stone shares what it means for him and Gekko to be back again, his thoughts on the 2008 financial crisis and China's new power on Wall Street.

Was the 2008 financial crash an important reason for you to make the sequel?

Last year I read a script by Allan Loeb that addressed the issue of the financial crash in 2008 and it started with Gordon Gekko getting out of jail, which is a great hook. It got to me.

Years ago, there was talk of a sequel but I did not want to do it. Then the crash happened and I changed my mind.

Do you think everything has changed in the past 20 years or so?

Wall Street has always been an insider's game. There has always been inside trading. Insider information is power, people sharing information. It's the nature of the game. But yes, it was different in 1987. Now it's another ballgame; it is even bigger. There's much more money and much more is at stake.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is still a battle between a young, upright man and a sophisticated senior. If you could choose, which one would you like to be?

I think the main storyline is from the young man's point of view - Charlie Sheen in the original and Shia LaBeouf in this one. I may be Gekko's age, but I certainly would like to be young again with the opportunities, chances, and choices that youth has.

Do you agree "greed is good"? If so, in what way?

No, I don't think so at all. I think greed is bad, but I think it's now legal. What Gekko is doing in the 1980s has now become legitimate. At one point in the movie, we say "Greed is now legal" - this sums it up.

What does it mean to you to do this sequel after 23 years? We all know how the first movie influenced the business world. Will this second installment make an impact on the world of business as well?

I don't think of this as a sequel, but more as a bookend. The impact of a sequel would have been in the 1990s when there was still a generation that would have remembered the film.

This film was important to me, because of the events of 2008 and its impact on the business world. This was a cataclysmic heart attack, and a serious warning to the world that it was living beyond its means. In the same vein, central banks of the United States let us all down by selling junk securities to the American public. The trust between banks and the people has to a certain large degree been endangered.

China is now gripped by chasing wealth and there are definitely many Gekkos, Jakes and Buds here. What message do you think the movie can deliver to audiences here?

China is your story. In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps I'm framing the US story, but certainly there are parallels. Your government, however, would never allow the banks to do what the US did in 2008. Certainly your government would have sent some of the bankers to jail by now.

In Money Never Sleeps, Wall Street guys tried to persuade some Chinese businessmen to invest in a new energy project. Why do you have such a China angle? Was it out of box office considerations, or simply a coincidence, or for some other reason?

No, the introduction of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund into the movie was done out of a sense of reality, because the Chinese government, the wealth funds, and investors play a huge role in Wall Street. They are the source of much new capital, and China has been in the forefront of solar research for future energy needs.

Do you have any plans to shoot a movie about China?

I would like to make a film in China, and have considered it several times, but one problem that keeps re-occurring is the barrier of censorship and what can and can't be done. I find the process somewhat political and tedious. But things change, and I hope to make a film in China. I have shot commercials there, and very much enjoyed the crews and the process.

China Daily