The screen adaptations of Gordon Gecko, Patrick Bateman and Jordan Belfort's stories make me think that a lot changes between the time production starts on a screenplay and when the cinema reels roll off the assembly lines.
Studio execs do test screens and decide to glamorize the debauchery to extreme levels and give it tons of screen time, because "that's what the people want".
So at the end of the movie, you no longer merely empathize with the antagonist, but end up idolizing him. Why else do college bros know the "Greed is Good" speech by heart? Or Bateman's opening monologue in his apartment?
Probably true. But I'm reminded that when Michael Lewis wrote his first book, 'Liar's Poker', he viewed it as a cautionary tale and a polemic against the behaviors he saw on Wall Street. He was surprised that its readers took it more as an instruction manual and an invitation to participate.
EDIT: Found the link to the interview I'm misquoting. Here's the original passage:
"I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual."
It's not the students that are hopelessly greedy I'm afraid. It's just that they're conditioned - living in such a competitive, second is first of the losers kind of society - to go with whatever provides them the safest path away from poverty and destitution.
I don't think it's restricted to students. To go back only a little bit in the history of things, I think Maslow was on to something with his hierarchy of needs. When you're safe and fed, and cared about, you have some room to work on self-actualization. Not so much when you're scared and hungry. Money's not safety or food, but a steady stream of it is a good proxy in these days. To go back a little further, I'm thinking of John Adams quote "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
I worked for a prominent hedge fund (20B USD AUM at the time) for 9 years and never first hand witnessed any excesses.
There was always the third hand accounts of something happening. I did work in backoffice IT and not for one of the desks, so not odd I wouldn't have seen anything firsthand.
Probably closest I saw to show of wealth would be the rare occasions I drove in and parked in the building. You'd see a few Ferraris parked even in the middle of winter in Chicago, and that's not counting the CEOs cars that were kept behind a keycarded garage within the garage.
And he wrote the "Undoing Project" to explain why this happens. Not his best book but a decent laymen intro for those interested in Behavioral Psychology.
It’s always easier to scapegoat “studio execs” whenever a production has ethical problems. In reality, smart folks like Coppola and Stone know how to play to certain audiences while still selling tickets to the less sophisticated. Most of their movies can be read in opposite terms and it’s absolutely on purpose.
I'm scapegoating the audience. They're the ones lapping this shit up. Bateman, Gecko and Belfort (I'll throw in Tyler Durden here as well) were all cautionary tales, they are sociopaths you want to avoid, not emulate.
But just the opposite has happened; they are revered by fans specifically for their lack of ethics because of how "badass" it came off on screen.
This is a problem that is somewhat well-known: If you send your message in esoteric terms it will be read by the great majority as a face value validation. Even some very direct statements tend to be read preferentially.
Whether this is problematic or not depends somewhat on your view of the world. I recommend Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines for a much more thorough historical treatment of the subject. By his reckoning it goes back to the ancient Greeks, at least.
His personal aesthetic care mantra has been repeated, unironically, all the time amongst some people I no longer hang out with. It's the "Gym Tan Laundry" (GTL from Jersey Shore) of its day.
The ending where he was at a sales conference asking people to sell him a pencil was rather poignant about how far he fell, but you're right in that that message is missed by most audiences.
Scorsese crime dramas (e.g. Goodfellas, Casino) tend to have a flair for showing the the up-and-up side of crime with a very brief ending in reality. The Departed is an exception in that you saw the story from both "rats" sides, and the undercover cop had it much worse than the mole cop.
I took it as taking you along the ride and showing how easy someone could get caught up. Everyone has some kind of evil inside them, and you shouldn't be quick to judge.
Well said. There were numerous reports of insiders cheering and feeling reinforced after watching that movie in theaters. Whereas the public, by only their sensibilities, saw the ill effects of that kind of business.
The book this movie is based on was written by Belford himself. What would people expect as a result? They decided to create a movie depicting the point of view of the thief.
Thank you. I downloaded it a long time ago but never was motivated enough to see it past the first 10 min or so. You confirmed my unconsious expactations. I just now deleted it.
With a quick reminder at the end that you can to this day go pay somebody to teach you how to do it yourself.