Reprising his iconic, Oscar winning role as Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas is back in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
After serving a jail sentence, the notoriously corrupt Gekko emerges to start a new life, apparently repentant, a reformed man.
No longer a force to be reckoned with in the world he used to dominate, he is keen to make amends to his estranged daughter, played by Carey Mulligan, who ironically is engaged to a talented and dynamic young trader played by Shia LaBeouf.
The actor sat down for the following interview on the Manhattan set of the new movie.
- What is it like to return to Gordon Gekko, such an iconic character?
It is all positive; it keeps everything in perspective and forces you to look back to that time twenty-three years ago when we made the original movie.
Wall Street was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar and then the film Fatal Attraction came right after it.
Wall Street changed my acting career. I had been better known as a producer before that film. Making this film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and returning to the character of Gordon Gekko is interesting historically because of what’s happened economically in the world markets. It really gives you food for thought.
- Even though you played a villain, many young guys in finance looked up to Gekko. They almost idolized him. Did that surprise you?
Well, I was always shocked when so many people who saw Wall Sttreet said that I (Gekko) was the person who influenced them and inspired them to go into investment banking.
I’d say to people, ‘well, I was the villain’ and they would say , ‘no, no, no’, they didn’t see me that way, so it was all very seductive I guess.
- Could you explain how your character has changed over the last twenty or so years, being in prison?
Well, I’ve been sworn by Oliver to keep all of this relatively secret but I can say that it is a question of whether a leopard can change his spots.
Gekko went away to jail for eight years and in this scene we are filming right now, he is talking about how his sentence gave him the time to think. Now that he is no longer allowed to trade, he says he can have a little more perspective on everything.
I’m reluctant to tell you where he goes or what happens but I think the question is whether Gordon has turned over a new leaf.
After his years in prison, has he been reincarnated or changed at all? My role in the film is to convince the audience, or have them believe that I have changed my ways. Whether I have or not - you will have to see the movie.
- Has your relationship with Oliver Stone changed over the years?
Well, it has changed because I’m in a very different position from the position I was in before. I can take his abuse much better now. (laughs). He’s a tough guy, very talented; he has great respect for actors, but he’s definitely tough.
I think the fact that he is a Vietnam veteran has had an effect on him and means that he likes everybody to be able to be in the trenches with him and work as hard as he does. He wants to be able to trust everybody to be in the trenches.
In the earlier film, I was probably more easily intimidated by Oliver and in this one I personally think he needs a sounding board. I think Josh and I are the only actors who have done multiple pictures with him and are able to give back as much as he gives. We are a complementary match for him.
- It sounds interesting.
It is. I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior. I think I’ve changed a lot; I probably have a lot more confidence than when I attacked the role the first time around with Oliver.
But really he is the same old Oliver and he can still work stronger and longer than anybody else. He still has an incredible eye and ear. He makes me crazy sometimes because of how long he takes to do everything. But at the same time I’m in awe of the detail that he sees and how well his ear hears everything.
- What’s really changed on Wall Street since the last movie was made?
The proportions and circumstances in the financial world are like night and day in terms of the statistics that we were talking about back then and the kind of corruption that existed at that time. Now it involves the whole banking industry. They are just as big of thieves as the hedge fund guys were.
- So there is really no comparison?
The numbers that we’re talking about now are staggering as well as the chicanery and trickery, which is much more sophisticated than existed back then. It is quite manipulative and quite scary when you see how fast things can change.
I think Oliver’s done a really good job with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in terms of capturing the kind of intrigue that goes on. It’s almost like a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean play.
And I think we have devised a pretty intricate network of relationships between Shia, who may be my future son-in-law in the movie, Josh Brolin, who is his mentor and boss, and my daughter, who is played by Carey Mulligan.
- Does Shia’s character resemble Gekko at all?
I see a lot of me in his character. He was a street kid who didn’t come from much and had tremendous ambition. You know, there’s a reason why he was cast for that role; Shia is a really extraordinary young man. I was blown away when I realized he started acting when he was ten years old; he was doing standup comedy when he was eleven.
His work ethic is impeccable. He has immersed himself in this picture like nobody I’ve ever seen. He started about three months before we got here.
He’s actually doing pretty well in the stock market too. Also he has to carry the movie - he is in pretty much every scene. It is not like Charlie Sheen’s role in the first one which wasn’t as big, and I think he’s doing a masterful job.
- Is Gekko in this film a little like Nouriel Roubini? [Professor of economics] who in 2006 said that the United States was likely to face a housing crisis and ultimately a deep recession? He warned about an impending disaster that would have global consequences and no one listened did they?
He is. He has a book coming out called ‘Is Greed Good?’ The predominant part of this movie takes place about two years ago, in 2008. Gekko is basically very pessimistic about what the future holds for the economy.
Of course the irony is that it’s a little different today because we have this history of what has been happening in the world markets as opposed to back then in 1986 when we were rocking and rolling, having a great time and it was all very sexy.
- Does Gekko have a new woman in his life, now?
No. Only his daughter really, and he is very focused on her.
- Did you look back at the first movie before you got started on this one?
No, I never really look at my movies. I love making movies and I was very happy to make this one, but I do not need to review films.
- There are some fantastic catch-phrases in the first one that have become sort of cultural touchstones, like ‘greed is good,’ ‘how much is enough?’ and ‘lunch is for wimps’. I wonder if there are some memorable phrases in this script?
There were some good ones weren’t there? like ‘If you need a friend, get a dog’. (laughs). You know, I don’t know, because you never really know what will be remembered until after the fact.
You’re saying the sentences when you are making the film and they very well may be memorable, but when making the first film, it wasn’t as though I read the lines and thought, ‘oh, this is going to really get them’. You never know that.
- What are the themes of this film?
Well, it’s a little more complicated now than it was last time. Gordon comes of jail with some baggage (some history). But I think it’s a pretty good reflection of what is going on now. The film is pretty brave about laying it all out and has lot of respect for the audience.
- How did you react to what happened in the market, for example the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal?
I guess in general it doesn’t particularly surprise me except with that particular scam, the size and the scope and the incompetence of the SEC [US Securities and Exchange Commission] was pretty staggering. You look at this guy who is literally waiting to be caught and they never came after him.
Personally, I do know a number of people who just lost everything in the crisis and that whole sense of losing confidence is terrible. It’s so difficult now to borrow money from a bank. On the other hand, the banks are taking your money and they’re borrowing and making tremendous investments.
It is really the phenomenon of banks who got jealous of hedge funds and started saying, ‘Well, why can’t we make the same kind of returns that they are making?’ We’ll see the end of it. Obviously there are more restrictions that have now been imposed.
- Were you hit yourself, along with everyone else?
Oh yeah, I got whacked big time. (laughs).
- Who do you think the real villains are?
I think that one of the main problems was the vision that everybody should own a house. That played a big part in all of this. The idea that owning a home is the best investment that you could ever make in your life, goes back a few years and inherently, it seems to be the biggest lie that was fed to people.
You would do everything you could to buy a home and consequently that played to the market and made people pay more money for a home than they should have paid or could afford to pay.
- In the first movie one of the big questions was: ‘how much is enough?’ Has Gekko found an answer to that?
Well, right now as far as we know, Gordon doesn’t have anything: no money; he’s been stripped pretty clean and he cannot trade publicly in stocks, so he’s somewhat limited in this arena.
- But he’s a best-selling author now?
He is trying to become a best selling author and we’ll see how successful the book is, but being a best-selling author is still a long way from what he was doing and the power he had before.
- Has he grown a heart now?
It would be so foolish of me to give that away, because then what do I have left? All I have left is for an audience to guess whether he has really found any compassion.
- Is it true that villains like Gekko (even though he’s supposedly reformed) are more fun to play than the good guys?
Yes, because as an audience we all vicariously live through villains. They behave in ways that we only fantasize about and never really do. Well, most of us. (laughs).
- You won an Oscar for your performance in Wall Street. What is the best memory you have from that night?
That was a big night for me because being the second generation in Hollywood, the son of Kirk Douglas and living in the shadow of my father for so many years, was difficult.
So finally getting the recognition from my fellow actors was fantastic. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of my fellow actors. The assumption is that being second generation makes it a lot easier in the business and it is easier in terms of how you conduct your life, but it’s a little more difficult in terms of creating your own persona.
So for me professionally, that was the biggest moment of my life, and it really allowed me to step out and feel like I was my own man.
- I assume that you obviously know your way around the financial world but how much research did you have to do?
I don’t really know my way around, but while we were researching this film we had a meeting with Sam Waksal, [former CEO of ImClone Systems], who was Martha Stewart’s partner. He was very generous. He went to jail in 2003 and did five years [he was sentenced to seven years], and he talked about it.
We met a couple of other guys, but I didn’t do anywhere near the amount of work that Shia did. Shia’s been extraordinary; he spent a lot of time before the movie started getting deeply involved in this world. He actually started a few funds himself, and is doing quite well I might add.
But I do have friends on Wall Street and I’m from New York, so I guess this was a little easier for me and I know a little bit, at least on the surface, about how it all works.
- Did you learn anything specific from people you talked to that might have infused your character?
Yes, that being in prison you have time to think. Most of this business is reacting, rather than having the time to think. So, it changes your pace and your rhythm a little bit.
Rather than being on top of everything instantaneously, it gives you a little time to reflect and a little more time to see the cycles that happen economically in the bigger picture.
So it might make you wiser, absolutely. But those years in prison are years that can be lost. It really depends on how you choose to spend them.
- Have you learned anything yourself doing these movies and meeting these experts?
After the shock of what happened over a year ago and seeing how much one can lose, I would say I’m generally fairly conservative. It has as much to do with my age as it has to do with the market.
- Did you have any idea that Gordon Gekko was going to be the iconic character that he became when you made the first film?
I had no sense that Gekko would live on as this sort of archetypal character, representing a whole period of culture and business. No, but I knew that it was a well written part but I had no idea that certain lines would last like ‘greed is good’. Some of those lines would come back to haunt me (laughs).
- Going back to the influence of this character, does it amaze you that Gekko remains so popular after all these years?
It does. The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He’s sort of a guru. Since that movie came out, I think it’s probably the picture people identify me with the most.
It is the one people mention the most and it has always amazed me. I think they were seduced by his words and his clothes. Ellen Mirojnick (costume designer) should get a lot of credit for that.
She worked on the first picture and started the trend for those vertical striped shirts and the suspenders that I wore, and she is also working on this one.
Wall Street captured a moment in time in our culture that was very, very seductive. Hopefully we we will capture a different moment in time with this film too.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is out now
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