Oliver Stone: 'Wall Street is a Good Place Distorted by Some'

What compelled you to go for this sequel? Was it just about leveraging the public sentiment post the credit crunch —  emotions are running high — people have lost their jobs, houses and money. Or is there a message intended?
To begin with, I don’t see it as a sequel.

Ideally sequels should be done in a few years time after the first release. Then they have the natural advantage of recognition factor. Now, Money Never Sleeps is 23 years post the original movie. This is a separate story all together… a new generation, a new feeling, all new characters.

The background for Wall Street was the 1980s era….Reagan policies, era of deregulation, 1987 crash, etc.

Money Never Sleeps is set against 2008 — a bigger crash…which was almost a triple bypass. It was a warning to the regulatory system that the US and the world were living beyond their means. The 2008 crash is just a background here. The fall of Frank Langella’s bank was derived from the way Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers were allowed to crash by the big banks on the Street.

But otherwise it is a family drama with six central characters spread across three generations. Complex relationships between a mother and her son, a father and his daughter and a boss and his subordinate. And of course the two larger than life characters Gordon Gekko and Bretton James.

This movie too like the earlier Wall Street is about money versus family and love. In the previous movie, a young man (Bud Fox) goes on to sell out his father, his father’s company for Gekko’s profits and in this movie, another young man (Jake Moore) betrays his girlfriend while pursuing his aspirations. Actually, in that respect it is very similar to Bollywood and the Indian cycles of history.

Gekko is in his 60s — reformed and just out of prison. James is in his 40s and the bad guy who is hungry for more. And Moore is in his 20s, relatively amateur and looking forward to learning the tricks of the trade. I don’t necessarily make movies to give messages to my audiences. I make movies because it is exciting to make movies and I want to entertain the movie watching audiences. However, I would like to emphasise that money doesn’t make happiness.

Considering that the original Wall Street derived heavily from the excesses of the 1980s (free market capitalist policies, insider trading, corporate raiders et al), what were the influences for Money Never Sleeps?
Like I mentioned, the 2008 crash is just the background. The resemblance to some vital financial events of 2008 cannot be ignored. But it is just a portrayal of our times….how we have been operating perilously.   

Wall Street glorified greed and the financial world failed to learn its lessons. Does Money Never Sleeps expect to bring in a sense of moral deterrence?
Actually I don’t operate like that. The background may revolve around socially conscious behaviour but at the end of the day, people need to be entertained. I agree that the original Wall Street didn’t do anything to invoke any such sentiments.

The thing is that the entire system runs on greed. Gekko was an outsider in 1987. The generations after him became hedge fund managers in 1990s and bankers in the early part of this century and were insiders.

The motives of all three were pretty similar — plunder the economy. What changed was that the hedge fund managers and the banker operated within the frameworks of the law and got greedier.

We, as a reformed society, ushered in capitalism and failed by deregulating all the rules of dealing. Banks were cut loose and then bailouts from taxpayers’ money came. I am not sure if capitalism in its current form can even survive.

What differences do you see between the 1987 capitalism and what we have seen in the last two years?
I don’t see any difference. It is still excessive and unregulated. A series of bubbles keep blowing up every few years. President Reagan deregulated the markets heavily. That brought in a sizeable crash in 1987. We thought the system will self correct. But it didn’t. It just got worse.

The Web / tech bubble came as we entered this century. And now the subprime real estate crash. It is a real structural problem that keeps repeating itself every few years. Regulators’ oversight contributes to it massively.

Washington keeps coming up with new rules but there is no real and proper interpretation of it. There has always been a lot of bureaucratic confusion in the way these rules interpreted and implemented.

The Banking and Commodity reforms came during the Clinton regime. The banking rules were reformed by repealing part of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999. This started the countdown to the sort of heart attack and the triple bypass that hit the financial world in 2008.

And all this while, regulatory and rating agencies continued to exist but they allowed accumulation of dumb mass money. Ideally, Enron should have been a great example for the government and the regulators. But it didn’t happen. Bankers became the new Enron.

Gekko was created as a combination of various real life characters (Ivan Boesky, Mike Milken, Carl Icahn etc.). How was Bretton James in Money Never Sleeps created?
Bretton James is a banker. He is handsome, smart and a ruthless power broker. He represents the typical power generation of Wall Street i.e. a man in his 40s or 50s. A believer of “too big to fail,” he is a combination of men like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Rubin etc.

It is said that you were quite surprised and shocked by Gekko’s popularity after Wall Street’s release. Did it in any way impact the way you created Bretton James?
To be honest here, we were quite surprised when Gekko became a cherished idol for college and business graduates. When we made Wall Street in 1987, the world had not seen a crash. We didn’t expect the world to embrace Gekko. He was a bad guy and people should have learnt what not to do and moved on. But Gekko stayed in the mindset of the Wall Street aspirants.

Having said that, Gekko’s popularity and cult didn’t impact the creation of Bretton James in any way. Now, the world has witnessed all that has happened in the last few years, it is unlikely that the world would fall for the banker James.

What is it about Wall Street that lends itself to moral compromise?
Money makes people do things that they don’t want to do. It is a sort of murky world out there. For an average guy who is desperate to rise through the social and competition ladder, a mere presence on the street is daunting enough, let alone the incredulous amounts of money on offer. The temptations erase all moral considerations. Once again, it is the system here that is at fault. Greed has replaced goodwill.

What would you like a young Wall Street trader to take away after he sees Money Never Sleeps?
My father was a stock broker on Wall Street in the 1940s — a completely different era. He believed in doing good for his clients. Now, this is missing today completely. Clients’ interests have to be the most important thing for any young Wall Street trader. He needs to appreciate the finer details with a firm sense of truth.

We must understand that Wall Street isn’t bad at all. It is the engine of capitalism that creates jobs for society, infrastructure, healthcare and most importantly good wealth. The problem is that it is repeatedly distorted by those people at the top.