We didn’t even notice enough to be offended. Yet the incidents barely registered at the time because they were so … normal. The experiences my female Wall Street friends and I had would be considered outrageous today. But in other ways, for those of us who were there in the 1980s, especially women, the film doesn’t begin to capture the absurdity of that era. In many ways the film is over the top - an orgy scene on the trading floor, which for no particular reason includes a marching band, comes to mind. Much of the conversation and coverage around the film has revolved around the same questions: How real is it? Did stuff like that really happen? I was reminded of that long-ago encounter while watching The Wolf of Wall Street, the Martin Scorsese epic about penny stockbrokers in the 1980s and 1990s binging on women, Quaaludes and sports cars, with some dwarf-tossing thrown in for good measure. ( MORE : The Wolf of Wall Street: The True Story of Jordan Belfort) In fact, it turns out that filming some scenes in 'The Wolf of Wall Street' resulted in one of its lead stars needing to go to the hospital.Follow a rookie reporter at the Wall Street Journal in the 1980s, while working on one of my first articles, the businessman I was interviewing locked his office door, leered at me and stripped down to his underwear.Īlarmed but not knowing what to do, I kept asking my questions, jotting notes in my reporter’s pad. However, while the film's numerous party sequences work to illustrate the absurdity of Belfort's escapades, shooting them was by no means an easy task for its actors and crew.

As a result, the film goes out of its way to show what kind of lifestyle Belfort and his crooked colleagues were engaging in at the height of their 'success.' It takes Belfort's carefree, unapologetic perspective on the situation, and it doesn't shy away from showing the clear pleasure he took in making money - regardless of how he did it. The film's visual and narrative excess isn't unwarranted, and it actually makes sense given its subject matter.īased on the memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' details how Belfort and his brokerage house achieved immense success on Wall Street by committing fraud and engaging in countless illegal activities.

From its 180-minute running time to its extreme amounts of onscreen nudity and swearing, the Martin Scorsese-directed film is intent on depicting both the rewards and costs of living a life of endless luxury and debauchery.

' The Wolf of Wall Street' is, in many ways, a film about excess.

Wolf of wall street movie clip