ON A MORE INNOCENT WALL STREET

FLASHBACK

Given another ugly day in the markets today (roller coast day with multi-hundred point swings on the Dow), it's nice to take a break and think back to a time when things seemed so much simpler, say the 1980s.  The LA Times this weekend had a great piece by Stanley Weiser, one of the co-writers of the iconic Oliver Stone movie "Wall Street", which gave the world Gordon Gekko to hate and/or love and emulate. 

It's surprising to read that the idea of the movie seemed to come on an impulsive notion by Oliver Stone, hot off his success with Platoon, which gave him mojo with the studios to green-light a seemingly risky movie about financial geeks on Wall Street.  As the author describes it:

"The conceit for the movie was an afterthought on Stone's part. He wanted me to research and write a screenplay on the television quiz show scandals of the 1950s. During a story conference at a Mexican restaurant on a Friday night in Los Angeles, he interrupted me, "Why don't we do a movie about Wall Street instead?"

What's also fun to read is how they came up with Gordon Gekko character:

"In developing the character of Gordon Gekko, I formed an amalgam of disgraced arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, corporate raider Carl Icahn, and his lesser-known art-collecting compatriot Asher Edelman. Add a dash of Michael Ovitz and a heaping portion of, yes, my good friend and esteemed colleague Stone (who came up with the character's name) -- and there you have the rough draft of 'Gekko the Great.'
Gekko's dialogue actually was inspired by Stone's own rants. Listening to Oliver's early morning cajoling and sarcastic phone calls (I write at night) exhorting me to work: "Where the hell are you? Out having a gourmet breakfast, playing with the kids in the park?" Or: "The one thing you don't do is everything I tell you to do; next time write a note and pin it on your . . . forehead." Other unpublishable barbs proved to be the precise varnish with which I needed to coat Gekko."

They ran with it, and the rest as they say, is movie history. The high-light for many of course, is the "Greed is Good" speech:

The irony of course is over the last 20 years we gave managements much bigger stakes in the companies...and we're still more or less back at the same place.  Note today's congressional "show trial" grilling of Richard Fuld, the CEO of the now bankrupt investment bank, Lehman Brothers.

The world of Wall Street of the 1980s seems so much simpler than the Wall Street that remains in 2008. 

One can only imagine what it'll look like again in another 20 years.

Comments

[Yihong Ding]

Hi Michael,

It's great to watch your thought. As you said, history has repeatedly told us the same thing while the knowledge does not stop us from being trapping into the same place again, even deeper. Are there anything missing or could we actively do something to improve ourselves?

In this new Web age, we have improved computers while ourselves seem to be dumber than before. This is simply wrong. We should be able to learn something. When some bad thing happen again, someone should be able to stand out and point the rest of the people to the history. Our memory should not be lost when a new generation replaces an old one. Something we must do and maybe we are doing now.

In addition to make computers smarter because of humans, why can't we make humans smarter because of computers? I have shared this thought with many people recently at varied places---on the Web or even local at restaurants. All of them told me that it is what they are looking for. Computers should be a tool to make us think better instead of removing the ability of thinking from mankind. Your great post has demonstrated it.

thank you and always appreciate the thoughts you shared with us.

Yihong

[M]

"History doesn't repeat itself - it rhymes."

So it does, and so it will again...