Hacker Cinema
The Wolf of Wall Street
2013 · Film · 180 min
Directed by Martin Scorsese
A New York stockbroker refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, corporate banking world and mob infiltration. Based on Jordan Belfort's autobiography.
8 positive24 negative2 mixed86 neutralfrom 120 commenters
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124 comments on Hacker News
If the manager told you
"You don't value our time, you show up late, how do you expect us to value your time?"
Or something to that extent, that would be extremely rude. It's like a line out of Wolf of wall street or those trump movies - "You're fired!".
I meant to say modern-day influencer. Like instagram/tiktok like. All this "American-Dream" style things were promotional material with twisted reality. Movies showing luxury lifestyle of a "regular" American/US person.
Although per-person adjusted income is really high compared to many parts of the world, day-to-day lifestyle is hardly comparable to "Home Alone" or Wolf of Wall Street themes.
But yes, each era had prosperous countries trying to attract talent obviously. From Egypt to Persians then Rome and even Ottomans too. Later on France/Britain during industrialization.
A Few Good Men is also a great movie IMHO.
And he was quite excellent in The Wolf of Wall Street (playing I think Leonardo's father?)
Very sad development.
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Reminds me of that quaalude scene from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
TBH, I've been hoping they make a Wolf of Wall Street style movie about the store. There was obviously kooky stuff going on business wise, and that means there could be an entertaining story.
sounds like hes setting the stage for a movie script - "wolf of wall street 2"
There's a lot of great (and some remarkably bad) advice in the replies here, but one thing I can share from my two decades of having my hands in sales, engineering and service is that customers, regardless of they are B2B or private, are going to weigh your product on two things;
1. Does this solve a problem we have?
2. Can we afford it?
That's it. There's no magic tricks or dark patterns to be exploited, contrary to what a variety of sales/marketing books might tell you (those books are selling you the books, nothing more).
Here's a few easy things to remember:
1. Your customer has needs. Meet them or walk away before you waste valuable time and create resentment.
2. Your customer is a human that values honesty and wants to make an informed decision, so be prepared to give them the information they need to do so.
If you go into a presentation knowing your product and knowing your customer's needs, there's really no other controls you can account for that will sway that deal one way or the other. So, do your homework. Use OSINT techniques to gather info on your customer, build a profile of what they already use, what their pain points are, etc and don't forget to just talk to them. Not every interaction has to result in a sale, in fact, most are fact-finding/info-gathering sessions for both parties, in my experience.
Despite doing well for myself when I was operating in a sales capacity, I do not do sales much these days mostly because I prefer the troubleshooting and development side of the industry I'm in, but if you approach it with a Troubleshooting Mindset, you're better off. It sets you up to offer the right solution for the right problem if you think of your customer's workflow/processes as something to be studied so that it can be improved.
I say this because I have met countless salesmen in my day that think they can human-hack their way to a deal because they watched Glengarry Glen Ross too many times, or read a Malcolm Gladwell book. They're the reason why we have a used car salesman stereotype and why movies like Wolf of Wall Street are made (that movie is not about a hero). Approach with caution any advice that a behavioral economist or anyone claiming to be a market expert offers; none of these people have crystal balls or mind-reading capabilities and they make money by convincing people they do. You're in a position where a lot of that might seem attractive and I was there once myself, going so far as to paying real money to attend a Tony Robbins seminar more than once when I was first starting out. It's all nonsense in the end, boiling down to getting yourself out there, building relationships with people, spiced with a bit of luck and privilege.
This is basically it.
Are the liars of our society shunned and condemned to penury? Nope.
Jeff Skilling (Mr Enron) got out of jail and raised money for a new company. Pull off the fraud synonymous with corporate fraud and get investors.
Former convicted Enron corporate officers enjoy fat speaking fees and cushy consulting gigs.
You can pull off the fraud everyone knows and pay no social price for it.
You can defraud investors by the billions and get a movie about you (Wolf of Wall Street).
You can cook up the disaster that was WeWork and raise hundreds of millions from the most powerful VCs right after.
> A precondition is likely that one has mainly watched CGI-heavy movies for most of one's life.
Indeed, a great (if counterintuitive) example of this is The Wolf of Wall Street. I bet a lot of people would be surprised at just how much CGI is used in that just for set/location.
For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.
There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho, American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them deal with dark themes in a light way.
Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.
Dr. Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
Casablanca
The first Sean Connery James Bond films, Casino Royale with Daniel Craig
The Matrix
Django Unchained
The Wolf of Wall street
A good read is "Billion Dollar Whale", which details the 1MDB scandal that actually funded the Wolf of Wall Street movie.
Jho Low scammed ~$5 Billion, and used some of the funds to befriend Leonardo DiCaprio (by throwing lavish parties), as well as fund the movie.
> I’m sure that overworked wealthy people have plenty of vices, i.e. “poor impulse control”.
I once watched a movie about this called The Wolf of Wall Street
They do crash real cars in movies though. The Wolf of Wall Street saw an actual Lamborghini Countach with a VIN get crashed quite a lot, John Carpenter's Christine went through like twenty Plymouths and The Dukes of Hazzard TV series destroyed hundreds of cars ("an estimated 309 Chargers were used").
These stories sadden me because I can’t help but wonder, what else could you possibly “need” after your net-worth is above seven or eight? Figures?
Watching the Bernie Madoff documentary on Netflix I couldn’t get away from the question “why”? Same thing with the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Why would someone “need” another 50 million dollars? How is it worth risking life in jail?
There's some precedence of pop culture has influenced criminal behavior. But it's usually superficial, by groups that were already engaged in the behavior. Mafia media from The Godfather onwards were reportedly popular with the mob and maybe influenced them to imitate the fashions and manner of speaking depicted on screen (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/movies/godfather-mafia.html). Hong Kong Triads youth did the same after John Woo's films with the Mark Gor Lau. Wall Street, and probably other financial thrillers to The Wolf of Wall Street and further also influenced brokers' styles, and sometimes behavior (https://slate.com/culture/2007/09/how-wall-street-s-gordon-gekko-inspired-a-generation-of-imitators.html).
You also hear examples of "suburban father tries to make meth because of Breaking Bad" but those are one-off individuals who are probably not of sound judgment.
> I'm an American in my 40s. I've never seen "glorification of scams" in any mainstream culture
Some very popular movies that come to mind (Some of these may not be intended to be glorifying scams, but to many unsophisticated viewers, they absolutely are):
- The Social Network
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Uncut Gems
- The Godfather
- Scarface
- Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen)
- Emily the Criminal
- I Care a Lot
- Nine Queens
- Punch-Drunk Love
> I've also never seen any sort of "hyper-masculization" shown in a positive light in mainstream culture
More movies!
- The Godfather (again)
- Pulp Fiction
- Fight Club
- American History X
- Gangster Squad
- Django Unchained
- Expendables
- Every Fast and Furious movie
- (Nearly?) Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
> it's common to see masculinity referred to as as "toxic" and equated with negative traits or externalities
I think this is (usually?) a misunderstanding. People refer to toxic masculinity, a set of problematic behaviors some men exhibit as part of attempting to appear "manly" that includes traits such as: homophobia, glorifying unhealthy habits (e.g., drinking like a man, don't cry like a woman, mental health issues depicted as "weakness", etc.) They're not referring to masculinity, itself, as being toxic.
Lots of classic movies about or that came roughly around the 2008 financial crisis:)
Wolf of Wall Street
Margin Call
The Big Short
You can watch a good example of this in the Netflix mini-series on Madoff.
Really shows how he did it using the steps detailed above.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81466159?preventIntent=true
The Wolf of wall street film also shows the same pattern.
Crypto tokens are effectively the modern version of penny stocks, the thing you'd see garish ads on MotleyFool.com years ago. It's selling the dream of above average returns to retail investors who don't know any better, a game as old as time.
If films like Boiler Room and Wolf of Wall Street were to be made today, they wouldn't show brokers cold calling retirees, but rather people furiously typing away in Discord rooms, inflating the mirage until the insiders are able to cash out.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blackberry-movie-review-2023
> “BlackBerry” is a MoneyBro movie par excellence, right up there with “Wall Street,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Boiler Room,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It shares their key, defining trait: even though its main characters are either charismatic sociopaths or sheep, and the capitalist system they operate in is deeply corrupt and rewards men without morals or conscience, the story is so excitingly told, the performances so watchable, and the dialogue so quotable that it becomes the verbal equivalent of an action flick—kinetic, suspenseful, and sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and weirdly moving.
For The Wolf of Wall Street, the following result using wolf + money bag + roadway was considered wrong:
> The guess is: The Wolf of Wall Street Reason: The movie is about the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, earning him a lot of money in the process. The road emoji may represent the stock market, which is a symbol of the financial industry. Additionally, the wolf emoji can be seen as a reference to the word "wolf" in the title of the movie, while the emoji...
If we are talking just general business movies, some more are: 'The Big Short', 'Wolf of Wall Street'.
Hated it. I was apparently not alone; it did poorly at the box office. I'm also generally not a fan of religious films.
Also hated (and could not finish) the utterly turgid THE IRISHMAN. WOLF OF WALL STREET had its moments, but I'm honestly not sure why the film existed -- I mean, it's the same sort of story as GOODFELLAS.
SHUTTER ISLAND was crap. THE DEPARTED was maybe ok. The last one I loved was THE AVIATOR.
Given how awful THE IRISHMAN was, and the trendline I see with his work, I have no plans to see the adaptation of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.
The movie re-encoded into a different format is perfectly fine if the work is sufficiently different.
Taking a file of wolf of Wall Street and encoding it so all the oranges are blue but there’s no other changes is bad as that’s clearly a derived work.
Taking the same file and scrambling it so it doesn’t resemble is perfectly fine.
Watching the movie and then making your own version of the same exact plot points is infringement. But using plot points that are changed is perfectly fine.
There’s existing copyright law that prevents the makers of the movie Deep Impact from suing the makers of Armageddon.
I also downvoted, and it’s honestly because your point comes across as not understanding any of Martin Scorsese’s direction and body of work. Nearly all of his movies (primarily, mobster and crime related) are centered around characters and stories of wealth, excess, and the blatant flouting of rules and law in order to obtain power, followed by their near immediate downfall and loss of everything that truly matters. The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie, isn’t about the glorification of wealth: it’s about the vapidity and shallowness of that component of human nature and the ultimate self destruction and meaningless of life when it’s pursued. Someone can recommend that movie because they appreciate that moral and sentiment, not because they want to be a conman investment banker (or a gangster for that matter).
And, of course, the movie The Wolf of Wall Street is another good example -- it managed to con everybody into treating it like a good movie when it was ridiculous ahistorical junk that taught nothing, glorified crime, denigrated victims, and then was found to have been funded by grift (money siphoned from the Malaysan development fund 1MDB).
To this day, I use it as a litmus test -- if someone recommends a movie to me, I'll ask them what they thought of The Wolf of Wall Street. If they liked it, I will steer clear of any of their recommendations.
Of course, what makes you famous is how good is your "reality distortion field". No one buys "facts", people buy "stories".
Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" also invented most of the stuff in the movie/book but he knew how to play the role.
Buffalo Bill was just an exhibitionist showman that never did anything heroic but he knew how to pretend it.
And Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, ...
Well, you got the idea...
The part you mentioned that was referencing The Wolf of Wall Steeet is just plainly untrue.
Stratton Oakmont (the OTC brokerage house from The Wolf of Wall Street movie, as well as its real-life counterpart) didn't "fall into greed trap." They have been running their pump and dump schemes (by straight up lying to investors) from the very start and have been scrutinized by National Association of Security Dealers since their founding in 1989[0].
However, I can believe the "fell into greed trap" reasoning for SBF, as it looks this way to me as well. That wasn't the part that made my blood boil, it was all the lies and excuses and pure gaslighting that followed after they got exposed. The crime was bad, but the coverup didn't lag much behind in terms of their awfulness (and arguably imo was much more disgusting). If it was just "oh, we ended up managing risk poorly and decided to yolo the funds on risky funds", that's one (still very criminal and bad) thing. But it is another when you end up covering it up and gaslighting people post-factum.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont
The explanatory video lost me with the snippet from the movie Wolf of Wall Street, about fraudulent sales texhniques. Pick a better example.
> I promise you - with the women at the top, there’s a lot of cocaine and sex and wild stories to tell.
Damn - now you’ve piqued my interest. Someone needs to make a “Wolf of Wall Street” movie but for Amway.
Even most of his mobster movies aren't really about being depressed or Italian.
Casino's main character is Jewish. Gangs of New York is about Irish Catholics and American Protestants. The Departed is about Irishes. The Wolf of Wall Street may be about depression (haven't seen it), but is not about violence nor about Italians. The Irishman certainly has a lot of depression, and certainly violence and Italians, but even then.....it's called the "Irishman".
Goodfellas is probably the one prime example that is certainly about violence and Italians, and I'm not sure that's that depressed.
Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese, aka 'Casino'.
One of the few remaining greats.
I agree Andor has better writing.
I could be crazy, but I feel that there is a 'sanitzation' happening, and it could be a multi-faceted thing.
Of course there is 'violence' but it's generally very clean and surreal, even when they are trying really hard to make it dirty, it just feels fake.
It might even just be bland writing by people with limited life experience?
But I feel that we are all 'careful about what we say' in a way we were not before.
On Smartless and Conan all the actors just tell each other how much they 'love one aother', it's purid, a bit revolting. ('aka' I hope you consider me for you next project and don't think I'm one of the 'bad people').
Where are the deviants? Wierdos? Trolls? Odd looking people?
Just Google 'Character Actor' - and you get a long list of old guys!
Scorsese packs his films with tons of very regular looking people, and the production design embellishes but it feels very real, just part of why I think his villains are more 'scary'.
The Joe Pesci "You Think I'm Funny?" from Goodfellas is one of the most unsettling bits in cinema - and consider how simple the scene is and even the relative power dynaic of the characters. He's not the head of the mob, or even a mass murderer like 'Dahmer'.
And probaably 'globalism' aka 'global audiences' is a primary factor among others.
Anyhow - Kermit himself is a classic case.
Have a look at this classic Kermit and Cookie Monster, the later throws a wrench into Kermits thing and he gets pissed. For some reason that level of emotional reality just does not exist on Barney or Paw Patrol.
Watching Paw Patrol feels dystopian, I watch my newphews watching that and it feels more like a 'visual opioid' than anything else.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=kermit+being+violent&client=firefox-b-d&biw=1077&bih=580&tbm=vid&sxsrf=AJOqlzWNcW5UfqiwqhUeMIitHv2lzA8ZtQ%3A1675404150796&ei=dqPcY-eXMLjl5NoPvZqqiAo&ved=0ahUKEwjnqo3q1vj8AhW4MlkFHT2NCqEQ4dUDCAw&uact=5&oq=kermit+being+violent&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvEAMyBQghEKABOgcIIxCwAhAnOgUIABCRAjoFCAAQgAQ6CggAEIAEEBQQhwI6BwghEKABEAo6CAghEBYQHhAdUOACWNhNYPxQaAlwAHgAgAF4iAGHEJIBBDE5LjSYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9e0eab1a,vid:y-Z1BFLteSw
The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie that would surprise most people by how much special effects it has:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU
One aspect of this I’ve talked about before is the phenomenon of the “permanent golden hour”: what used to be a narrow sliver of time when you could get the most dramatic lighting is now easily replicated in post. So as a result tons of movies have all their outdoor shots set in this incredibly unnatural-looking light that really pulls me out of the movie. Like I remember the banker in Switzerland scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street, with the open window and it just looked so hilariously fake I thought Scorcese was doing a bit. Nope that’s just how outside scenes/shots are lit now.
> The stuff ChatGPT comes up with sounds funnier and more entertaining than 90% of the current Netflix catalog.
I just made it write a skit between r/wallstreetbets and Bill Burr during the GME saga... it was not as funny as when I then asked it to write a skit where Bill starts shilling for it.
It might have been something the film adaptation of Wolf of Wall street left on the cutting room floor, even down to the facial descriptors. Try it for yourself, its pretty silly, but so was Wolf of Wall street, and I read the book after the movie because I was told it had more gonzo-like story telling.
The Big Short and Boiler room are incredible movies. The only real competition is Wolf of Wall Street, which goes too deep into the debauched party lifestyle at the expense of the more interesting financial story, and Margin Call which has the opposite problem since it’s completely inaccessible to most people.
This review of Markoff's take on the subject is rather less flattering:
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/stewart-brand-whole-earth/
It's really a kind of cultural caricature at this point - iconic of (some of) the boomer generation, who started off as a young idealistic hippie in the sixties, got jaded in the 70s, flipped over to Wall Street yuppiedom by the 1980s, and then onto more sales deals... imagine if the movie Glengarry Glen Ross was populated by these hippie salespeople. The Wolf of Wall Street kind of got it right in the pink sheets sales center, I think. This is why the punks of the 1980s printed stickers saying "Never Trust A Hippie", incidentally.
The kind of products these Whole Earth people sold were pretty shoddy as well - for years, many California roofs were littered with defunct solar hot water systems, corroded out due to the use of cheap materials. As far as the 'personal computer industry', it packed up and offshored production to overseas sweatshops as soon as they could get their friends in Congress to push it through with similar cheery positive vibes. All the high-end backpacking 'get in touch with nature' outfits, the North Faces and Patagonias, followed suit with their local Berkeley-based factories. As this happened, homeless populations boomed all across the Bay Area and Los Angeles where those jobs, basic though they were, at least allowed people to earn a fairly decent living. It's a story of hucksters looking for a quick buck while patting themselves on the back about their enlightened worldview.
As far as high-quality renewable energy tech, the Chinese approach is sure working a lot better. Hard work spent on R&D allowed Chinese companies to master monocrystalline silicon PV production, making them the world leader on durable, reliable and high-efficiency PV, also at the lowest cost (or would be if the US tariffs were dropped). Granted, China was highly motivated, having no domestic gas and oil and the world's worst air pollution, but it's really just a pathetic story for the USA, once the world's leader in tech manufacturing. Maybe the US domestic chip initiative will help, late to the party as it is, and it's not like China is slowing down on that front either.
This kind of behavior reminds me of a line from Jim Morrison of the Doors: "I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I'm gonna get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames."
> There is a shitton of crap movies in Hollywood. I wonder...
The movie doesn't need to be crap to be a product of money laundering! The Wolf of Wall Street[1] was infamously funded by money laundering (from the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund),
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_of_Wall_Street_(2013_film)#1MDB_scandal_and_subsequent_Red_Granite_lawsuit
Disagree. CGI is getting "easier" in the sense that even low budget films can do things that used to only be reserved for large budgets. And there's so much CGI in use that you don't notice these days because it's so seamless / not the center of attention (e.g. check out this before/after about Wolf of Wall Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2sJqoZD7g).
But at the end of the day, you still need good direction and editing that involves understanding the limitations of doing things on the computer vs. in camera. I think this video about Dune provides great examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ. One example provided is that using green screen can sometimes result in "flat" unrealistic lighting because the camera doesn't expose the image the same if representative lighting isn't used to actually capture the shot.
Pink sheets and movie Wolf of Wall Street, seen either?
Most of the author's complaints are centered around CGI used for moving objects, especially in focus. So humans, vehicles, robots, anything like that. CGI does seem perfectly suitable to model backgrounds, but the moment it's used to show movement, the difficulty of doing it right goes way up.
> For an example off the top of my head, I know Wolf of Wall Street had a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2sJqoZD7g
Yea those are all background replacements. When watching the movie two scenes stood out to me as very unreal-feeling CGI: the helicopter landing and the boat during the storm. And indeed, it's all CGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D7MqlNWUEs. It's awful - just look at that piece breaking off at 0:26. The scene at 2:30 is egregious as well.
Modeling the physics of such a complex scene well enough to be convincing to humans is essentially impossible. We are far too attuned to how our physical world works to be fooled by anything less than perfect.
Use CGI where it makes sense - for mostly static backgrounds. For movement, use practical effects. Let the universe do the physics simulations for you.
> I would never have thought "The Wolf of Wall Street".
For what it's worth, I would have.
Part of the reason you don't notice it is that they all have this sheen of unreality, so it's hard for any particular film to stand out. They're all color corrected to hell.
If you asked me to name a movie that had a clear pervasive fakeness, I would never have thought "The Wolf of Wall Street". Conversely, I routinely feel like MCU movies are guilty of this. So it seems to be less "CGI always reads out as fake" and more how you're using it.
Wow, I had no idea a movie like Wolf of Wall Street had so much CGI. This makes your point perfectly, that it truly is not noticeable and seamless in a lot of movies. CGI is just a tool, and it's not to blame for so many mediocre movies being made. This reminds me so much of the constant "JavaScript ruined the web" arguments I see on HN.
I think this criticism undoes itself. The thesis is that CGI visual effects are not convincing, not "weighty", implausible, unconvincing. But there's no mention of CGI being pervasively used outside of blockbusters! I'm not enough of a film buff to say for certain, but I'd guess it's a majority of non-indie releases. It goes unnoticed because it's seamless and convincing. It's enormously helpful to avoid an expensive location shoot or reshoot, fix an error, add setting, integrate actors and stunt doubles, all kinds of things. This article doesn't even know to complain about it because it's so dang good.
For an example off the top of my head, I know Wolf of Wall Street had a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2sJqoZD7g You can search youtube for the title of any movie and "cgi" or "visual effects" to turn up tons of examples. David Fincher's movies have some great examples.
And to hop on my bar stool and opine, I think CGI is going to lead to a revolution in filmmaking over the next decade or two as it continues to get better and cheaper. There's ubiquitous criticisms that movies the last couple decades have been so expensive that studios only put money into blockbusters, or meddle in the creators' vision, or only fund simple action movies that are easily translated, etc. When low-budget indie films get access to this stuff they're going to to have the ability to make all kinds of movies rather than just contemporary character studies with limited sets and props. (Digital distribution will help, too.) CGI will be a landmark revitalizing force for movies, much bigger and stranger and better than the New Hollywood movement in the 70s.
I think a lot of what people are complaining about is that the third act of a lot of big movies is just "...and then they all have a big fight". I've never heard anybody complain about the extensive VFX in The Wolf of Wall Street[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU
That's a problem with a lot of people regarding a lot of movies, I've found: people think the Main Character is always the Good Guy and whatever they do is a positive model for life. See: The Wolf of Wall Street.
This is very obviously wrong, but it is the conventional wisdom. Every time someone says something like this and mentions Jimmy Buffet you know they're just quoting some movie like Wolf of Wall Street.
Trading is a real job and the market is very inefficient. If you're too lazy to study it, you say things like what the GDC7 posted. It's pretty easy to predict Microsoft stock four months from now (it will probably be higher, but there's a small chance it will be lower), certainly easier than "the fate of the Universe trillions of years from now."
At the end of the day, trading is learning how to manage risk. What is Microsoft doing, how much is it likely to make, and will the macro environment support or suppress their strategy. Then you put on a trade to take advantage of this view. You may sometimes be wrong, but the idea is that over all of your decisions, you'll mostly be right and make more money than you lose.
I know what you mean about The Social Network and Silicon Valley. Not tech specifically, but definitely motivating and inspiring for me are:
Moneyball Margin Call Limitless The Big Short Wolf of Wall Street That Fyre documentary and at Christmas - Trading Places
It definitely is. Jho Lo is a great example of this. He burned through billions, with a capital B, in only a few years time. Boats, houses, financing film projects (The Wolf of Wall Street, you can’t make this up), gambling millions of dollars at a time on single hands of blackjack. A member of his entourage abandoned the life because he couldn’t emotionally handle watching Lo spend more on bottle service at the clubs in a single night than his entire extended family would ever earn in their lives. I think most rich people are just relatively staid in their spending, despite the multi million dollar homes and all that.
A few years back I worked in a brokerage firm. A sales tactic we were taught was after making an ask, keep your mouth shut until the other person speaks even if there is an awkward silence, similar to how in the movie "Wolf of Wall Street" there is a scene where DiCaprio's character says "whoever speaks first loses."
This tactic came in handy several times in later jobs. I remember once when I asked me boss for vacation time, he started with "oh but this is a busy time for business," to which I just said "ok" and stared at him blankly while an awkward silence ensued before he eventually caved and said "well I guess it won't make too much of a difference" and approved my vacation request.
Definitely going to try these plays and see their effects.
The story, in fact, was mostly bullshit. It was being "narrated" by Belfort (DiCaprio) all along, and the mere presence of some very obviously outlandish/fickle claims serve to establish the unreliability and narcissism of the narration.
For example, at the start of the movie, he talks of driving a red Ferrari, and immediately changes it to white [1].
Another example is the 400lb bench press [2].
I also saw an interpretation on how Scorsese sought to present money and opulence as the ultimate salvation. So it only made sense to write the gospel in a way that extended that narrative. [3]
Edit: Formatting
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/bvt20s/in_the_wolf_of_wall_street_jordans_home_gym_has/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8
"Wolf of Wall Street" with Leonardo DiCaprio vividly shows wild west of pump and dump schemes in late 80s - early 90s. The movie is based on a true story of Jordan Belfort who finally went to jail. But today's SEC lost most of last teeth they have had in the 90s. I doubt anyone will go to prison for the modern day pump-and-dump and Ponzi schemes (Bernie Madoff was the last one).
> 'The premise was a classic “pump and dump”. Fans of The Wolf of Wall Street will be familiar'
I only saw the movie trailer and an interview with dude after he'd served a federal prison term, but...I do have this beautiful bridge you might wanna get on before it's gone?
I can assure you that most folks on wall street (speaking about most of the multi-manager hedge funds specifically) have significantly tighter risk limits than anyone on WSB. Frequently drawdowns of even 5-10% can get your sized reduce or get you fired. The YOLO attitude that WSB has is closer to the film "the wolf of wall street" than what actually happens.
While Billions is one of the more realistic shows about finance, it is far from accurate enough to be compared to real life.
'Success' and 'Happiness' may be conflated, depending on how Success is defined.
I think it's interesting to focus on Success, and then consider two types: a) Success for personal benefit, b) success achieving a higher purpose.
(Intentionally referencing film characters)
Success for personal benefit may be illustrated by Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street. He succeeded in becoming, for a while, the type of wealthy person he imagined as a young man that he wanted to become.
Success achieving a higher purpose may be illustrated by Terence Fletcher from Whiplash. He succeeded in turning musicians with talent into accomplished performers.
Both personalities could be considered 'dark'. One succeeded by being a charming pathological liar. The other by dismissing any sense of empathy and driving others with severe, manipulative criticism.
But in the end, it was type a) that eventually flamed out and type b) that had an enduring impact on his profession.
I think the notion of 'how to get the most out of people' actually depends on the people you are trying to get the most out of. Many musicians quit under Terence because the achievement was not worth the suffering along the way. Others were motivated to excellence by his style, and he didn't care that they hated him for it.
Microsoft was someone infamous in the past for taking other peoples' technology and using it without paying for it, and later settling in court for small money.
Amazon very certainly has bad behaviors with respect to allowing counterfeit items and possibly treating labor unfairly.
Google seems to have its share of bad behaviors as well.
Don't forget banking and finance, politicians, and other groups.
But let's face it: the Mother Teresa's of the world don't gain the financial riches or obvious power that narcissistic and sociopathic leaders do.
And at least in finance, not so unrealistically portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street, some takers will privately mock their marks and fools. Incidentally, that movie missed telling the story of the real wolves. I'm still waiting for the Goldman Sachs/Fed/Government story. Point is, this behavior is OK for some.
There are a few movies that inspired me when I started learning sales: Glengary glen ross is one of them. The boiler room. Wolf of wall street. Not sales lessons per say but that'll get you into a state of mind and motivate you devour sales books.
Yes the closest I could come up with a comparison would be penny stocks, as popularised in the film - The Wolf of Wall street.
Would make a good script for a Wolf of Wall Street type of movie
FWIW I just found this fascinating tangent: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-perfect-irony-that-the-wolf-of-wall-street-was-also-a-real-life-scam
> THE PERFECT IRONY THAT ‘THE WOLF OF WALL STREET’ FILM WAS ALSO A REAL-LIFE SCAM
(caps in original)
> How Leo got caught up in a money-laundering scheme that screwed the Malaysian people out of billions.
I didn't see it. All I know about it comes from Christina McDowell's open letter:
https://www.laweekly.com/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-the-wolf-himself/
> Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers' fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees.
My point is that we did find it entertaining to the tune of $0.4B, and that doesn't bode well for our general level of moral development.
> the wild decades portrayed in the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Basing your legal theory on fiction movies is not a great move.
The legislature is in place after the wild decades portrayed in the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street". In an indiscriminate freewheeling environment very few peasants got the good high-return stuff, but many had their savings wiped out by slick salesmen with promises of quick riches.
Yes. And what's worse, they misinterpret movies like the Wolf of Wall Street as something to admire (even if being aware of the excesses), when they are really descriptions of broken, corrupt, hateful individuals and criminals. Quoting the Wolf of Wall Street shouldn't serve as an endorsement of anything.
Beyond that, has anyone else noticed how executive types LOVE to quote movies like the god father, wolf of wall street, and similar types of media, as if they themselves are the protagonist and/or "hero" of the story? Its a "Rah-rah" strongman ideal chalk full of projection and other bullshit mechanisms.
To quote M.A.S.H. " War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse." What is business? Cupcakes.
You have to read this book "Flip the script" by Oren Klaff. This book describes basically how you can make a sales script for your business like Jordan Belfort had during his cold-call telephone sale in the movie "The wolf of Wall Street".
It is a killer to read and will redefine how you look at sales in way that will come completely natural to you as introvert.
https://www.amazon.com/Flip-Script-Getting-People-Think/dp/052553394X
I don't understand why movies like The Wolf of Wall Street would be hard to fund. The talent i.e. DiCaprio, Jonah Hill etc are all great and known actors bound to make a movie succeed, especially DiCaprio. and Scorsese is also a well-known, successful director. Why would producers have any issues funding a movie for them?
Is it the controversial nature i.e. nudity etc that was the problem?
Virtually anybody but Hollywood exec types love Netflix, particularly creatives (the people who actually DO the things). Netflix has been making enormous amounts of content, even for smaller markets like Spain and betting on great people who are making really good shows (see ‘casa de papel’)
If you are a creative person you are enthused about streaming because suddenly there’s a huge amount of content being funded. Think about standup comedy and what Netflix has done for it.
Netflix is run by very smart people who are making very good content that most Hollywood execs wouldn’t touch. Scorcese’s next film is being funded by them! It’s nuts that Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, multiple Scorsese projects were VERY HARD to fund. Jonah Hill worked essentially for the lowest money you can work for in a movie (SAG which is the actors union says 20k minimum) in Wolf of Wall St. Because they couldn’t afford him. Stuff that you look back and wonder “how the fuck?”
If you mashed together the movies Wolf of Wall Street and Zoolander, you’d get WeWork.
For video there's Lightworks (https://www.lwks.com/), which was used for cutting Pulp Fiction and Wolf of Wall Street for example.
Da Vinci Resolve (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/) is another professional video editor used for popular movies (Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 for example).
Both work on Linux.
>Prosecutors allege the fraud involved 1MDB officials and Najib using misappropriated funds to...fund the production of Hollywood films including The Wolf of Wall Street.
The Hollywood ending defines them and probably always has, so far from recent. It's been a standard for everyone to take the piss out of as long as I've known of movies!
It's one reason I miss a healthy British film industry - sure those mostly ended happily, but rarely so cheesy, except some from the 1940s. Yet there was a decent proportion of surprise unhappy, cynical, tired and non-endings too. A twist would sometimes be something you actually didn't see coming, rather than a "surprise" set up from the start and regularly telegraphed like a five year old keeping a secret. :)
It's not that I dislike superheroes. Well, didn't used to. The whole Marvel universe thing started off well enough. I enjoyed Wolverine, Iron Man, Deadpool 1 plenty, and some others. I really like roast lamb and mint, but getting it for 2 in 3 meals would cure me by boredom within weeks. Maybe it's just too large a proportion of the canon. Except it infects all genres... Wolf of Wall Street? Great Gatsby? Chernobyl? Superhero movies - in style, in script, in camera work, and in tropes used. Now that's putting lamb and mint in with my choc cake and just spoiling every meal.
Chernobyl was the surprise disappointment. It didn't need to deviate so far from reality - the affected were dangerously radioactive too? Not in our universe's physics. Nor be quite so McCarthy child's comic book (and wildly inaccurate) in representing the Soviets. That kind-of suited Stranger Things, though even there it was rather overblown, or Bruce Willis' Red, but not here. Legasov was the superhero - except he didn't actually tear down the whole Soviet system in court, nor get arrested by the KGB after the show trial. The plant manager (I forget the name) was the absurdist villain, missing only a white cat. Do as I say or I will throw you into the reactor Mr Stark. Oh wait, that was Serbina in the helicopter.
Chernobyl was clearly set in a comic book universe. It would still have been bloody good, and well made without any of that bullshit. The attention to scenic correctness and actors resembling the real people was remarkable. Spoiling the plot for a ha'p'orth of reality then.
Suffice to say, I don't think we're going to agree, but it's been a fun back and forth. :)
There are a lot of recreational cocaine users, and they are doing it right under our (or their) noses. They range from billionaires to your local college grad.
See The Social Network Movie, Wolf of Wall Street, etc. The drug use was not as dramatized as you might think.
Pedantic I know but I wanted to check if it was in Wolf of Wall Street and having searched the script it would appear it wasn't...
Maybe another movie?
That's a good point about missing the satire and why movies like "Boiler Room", "Wolf of Wall Street", etc can rub me the wrong way. Sure, there's a fall and consequences after all the money and partying but that money and partying looks pretty good (especially if you don't get caught).
I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time. These availability windows on shit is ridiculous. You wonder how pirates stay in business, it's because of availability windows and that region-locked bullshit.
The Wolf of Wall Street came out like 10 years ago, and you're telling me the only way to watch it is to buy it for $15 on Amazon? Keep dreaming.
> Esp long movies like "Wolf of Wall Street" are not practical to watch in a single sitting.
Ha ha, some moviebuffs will skewer you for saying that (about any movie). I feel your pain on the 48h limit though.
> "People assume that our customers must either be super seniors or folks that live in the boonies with no internet access," she says. "Actually, our biggest hot spots are the coasts, like the Bay Area and New York."
Not surprising. Netflix, Comcast, Amazon Prime and other video streaming service charge you the same as the DVD rental, but force you to watch the entire video within 48 hours from 1st starting it.
Personally I find this very annoying (why do the do this? What does it cost them to let me watch it within a week or so and not 48 hours?).
Esp long movies like "Wolf of Wall Street" are not practical to watch in a single sitting.
I have a Samsung DVD player that I got for 40$ and depending on the movie, I find it's cheaper or same price to actually BUY the DVD from Amazon.com (with prime). Ex: Wolf of Wall Street was $4.99 to stream and view within 48 hours, or keep paying $4.99 until you finish it. The same DVD ( NEW ) was selling for $5.49 on Amazon, Free shipping so I ended up buying the DVD.
Interesting. It seems the only way to get a movie made that's not a studio-originating project, with people who _you_ want to work with, is 1) get your own financing (like DiCaprio schmoozing the 1MDB guy to fund Wolf of Wall Street), or 2) play tit-for-tat with something the studio really wants to make (like George Clooney giving them Ocean's 12 in exchange for them funding his Good Night, and Good Luck).
If the movie was supposed to vilify financial scams instead of glorifying it yes it would be ironic. But Wolf of Wall Street was very glorified. Even when you think the anti-hero is finally going to get his just deserts he gets off relatively easy for supposedly committing a serious crime.
Defining irony has been a continuous argument online, but this definition seems to capture the essence of irony - "a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result."
>Since they can’t get back the stolen millions used to bankroll DiCaprio’s dreams, part of accomplishing justice in this case means the U.S. government now owns the rights and royalties of The Wolf of Wall Street.
Minor correction: U.S. government received a $60 million settlement from Red Granite Pictures, but not any rights to any film directly[0]. Obviously a big chunk of that $60 million derived from the royalties of The Wolf of Wall Street, but the government didn't get the rights and royalties directly.
The author might have confused it with the fact that the government was _attempting_ to seize the film rights during the court proceedings[1], but the final settlement didn't include these film rights.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-scandal-redgranite/the-wolf-of-wall-street-producers-to-pay-60-million-to-u-s-in-lawsuit-settlement-idUSKCN1GJ0FH
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/feds-look-seize-wolf-wall-912733
No. Irony is when the outcome of a state of affairs is opposite the expected one. The movie being about financial scams implies nothing about the making of the movie.
Now, if the Wolf of Wall Street criticized (or made fun of) financial scam funded movies, that would be ironic.
> I only run Linux, so I'm not sure what I would've done without Kdenlive since I don't see what else I could have possibly used.
Lightworks should run on Linux. It was used to edit Pulp Fiction, The Wolf of Wall Street and other blockbuster movies.
I used it on Windows a while ago and my basic requirements were met, despite the free version having some limitations (like export resolution and formats).
https://www.lwks.com
When I'm flying Emirates, the censorship on the IFE is hilarious. Watching the Gotham TV series, and they kept censoring the word "lesbian".
Also, the Wolf of Wall Street Emirates style is significantly shorter (they cut all the scenes with extensive hookers and cocaine) and when Margot Robbie walks out nude they cropped the image and zoomed in on her face only, albeit with extensive pixellation.
But hey, at least Emirates will never tell you that you've had too much to drink, unlike Singapore Airlines.
The fact that people watch Wolf of Wall Street and read it as an example to be emulated is very telling. By the end of the movie he’s in a hateful, bitter relationship, crashing cars into shit because he’s strung out on quaaludes and yet this is called “virtually zero consequences” because the consequences are not coming from an external authority. It’s the substitution of paternalism for morals and money for happiness.
No, no, no. This isn't taught in college. It's taught in Elementary School when students learn about the world leaders and take two seconds to discover their actual backgrounds and where their power and wealth truly came from. It's learned while watching movies like Wolf of Wall Street where the beautiful protagonist fucks everybody else, living a lavish and perceivable happy lifestyle, before getting "caught" and suffering virtually zero consequences for his or her actions.
Then, after being learned at an early age, it is reinforced time and time again in the stories of entrepreneurs who make billions immorally and similarly suffer zero consequences.
The article reminded me that the first time I heard of that was when I saw the movie "The wolf of wall Street".
https://youtu.be/90Xx7PAiqY8
Somebody has to make a movie about this whole story and entitle it "The Real Wolf of Wall Street"
Strongly agree! Book is a great primer on how / why crooks drive up the price of high end real estate, art and film financing. You will never wonder how these businesses can charge so much again.
At one point (when the 1MDB company is financing the Wolf of Wall Street) the original true life "Wolf of Wall Street" person says: I don't want to have anything to do with these people, they must be crooked. The only reason why you spend money like this is if it is stolen.
Exactly!
I agree, The Big Short was insightful and you come out of it with a better understanding of the financial industry. The Wolf of Wall Street glossed over the financial information to focus on the debauchery, which to me is far less interesting.
Boiler Room and The Smartest Guys in the Room are my other go-to business movies.
Given that "Wolf of Wall Street" was written by the Wolf himself, it is not surprising that the trail of corruption goes back to Wall Street again. He was probably in friendly terms with the financiers of this movie.
>The money was used to buy a Picasso painting, diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
A scam that funded a movie about scams? True life is stranger than fiction.
diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Najib Razak,
what an ironic movie choice
Chauvinistic farts...
The common link between Rick and jbp is that they speak to young men in a way that nobody else does. Rick is careless, extremely independent and a risk taker. Peterson, maybe over stepping his boundaries, gives concrete individualistic direction and life "rules" that young men happily buy into and find success with.
I was thinking the other day about how similar Wolf of Wall Street and Fight Club are. One is sadistic and anarchists, the other is hedonistic and capitalist. Yet I think they inspire men in the same way. They describe figures who defy social norms, who are impulsive and independent. It's interesting that both of these movies are considered the pinnacle of toxic masculinity, but in some way speak to men in a way that inspires. If the concept of toxic masculinity seeks to eliminate these character types and these themes, it makes me wonder what would replace it and if the inspiration that a young man finds for these lawless models will persist or if out culture can instill new ideals that make men more docile and better socialized.
Indeed the one thing that sticks out in my mind about The Wolf of Wall Street is that no effort was made to show all the harm he did to the people he stole from. It was just one very, very long spectacle. Not a film I'd watch twice.
One thing I've been struck by with movies and films like the Wolf of Wall Street, the film Wall Street, Fight Club, or even the Great Gatsby is how many people end up coming away with the exact opposite message of the movie. They end up idolizing the vapid, shallow lifestyle that the movie is critiquing, because even though the film is critiquing that it can't help but also make it glamorous. Michael Douglas has said that he has had people come up to him and tell him that Gordon Gekko inspired them to get into finance, so it's not surprising that Belfort is now inspiring a new generation.
The Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort (the wolf of wall street).
Jordan has a lot youtube clips with his live seminars of upto 10 episodes - 90 minutes each.
Disclaimer: Not in sales, but have great sense of appreciation for rain-makers.
> Maybe I've just watch The Wolf Of Wall Street too many times.
Why do so many HN commenters think that movie is, like, a credible documentary?
(I don't necessarily mean you, obviously.)
I think this was in The Wolf of Wall Street or some other stock market related movie.
We want a world where people "deserve" the things they have/can-do; but I don't think we will ever get close to that (we sure can try tho)
It happens the same way in an individual level; the "wolf of wall street" (Jordan Belfortm) did a lot of illegal things; but despite being found guilty and forced to pay fines he is still better off for having done them (~10M offshore money and book/movie money among others).
Heck, it even happens in social interactions, for example kissing a random woman in the street without asking can give someone jail time (sexual harassment and what not) but if he is lucky she may fall for that; they may even get married later on.
It's just more candid in its unreliable narrator aspect than other films.
The Wolf of Wall Street employs a similar trick for part of the film to great effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZhGPH83ZHE
I don't think they're stated as bad, just as surprising given common perceptions of people in those roles, which is usually shaped by movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, since most people have no other window into the lives of top-level executives.
stock image of a woman : "Hi I'm the CEO ..."
"please wait until our experts choose a special name for your baby ..."
Where goes the line of white lies?
Reminds me of "Catch Me If You Can" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" movies.
That is correct, the reason for such regulation is depicted in the movie "Wolf of Wall Street", where Florida grandmas are being pitched some "incredible opportunities".
If you're a seller and you did not verify investor accreditation, you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit when things go bad with the investment - what if the buyer comes back and claims he was defrauded and duped into buying shaky securities?
The broker participating in such transaction, in theory, has a chance of having their license revoked due to participation in alleged fraud.
I would hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but Malaysia's politics are quite a spectacular bowl of spaghetti. You have Saudi "donations" of billions, a Prime Minister who stands accused of using the country's Speciall Forces team for blowing up a Mongolian woman involved with a billion dollar French defense company purchase of Scorpene submarines. The accused murderer now resides in Australia. You literally have the financier of the Wolf of Wall Street movie, parties with Paris Hilton, squandering of billions of Malaysia's taxpayer funds. You have bankers being murdered in broad daylight. You have attorney generals being fired and prosecutors being found dead inside barrels of cement. You have Deputy Prime Ministers being kicked out. You have ex-Prime Ministers raising a 5 alarm fire demanding that the Prime Minister be arrested. You have apartheid policies being increased in the country. You have sudden import of millions of foreign workers, who have been accused of being used as false vote banks. So.... when they write "keeping secrets forever", that almost seems like what was intended for this flight.
[1] http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens-against-najib-in-france-how-come-not-in-malaysia/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa
[3] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias-najib-razak-sacks-attorney-general.html
[4] http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up-the-charge-sheet-against-najib-and-then-sent-it-to-sarawak-report-says-brother/
[5] http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin-morais-murdered-military-doctor-among-7-arrested-say-cops
[6] http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/malaysias-most-explosive-murder-mystery-is-blowing-up-in-australia/news-story/d8e92bbd5172292a63664f90e2598767
[7] http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-moving-towards-apartheid-tendencies-nus-academic-warns
[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27/the-mystery-behind-a-700-million-donation-from-the-saudi-royal-family-to-the-malaysian-pm/
[9] http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder-connection-malaysia-1mdb/
[10] http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid-defends-move-to-bring-in-1.5-bangladeshi-workers
[11] http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris-Hilton-and-1MDB-what-a-threesome
[12] http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf-of-wall-street-ties-to-malaysian-fund/
I'm going to be a bit vague, but if you haven't seen the movie, don't read this.
Its an epic movie that takes you through a persons life. Its great because it plays with your emotions. The audience starts out rooting for him and, and least I was, get impressed when he succeeds. Then you experience his decline and get a feeling for how success changes him. He makes some bad decisions, but its easy to understand why. The mistakes start to pile up and he quickly becomes someone most people loathe and he becomes the antagonist in someone's story.
Lots of movies do similar things, but I thought Barry Lyndon was incredibly engrossing and it actually succeeds in this crazy character development that might feel trite in most cases. It was also shot extremely well and the film score is fantastic.
I've always thought Wolf of Wall Street as a modern day version of Barry Lyndon, but with more flash and less substance.
Anyone who got that message from the film is completely oblivious to its point. A similar movie with a more extreme premise would be American Psycho. No one aspired to kill prostitutes after seeing that film, I have no idea why Wolf of Wall Street is different.
Loved the movie. Doesn't mean I want to be like him. One of my favorite movies, The Talented Mr Ripley, leaves you feeling unsatisfied about the conclusion-- not a typical Hollywood ending.
Boiler Room is also a favorite, which of course is related to Wolf of Wall Street.
>>The Wolf of Wall Street was a glorification of this type of behavior and a lot of people saw Jordan in that movie as a "Hero"
Interesting analogy, and I'm glad you pointed this out. I was disgusted by Wolf of Wall Street, and even more disgusted by how exalted Belfort became after. So many friends and acquaintances admired and aspired towards what they saw in the film - that was the worst part of it for me. I just can't relate.
My first reaction to his arrest was joy and then I saw comments about him getting "beat up in jail" to put it lightly.
People who say those kinds of things are no better than him. Possibly worse.
The solution to dealing with people like him is to be able to separate them from society or fix the system so it can no longer be exploited so "easily".
He may have hurt a lot of people but it's been through proxy as far as we know. Like Drone strikes, if you can't see the damage you're doing you can't feel guilty about it.
Like Morgan on the Walking Dead. I do believe Martin is a good guy on the wrong path.
It's easy to come together to have shared hatred for this guy and it's hard to realize
I can do better as a human being with empathy towards someone who is broken; sad and probably doesn't understand why people hate him.
He's just being "successful" as it was always defined to him.
Like the Boston Bomber. Getting "Revenge" does not stop the perpetual cycle violence and misbehavior.
The Wolf of Wall Street was a glorification of this type of behavior and a lot of people saw Jordan in that movie as a "Hero"
"The Wolf Of Wall Street" springs to mind as well. Hideous behaviour that ruined thousands of ordinary people's lives, but lots of people can't help but admire people like Mr. Belfort - at least as portrayed in the movie - for their success (myself included). It's an interesting phenomenon.
As a colorist the look is mostly a creative choice and can be made to match if you want it too.
Also, much of wolf of wall street was digital Arri Alexa. Another example of matching digital and Film seamlessly.
not a pro videographer. RED colors seems soft (under saturated). looks like they give RAW for intensive post-processing instead of mostly usable film output. on paper digital matches or exceeds film but real world output does not say so. For example Wolf of Wall Street looks very cool (shot on film).
I think filmmakers which make real money off films use film or some esoteric digital camera and for cost reduction (aerial shots very low-light shots wtc.) use things like RED.
The prelogy was as much badly done than badly timed, they were still trying to go over using the technology[1] for the sake of it, nowadays you see people using CGI to help the experience more often.
People will probably realize that all of this is unnecessary. There was a video on youtube showing how much CGI there was even in a movie like The wolf of Wall Street. It's incredible how everything is faked (scenery, mood, ...), you end up wondering how people did make movies at all before. Well they did it pretty well.
CGI characters and stage are bad because they lack .. depth. I watch Alien often and only a few seconds of it sucks you into the ship. Same for Blade Runner, the guys are walking in an actual street, it probably embeds the whole crew a lot more, giving realism that can't be achieved in green rooms (Star Wars < 4 shined in this department, it was as bad a Soap Operas).
All of this require good sense and good sense of measure. Terminator 2 SFX very pretty crude in retrospect, but the editing made them blend perfectly. If you do frame by frame you'll laugh as some shots were really bad, but in real time, it never shows, the pace, framing, action compels your mind to think about the story, not the pixels.
[1] which makes the original trilogy even more impressive, most was invented on the spot yet it wasn't detrimental to the story.
A lot of people dont realize that that you can begin trading stock OTC by just filling some paperwork with the SEC though lawyers fees for that paperwork are not cheap. You can do what is called direct public offering and directly sell your stock without using an exchange aka over the counter. Many people refer to these stocks as penny stocks and the OTC market as the pink sheets. What these new laws are trying to change is the way you register to sell OTC and the people you are allowed to sell to. The real problem is that just like no one trusts penny stocks and the otc market no one is going to trust crowdfunded stocks. They are going to be full of scams and pump and dump schems. Just look at the movie wolf of wall street for an example of the kind of scheming that goes on in the otc markets
> Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20.
As an aside, that movie is one of the worst I've seen in a long time. I wouldn't consider it worth my time to watch it again if I was given $20.
> Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem.
I'd say its a pricing problem.
Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ?
You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price.
I think the industry should do what Hulu has done over the past 5 years. Give the product away virtually for free, collect an enormous user base while you starve/kill the demand for the equivalent torrents, slowly increase the price of the service until you find equilibrium, then profit.
But hey, maybe piracy isn't really a problem? The greatest assumption people make is that because someone downloaded a movie illegally they were willing to buy it for $20. Which is false. I'd have to imagine that selling 'The Wolf of Wall Street' for $20 on Amazon is more profitable than selling it for say $19 and capturing a few pirate consumers.
But I wonder if theres a number between $0 and $19 that captures enough of the piraters to be more profitable than $20?
The guy who the movie the Wolf of Wall Street is based on was on Piers Morgan a few weeks back and he said his approach to sales was basically the same thing. You ask someone if they're interested in buying X right now, if they say "no", you ask "OK when will you be looking to buy X" and just move on to someone who wants to buy "X" now. It all sounds so obvious, but like the OP states, to us engineers, it can feel a bit slimy, pushy etc. Not how we want to be sold things if the roles were reversed.
I've definitely found the transition to salesperson from developer one of the hardest things about running a company.
Checking your email on your phone is OK (even though it is a dick move since you annoy others in the theater), but holding your phone up to the screen to record all 180 minutes of The Wolf of Wall Street is in fact not ok.
IE: Wearing a device on your face that is pointed to the movie screen that can possibly record the entire flick is not the same as your phone being out of your pocket for 20 seconds to read your latest text message.
I've seen many movies based on real-life events and have yet to read a review of any that didn't find huge fault with its accuracy. The most notable are probably the Ben Mezrich movies, but most recently I watched Wolf of Wall Street and then subsequently read an editorial by the lead prosecutor calling the movie out as inaccurate and assailing the real life Jordan Belfort.
The lesson in all this is that when you are mass-marketing a story to the public, the truth doesn't sell as well as a greatly altered version of the truth. People want to see a romanticized version of the story, so that is what Hollywood gives them. There shouldn't really be a huge surprise there. If you really want to know what factual events took place in any story, you're probably going to have to do a lot better than a two-hour Hollywood interpretation starring the lead character from Two and a Half Men.
Seems like Thor and Wolf of Wall Street show up on every list. Some movies just seem wrongly categorized, but the biggest problem is there just aren't enough movies for it to be very useful yet. You need the top 1k movies at least I think.
Another site of this type http://goodfil.ms/