The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)


The Wolf of Wall Street is a 2013 American biographical black comedy crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Terence Winter, based on the 2007 memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. It recounts Belfort's perspective on his career as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm, Stratton Oakmont, engaged in rampant corruption and fraud on Wall Street, which ultimately led to his downfall.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who was also a producer on the film, stars as Belfort, with Jonah Hill as his business partner and friend, Donnie Azoff, Margot Robbie as his wife, Naomi Lapaglia, and Kyle Chandler as FBI agent Patrick Denham, who tries to bring Belfort down. The film marks the director's fifth collaboration with DiCaprio, after Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Shutter Island, as well as his second collaboration with Winter, since the television series Boardwalk Empire.
The film premiered in New York City on December 17, 2013, and was released in the United States on December 25, 2013, distributed by Paramount Pictures, and was the first to be released entirely through digital distribution. It was a major commercial success, grossing $392 million worldwide during its theatrical run to become Scorsese's highest-grossing film. The film was controversial for its morally ambiguous depiction of events, explicit sexual content, extreme profanity, depiction of hard drug use, and its use of animals during production. It set a Guinness World Record for the most instances of swearing in a film.
The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, with praise for Scorsese's direction, DiCaprio's comedic performance and the fast-paced and consistent humor. It has also been criticized by many as glorifying the infamous individuals and immoral behaviors portrayed in the film. It was nominated for several awards, including five nominations at the 86th Academy Awards ceremony: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominations for DiCaprio and Hill, respectively. DiCaprio won Best Actor – Musical or Comedy at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, where the film was also nominated for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Plot

In 1987, Jordan Belfort procures a job as a Wall Street stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild, employed under Mark Hanna, who quickly entices him with the sex- and drugs-fueled stockbroker culture and passes on his idea that a stockbroker's only goal is to make money for himself. Jordan soon finds his career terminated following Black Monday, the largest one day stock market drop in history, and takes a job at a boiler room brokerage firm on Long Island that specializes in penny stocks. Thanks to his aggressive pitching style and the high commissions, Jordan makes a small fortune.
Jordan befriends his neighbor, Donnie Azoff, and the two found their own company. They recruit several of Jordan's friends, whom Jordan trains in the art of the "hard sell." Belfort's tactics and salesmanship largely contributed to the success of his pump and dump scheme which involves inflating the price of a stock through issuing misleading, positive statements in order to sell it at an artificially augmented price. When the perpetrators of the scheme sell their overvalued securities, the price drops immensely and those who were conned into buying at the inflated price are left with stock that is suddenly worth a lot less than what they paid for them. To cloak this, Jordan gives the firm the respectable-sounding name of Stratton Oakmont in 1989. After an exposé in Forbes, hundreds of ambitious young financiers flock to his company. Jordan becomes immensely successful and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. He has an affair with a woman named Naomi Lapaglia. When his wife finds out, Jordan divorces her and marries Naomi in 1991. Meanwhile, the SEC and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont. In 1993, Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours upon securing the IPO of Steve Madden. This brings him and his firm further to the attention of the FBI. To hide his money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel in the name of Naomi's Aunt Emma, who is a British national and thus outside the reach of American authorities. He uses the wife and in-laws of his friend Brad Bodnick, who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.
Donnie gets into a public brawl with Brad, and, while Donnie escapes, Brad is arrested. Brad does not say a word about Donnie or Jordan to the police. Jordan learns from his private investigator that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Fearing for his son, Jordan's father advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordan's lawyer negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. Jordan, however, cannot bear to quit and talks himself into staying in the middle of his farewell speech. In 1996, Jordan, Donnie, and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Aunt Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan decides to travel to Switzerland immediately to settle the bank account. To bypass border controls, he orders his yacht captain to sail to Monaco, but the ship is capsized in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine. Jordan takes this as a sign from God and decides to sober up.
Two years later, the FBI arrests Jordan because Saurel, arrested in Florida on an unrelated charge, has informed the FBI on Jordan. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence on his colleagues in exchange for leniency. At home, Naomi tells Jordan she is divorcing him and wants full custody of their daughter. In an impulsive cocaine-fuelled rage, Jordan tries to drive away with his daughter and crashes his car in the driveway. Later on, Jordan wears a wire to work but slips a note to Donnie warning him. The FBI discovers this and arrests Jordan. The FBI raids and shuts down Stratton Oakmont. Despite breaching his deal, Jordan receives a reduced sentence of 36 months in a minimum security prison for his testimony and is released after serving 22 months. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales technique.

Cast

Additionally, frequent Scorsese collaborator J. C. MacKenzie appears as Lucas Solomon, and Ashlie Atkinson appears as Rochelle Applebaum, a federal agent. Thomas Middleditch plays a stock broker who is rebuked and fired by Donnie. Fran Lebowitz appears as a judge. Spike Jonze has an uncredited role as Dwayne, a penny stock trader.

Production

Development

In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio/Warner Bros. won a bidding war against Brad Pitt/Paramount Pictures for the rights to Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort made $1 million on the movie rights. Martin Scorsese was considered to direct the film, during pre-production, Scorsese worked on the film's script before working on Shutter Island. He describes having "wasted five months of life" without getting a green light on production dates by the Warner Bros. studio.
In 2010, Warner Bros. had offered Ridley Scott to direct the film, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the male lead, but the studio eventually abandoned the project.
In 2012, a green light was given by the independent company Red Granite Pictures imposing no content restrictions. Scorsese, knowing there would be no limits to the content he would produce, came back on board resulting in an R rating. Red Granite Pictures also asked Paramount Pictures to distribute the film; Paramount Pictures agreed to distribute the film in North America and Japan, but passed on the rest of the international market. The rights to internationally distribute the film were acquired by Universal Pictures International.
The film was alleged by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to have been financed by money stolen from the Malaysian 1MDB sovereign wealth fund by producer Riza Aziz who pled not guilty to charges laid in July 2019. The film is part of a broader investigation into these illicit monetary movements and in 2016 was named in a series of civil complaints filed by the DOJ "for having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund were illicitly siphoned". To settle the civil lawsuit, Red Granite Pictures agreed to pay US$60 million to the U.S. government with no “admission of wrongdoing or liability on the part of Red Granite”. This settlement was part of a more expansive U.S. effort to seize approximately $1.7 billion in assets allegedly purchased with funds embezzled from 1MDB.
According to Jordan Belfort, Random House asked him to tone down or excise the depictions of debauchery in some passages of his memoir before publication, especially those relating to his bachelor party which featured acts of zoophilia, rampant use of drugs and nitrous oxide, and a particulary "disturbing" act which he recounted in Logan Paul's podcast. Neither the published version of the memoir nor the film contain references to this, and the film is even tamer in its depiction.
In the film, most of the real-life characters' names have been changed from Belfort's original memoir. Donnie Azoff is based on Danny Porush. The name was changed after Porush threatened to sue the filmmakers. Porush maintains that much of the film was fictional and that Donnie Azoff was not in fact an accurate depiction of him. Former Donna Karan Jeanswear CEO Elliot Lavigne does not appear explicitly in the film, but an incident recounted in the book, in which Belfort gives Lavigne mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save him from choking to death, is similar to a scene in the film involving Donnie. The FBI agent known as Patrick Denham is the stand-in for real-life Gregory Coleman, and lawyer Manny Riskin is based on Ira Sorkin. Belfort's first wife Denise Lombardo is renamed Teresa Petrillo, while second wife Nadine Caridi became Naomi Lapaglia on-screen. In contrast, Mark Hanna's name remains the same as the LF Rothschild stockbroker who, like Belfort, was convicted of fraud and served time in prison. Belfort's parents Max and Leah Belfort's names remained the same for the film. The role of Aunt Emma was initially offered to Julie Andrews, who refused it as she was recovering from an ankle injury, and she was replaced by Joanna Lumley.
In January 2014, Jonah Hill revealed in an interview with Howard Stern that he made only $60,000 on the film, while his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio received $10 million. Hill didn't care about his settlement though, and wanted to play Donnie Azoff so badly that he was willing to do whatever it took to get the part as it was his dream to be in a Scorsese film.

Filming

began on August 8, 2012, in New York. Jonah Hill announced that his first day of shooting was September 4, 2012. Filming also took place in Closter, New Jersey and Harrison, New York. In January 2013, additional scenes were shot at a set built in an abandoned office building in Ardsley, New York. Scenes at the beach house were filmed in Sands Point, New York.
Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has received seven Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, stated that the film would be shot digitally instead of on film. Scorsese had been a proponent of shooting on film but decided to shoot Hugo digitally because it was being photographed in 3D; however, The Wolf of Wall Street was originally planned to be shot digitally despite being filmed in 2D. Schoonmaker expressed her disappointment with the decision: "It would appear that we've lost the battle. I think Marty just feels it's unfortunately over, and there's been no bigger champion of film than him." After extensive comparison tests during pre-production, eventually the majority of the film was shot on film stock while scenes that used green screen effects or low light were shot with the digital Arri Alexa. The film contains 400–450 VFX shots.

Use of animals

The Wolf of Wall Street uses animals including a chimpanzee, a lion, a snake, a fish, and dogs. The chimpanzee and the lion were provided by the Big Cat Habitat wildlife sanctuary in Sarasota County, Florida. The four-year-old chimpanzee Chance spent time with actor Leonardo DiCaprio and learned to roller skate over the course of three weeks. The sanctuary also provided a lion named Handsome because the film's trading company used a lion for its symbol. Danny Porush, Jordan Belfort's real-life partner, denied that there were any animals in the office, although he admitted to eating an employee's goldfish.

Profanity

The film set a Guinness World Record for the most instances of swearing in a motion picture. The word "fuck" is used 569 times in the film, averaging 2.81 times per minute. The previous record holders were Scorsese's 1995 gangster film Casino, which had 422 uses of the word, including in the voice-over narration, and the 1997 British film Nil by Mouth, in which the word was used 428 times. The record has since been topped by , which says the word 935 times.
The film's distributor in the United Arab Emirates cut some 45 minutes off the runtime to delete explicit scenes of swearing, religious profanity, drug use, and sex, and "muted" dialogue containing expletives. The National reported that filmgoers in the UAE believed the film should not have been shown rather than being edited so heavily.

Release

The Wolf of Wall Street premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on December 17, 2013, followed by a wide release on December 25, 2013. It was previously slated to be released on November 15, 2013, but the date was pushed back after film cuts were made to reduce the run time. On October 22, 2013, it was reported that the film was set for a Christmas 2013 release. Paramount officially confirmed the Christmas Day 2013 release date on October 29, 2013, with a running time of 165 minutes. On November 25, 2013, the length was announced to be 179 minutes. It was officially rated R for "sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence". Scorsese had to edit sexual content and nudity to avoid an NC-17 rating. By different counts, the film contains between 506 and 569 uses of the word "fuck", and currently holds the record for the most uses of the word in a mainstream non-documentary film.
The film is banned in Malaysia, Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Kenya because of its scenes depicting sex, drugs and excessive use of swear words, and additional scenes have been cut in the versions playing in India. In Singapore, after cuts were made to an orgy scene as well as some religiously profane or denigrating language, the film was passed R21.
The film marks a change in film history when Paramount became the first major studio to distribute movies to theaters in digital format, eliminating 35 mm film entirely. was the last Paramount production to include a 35mm film version, while The Wolf of Wall Street was the first major movie distributed entirely digitally.

File sharing

According to copyright infringement tracking site Excipio, the film was shared over 30 million times via torrent sites and was the most illegally downloaded film of 2014.

Home media

The Wolf of Wall Street was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 25, 2014. On January 27, 2014, it was revealed that a four-hour director's cut would be attached to the home release. It was later revealed by Paramount Pictures and Red Granite Pictures that the home release would feature only the theatrical release.

Reception

Critical response

The Wolf of Wall Street received positive reviews, with critics praising DiCaprio and Hill's performances, Scorsese's direction, and Winter's screenplay. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 277 reviews, with an average rating of 7.77/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Funny, self-referential, and irreverent to a fault, The Wolf of Wall Street finds Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio at their most infectiously dynamic." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on 47 critics indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine named The Wolf of Wall Street as the third best film of 2013, behind 12 Years a Slave and Gravity at numbers one and two, respectively. The movie was chosen as one of the top ten films of the year by the American Film Institute. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said "it is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year." The Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper gave the film a "B+" score, saying the film was "good, not great Scorsese".
Dana Stevens of Slate wrote that the movie did not work for her, labeling the film "epic in size, claustrophobically narrow in scope." Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post argued that the story "wants us to be interested in characters who are dull people to start with, made duller by their delusions of being interesting because they are high". Some critics viewed the movie as an irresponsible glorification rather than a satirical takedown. DiCaprio defended the film, arguing that it does not glorify the excessive lifestyle it depicts.
In 2016, the film was ranked #78 on the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century list. In June 2017, Richard Brody of The New Yorker named The Wolf of Wall Street as the 2nd best film of the 21st century so far, behind Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love. In 2019, Brody named The Wolf of Wall Street the best film of the 2010s.

Audience response

The film received a "C" rating from audiences surveyed by CinemaScore, a rating lower than anything else in theaters the opening week of the film. The Los Angeles Times argues that the film attracted conservative viewers by depicting a more moral tone in its marketing than the film itself depicted.
Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prousalis, who worked closely with the real-life Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter addressing Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Belfort himself, criticizing the film for insufficiently portraying the victims of the financial crimes created by Stratton Oakmont, for disregarding the damage that was done to her family as a result, and for giving celebrity to persons who do not deserve it.
Steven Perlberg of Business Insider saw an advance screening of the film at a Regal Cinemas near the Goldman Sachs building, with an audience of financial workers. Perlberg reported cheers from the audience at what he considered to be all the wrong moments stating, "When Belfort — a drug addict attempting to remain sober — rips up a couch cushion to get to his secret coke stash, there were cheers."
Former Assistant United States Attorney Joel M. Cohen, who prosecuted the real Belfort, criticized both the movie and the book on which it is based. He said he believes some of Belfort's claims were "invented", as for instance " aggrandized his importance and reverence for him by others at his firm." He strongly criticizes the film for not depicting the "thousands of victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars", not accepting the filmmakers' argument that it would have detracted attention from the wrongdoers. Furthermore, he deplores the ending—"beyond an insult" to his victims—in which the real Belfort appears, while showing "a large sign advertising the name of Mr. Belfort's real motivational speaking company", and a positive depiction of Belfort uttering "variants of the same falsehoods he trained others to use against his victims".

Controversy

Use of animals

In December 2013, prior to the film's premiere, the organization Friends of Animals criticized the use of the chimpanzee and organized a boycott of the film. Variety reported, "Friends of Animals thinks the chimp... suffered irreversible psychological damage after being forced to act." The Guardian commented on the increasing criticism of Hollywood's use of animals stating that "The Wolf of Wall Street's use of a chimpanzee arrives as Hollywood comes under ever-increasing scrutiny for its employment of animals on screen". PETA also launched a campaign to highlight mistreatment of ape "actors" and to petition for DiCaprio not to work with great apes.

Thematic controversy and debate

Various scholars and individuals have criticized the film as materialistic, encouraging greedy behavior, extreme wealth, and advocating for the infamous individuals portrayed in the movie. Christina McDowell, whose father, Tom Prousalis, worked in association with Jordan Belfort accused the filmmakers of “exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior.” She continues to emphasize the gravity and timely significance of Belfort's crimes stating that Wolf of Wall Street 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". In response to Leonardo DiCaprio defending himself from criticism, Variety journalist Whitney Friedlander describes the movie as “still three hours of cash, drugs, hookers, repeat”. Friedlander argues that the film is a “celebration of this lifestyle” and preaches that short lived extreme wealth and extraordinary experiences are superior to a societally normal behavior.
There are also those like Nikole TenBrink, vice president of marketing and membership at Risk Insurance Management Society, who believe that the film is a “cautionary tale of what can happen when fraud is left unchecked.” She describes Belfort's business acumen, his talent in communicating and selling his ideas, and his ability to motivate others as offering “valuable lessons for risk professionals as they seek to avoid similar pitfalls”. In an interview Josh Greenstein, Chief Marketing Officer of Paramount Pictures during the film's release, he depicts how Paramount Pictures and his marketing team attempted to portray the film as a film about the “overreaching greed of the ‘80s. Greenstein proceeds to argue that “everything in this film is still applicable to what is going on today, where people are in life and how they're feeling about the world.”

Jordan Belfort's reception

In an interview on London Real, Jordan Belfort commented on the film's depiction of himself and of Stratton Oakmont. In this interview, Belfort mentions that the film did an excellent job at describing the “overall feeling of the movie” stating that “the camaraderie, the insanity was all accurate.” Regarding his use of drugs, Belfort mentions that his actual habits were “much worse” than that of the film explicitly stating that he was “on 22 different drugs at the end.”
Belfort also analyzes the major inaccuracies regarding the films oversimplification of Stratton Oakmont's gradual transition from advocating for “speculative stocks” in order to “help build America” to increasingly senseless and greedy crimes. During the interview, Belfort expresses that he “didn't like hearing” overly simplified and blunt depictions of his crimes because “it made me look like I was just trying to rip people off.” While unhappy with these practices, Belfort does acknowledge the cinematic benefits of these oversimplifications as “a very easy way in three hours” to “move the audience emotionally.”

Box office

The Wolf of Wall Street grossed $116.9 million in North America and $275.1 million internationally, for a total gross of $392 million, making it Scorsese's highest-grossing film worldwide. In North America, the film opened at number five in its first weekend, with $19.4 million in 3,387 theaters, behind ', Frozen, ', and American Hustle. In Australia, it is the highest grossing R-rated film, earning $12.96 million.

Accolades

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Adapted Screenplay for Winter, Best Actor for DiCaprio, and Best Supporting Actor for Hill. It was also nominated for four BAFTAs, including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, and two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. DiCaprio won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Top ten lists

The Wolf of Wall Street was listed on many critics' top ten lists.
The soundtrack to The Wolf of Wall Street features both original and existing music tracks. It was released on December 17, 2013 for digital download.
More than sixty songs were used in the film, but only sixteen were included on the official soundtrack. Notably, among the exceptions are original compositions by Theodore Shapiro.