Leonardo DiCaprio talks to The News about 'Wolf of Wall Street'
Leonardo DiCaprio is living the good life as Jordan Belfort in 'The Wolf of Wall Street.'
The wolf of 'The Wolf of Wall Street' may have been a wild man, a louse and an convicted swindler, but director Martin Scorsese's antihero Jordan Belfort really knew how to spend his ill-gotten booty.
A huge ocean liner, with a landing pad for his helicopter. A Hamptons estate and Manhattan penthouse. Ferraris and Lamborghinis to drive (and smash). Fantastic food. Trashed Vegas hotels. Expensive suits, bottomless vials of Quaaludes and tons of cocaine to sniff off hookers' backsides.
'We wanted to create the sense of a modern-day Roman Empire,' says 'Wolf' star Leonardo DiCaprio in an exclusive chat with the Daily News. 'We wanted the film to have this sense of everyone giving in to every temptation, minus the maidens putting grapes in our mouths.'
He says Jordan Belfort's 2007 biography of the same title 'reflected everything that's wrong with today's society. This hedonistic lifestyle, this period in Wall Street's history when Jordan gave in to every carnal indulgence.
'We purposely didn't show [Belfort's] victims. We wanted the film to be a hypnotic ride the audience goes on, so they get lost in this world and not see the destruction left in the wake of this giant ship of greed.'
Still, DiCaprio and Scorsese's fifth collaboration is a comedic satire, inflating Belfort's bacchanalia lifestyle in order to puncture it.
RELATED: REAL 'WOLF OF WALL STREET' EXEC'S SON SLAMS MOVIE'S 'INACCURATE' CHARACTERIZATION OF HIS FATHER'Marty said, 'We're gonna talk about a serious subject matter, but it won't be like taking medicine.''
It's a gray moral area the maestro of New York filmmaking has mined before, most memorably in the underworld settings of 'Goodfellas' and 'Casino.'
'There is a mythology around the notion of 'honor among thieves,'' says Scorsese. ''Goodfellas' showed that maybe there's not. It's more primal here. Nobody knows here where the [controlling] hand comes from, which makes it more insidious.'
Yet if Belfort's story reminds people of other Scorsese films, that may not be a coincidence.
'I don't want to say that Marty does 'unconscious trilogies,' but 'Wolf' is thematically the same type of movie as 'Goodfellas' and 'Casino,'' says DiCaprio.
'It's like, 'What would the kids of those guys in 'Goodfellas' go on to do?' The more I started researching Wall Street, the more I thought, 'These guys have an underworld mentality.''
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The film is set mainly from Oct. 19, 1987 - aka 'Black Monday,' which was actually Belfort's first day as a broker - to 1998, yet doesn't feel dated. That's probably because Wall Street excesses have existed before and will happen again, Volcker Rule or not.
'It feels like it's about today, tomorrow and yesterday all at once,' says co-producer Joey McFarland. 'In that [financial] world, it's always tempting for everyone to only look out for themselves.'
To convey Belfort's hard-charging selling power and charm, DiCaprio had constant contact with the man he played, who now lectures on morality in business (see sidebar).
That doesn't mean they became pals.
'What he did was deplorable,' says DiCaprio. 'But I do respect anyone who's going to be forthright about his mistakes. He's not the way he was anymore.
'He said to me early on, 'If you're going to depict me, let me be even more candid with you than what's in the book.' We all know, and he knows, we're depicting the darker side of his nature.'
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DiCaprio optioned Belfort's book in 2007 - and screenwriter Terence Winter had already read it in galley form. Winter, who worked on 'The Sopranos' and 'Boardwalk Empire,' was not only a logical screenwriting choice for 'Wolf' because of his understanding of cinematic criminality, but also because he shared Belfort's outer-borough upbringing and even spent time on the Street.
'In 1987, I was a paralegal, and was on the Merrill Lynch trading floor on Black Monday,' says Winter. 'It was like being on the deck of the Titanic.'
Winter sees Belfort's story as a warped American Dream, but also a twisted New York fixation.
'Belfort is from Queens, I'm from Brooklyn - there's that bridge-and-tunnel thing, where [glamour and wealth] are so close, it's like Oz,' says Winter.
To prepare, DiCaprio spent time on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
'There's a lot of responsible people in that job,' says the actor. 'But you can see how excess can run rampant.
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'That attitude is not just Wall Street - it's part of human nature,' adds the three-time Oscar nominee. 'There are people in Hollywood who are manipulative and obsessed with wealth. It's anywhere there's power.''
.....
The real Jordan Belfort
Who was the real wolf of Wall Street?
Jordan Ross Belfort was born in 1962 and grew up in Bayside, Queens, the son of an accountant. As a young salesman in the '80s, Belfort ran a meat and seafood business that went down in 1987. Belfort's first day as a broker was Oct. 19, 1987 - 'Black Monday,' as it's known, when stocks crashed worldwide. He downshifted to selling 'penny stocks,' then in 1989 started the Long Island-based Stratton Oakmont.
The firm was notorious not only for the debauched behavior among its staff but also for overhyping stocks that it wanted to unload, tricking customers into buying the securities at inflated prices - a practice known as 'pump and dump.'
Belfort was indicted in 1999 and arrested as he was boarding a plane to Switzerland. Sentenced to four years in prison and fined $110 million, he served 22 months in California's Taft Federal Prison Camp (for a time his cellmate was pot comic Tommy Chong). He was released in 2005.
Belfort now runs a sales-training company that encourages good business practices while showing ways to build wealth.
Amazingly, Bernie Madoff was the chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers in 1999. When Belfort was arrested, Madoff reportedly said, 'He is the reason Wall Street has a black eye.'
jneumaier@nydailynews.com
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