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From: Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
Sent: 1/12/2010 12:28:25 AM
To: Peggy Siegal
Subject: Re: My Wall Street 2 Story
terrific. i want to hear more about the trip
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Peggy Siegal wrote:
Wrote this for the February issue of AVENUE Magazine. Thought it would amuse you. Tell me what you
think of it.
xoxo Peggy
HD: Wall Street, Take Two
DEK: In the upcoming sequel to Oliver Stone's groundbreaking film, Gordon Gekko gets out of jail and back
to business. Peggy Siegal takes us behind the scenes where she got herself on camera along with a few of her
famous friends. Nice work if you can get it.
In 1987, right after director Oliver Stone won the Academy Award for "Platoon," he immediately turned to a
domestic arena and began working on "Wall Street" in New York City where his father had been a
stockbroker. Although the film was widely seen as a scathing critique of the culture of Wall Street, Stone has
said that part of the film is a defense of capitalism, his father's vision of finance (as seen through the Hal
Holbrook character) and an homage to his father.
At the time Oliver was also fascinated with the connection between the psyche of Latino Miami drug dealers
from his earlier "Scarface" script and the American-born 28- to 35-year-old, white collar stockbrokers. Both
groups had an animalistic need to obtain big and fast money. They shared an obsession with corruption and
greed.
Oliver sent his actors to Bear Stearns for research, including then-newcomer Charlie Sheen, who played Bud
Fox, a kid from nowhere. When he learns to cold call, and lands one big client, Gordon Gekko, Fox is thrust
into the fast lane with a rock star financial mentor who teaches him corruption.
Oliver needed an old-fashioned villain to create drama, and he cast Michael Douglas as Gekko against type.
Michael was not known as a heavy at the time, but as a charming, handsome, sensitive leading man. Oliver
also saw the anger, confidence, salesmanship and style that Michael brought to the role. Michael's Gekko
looked a bit like Laker's coach Pat Riley with his slicked back hair and well-cut suits, and it became Michael's
most important role, winning him the Academy Award for the villain no one could ever forget.
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When Gekko delivers his speech, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works,"
cinematic history was made.
"Wall Street" was set in 1985, a time before ten financial news networks broadcasting 24/7 existed. The entire
financial services industry was largely unknown and Oliver Stone nailed it.
Four years ago, Wall Street's producer Ed Pressman decided it was time for a sequel and met with Fox Film
Entertainment co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos. Michael Douglas was immediately on-board
pending script approval. Steven Schiff wrote the first script before the global economic crash of 2008 rendered
it obsolete.
Alan Loeb was brought in for a rewrite. Pressman asked me to meet Loeb at the Carlyle Hotel to explain the
social rhythms of New York's financial high society. Whereas Gekko's character was modeled after '70s junk
bond kings (Michael Milken) and '80s mergers and acquisitions killers (Henry Kravis), Loeb bases the new
villain on hedge fund billionaires like John Paulson and Mike Novogratz, geniuses who have created
stratospheric wealth beyond Gordon Gekko's wildest dreams. When Oliver Stone agreed to direct, he rewrote a
portion of the script to focus on bankers as well as hedge funders, taking no screen credit.
This past September, Oliver yelled, "action" as Gordon Gekko, with long grey hair, comes back to life as he
emerges from a lengthy prison stint shot outside of Sing Sing in Ossining, New York. Gekko is desperate to
redefine himself in a different era. The New York Post runs a full-page photo of Gekko and New Yorkers
immediately become obsessed with the filming of Wall Street 2.
A week into shooting, a glorious fall day. Ed Pressman invites me on the set at the Central Park Zoo. Oliver
designs an elaborate tracking shot around the seal pool where Gekko, fresh from jail, walks and talks to Jake
Moore, a young idealistic investment banker played by Shia LaBoeuf. They discuss Gekko's daughter Winnie,
Moore's fiancée, played by Carrie Mulligan, who is also having an off-screen romance with LaBoeuf. Oliver
played Cupid. Moore invites Gekko to the Alzheimer's Ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gekko, who
used to be a sponsor or honoree of such events, cannot even afford a ticket.
The shot starts with a barking seal jumping for fish, then pans down to the actors. Extras weave in and out. In
one take Michael makes a wrong turn and ends up at the monkey house. Everyone laughs. The atmosphere on
the set is courteous but quick and tense. There is pressure when you are making a sequel to a hit.
I watch the action on monitors while sitting on the producers' canvas chairs with Pressman, Eric Kopeloff
("Monsters Ball") and Celia Costas, who was a location manager on the first "Wall Street." They have asked
me to be an extra in the Alzheimer's Ball scene and bring some friends to play rich Upper East Side socialites.
Oliver wants over the top glam, go-to-the-vault jewels and couture gowns. "Give me the night before the
Titanic goes down," were his exact words. Not a problem.
I pay a quick visit to Michael in his trailer on Fifth Avenue where he is resting. We go way back. I was his
personal publicist when he won the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actor for "Wall Street" and we have
remained great friends. Gekko is just as challenging for him the second time because of endless pages of
technical financial dialogue. We discuss Catherine Zeta-Jones' Broadway debut in a "Little Night Music."
Michael has a stack of partially finished handwritten thank you notes next to him for gifts received for
their shared birthday party on September 25th at the St. Regis. Her 40th and his 65th.
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I tell him I have been cast as an extra in two scenes and he laughs knowing I am desperate to hang around him
and the production.
8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 21st, another warm, stunning fall day. I report to the wardrobe trailer on
65th Street and Madison Avenue. I carry four elaborate cocktail dresses and bags of matching accessories. My
hair is in rollers. Statuesque Julia Koch walks over from her Park Avenue apartment carrying her white
Valentino and long diamond earrings. Her real-life financial titan husband David is unaware where she is this
morning.
Vanity Fair's keeper of the Best Dressed List, Amy Fine Collins, arrives totally organized in turquoise vintage
Geoffrey Beene, and Vogue's fashion editor Hamish Bowles wears a riot of plaids, patterns and a large yellow
fake flower on his lapel. Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick, who created Gordon Gekko's rich slick look in the
first film, is ecstatic with the extras I invited.
Oliver is shooting a scene with Josh Brolin (the star of Stone's "W"). His character Bretton (never Bret)
James, a ruthless Wall Street kingpin, and his perfect wife Samantha (Noelle Beck) are hosting a benefit piano
recital for a 13-year-old child prodigy in their huge, art-filled townhouse at 41 East 65th Street. The building
actually belongs to Baby Jane Holzer, a wealthy art collector still famous for hanging with Andy Warhol in the
'60s. The production designer had Jane's fabulous Warhols moved to storage and replaced with matching
photographic copies. Very expensive contemporary art is again an important production element of Oliver's
vision.
At 10:30 a.m., all the extras are placed around the living room set. Oliver's French mother, Jacqueline Stone,
and her friend Monique Van Vooren, both in their 80s, are seated in front of the fireplace chatting in French.
Production assistants fuss over them. Debonair macho man Chuck Pfieffer, who appeared in the original film,
and I immediately invent a back story—I am his corporate wife—and we position ourselves on a couch next to
the director's mother. Julia gets the best spot close to the piano and Amy, Hamish and decorator Geoffrey
Bradfield are right behind her. Josh is brought in and the kibitzing stops.
Oliver appears on the set with eagle eyes and a sly grin and quickly re-positions everyone. He explains the
scene, gives out lines to his favored extras, and on his way out to the monitors in the next room mentions that
my earrings are too small. Wardrobe jumps. Josh rehearses and Oliver finally yells, "Action." The kid plays
the piano, Josh explains why we are in his home, asks for money, the camera dollies as extras say their lines
and Shia appears at the door uninvited for a confrontation with Josh. Three hours later a PA yells, "Lunch".
In costume, Amy, Hamish and I run to The Monkey Bar. I am late to meet "The Harpies," including Liz
Smith, Barbara Walters, Cynthia McFadden, Nora Ephron, Jennifer Isham, Maury Perl and Beth Kseniak.
Graydon Carter is at the next table. I tell him Oliver Stone wants him in "Wall Street 2" as an extra. (I make
this up.) Graydon jokes that he only works with lines. I say, "Not a problem." (This will be news to Oliver.)
Back on the set I tell Oliver that Graydon is willing to be in the film with lines. Oliver finds that intriguing.
Oliver shoots the piano recital scene over and over again from different angles all afternoon. Financial wizard
Don Marron saunters on the set to visit and Oliver spontaneously puts him in a scene chatting with Josh. Carrie
Mulligan hangs out watching boyfriend Shia work.
At sundown Julia Koch has to race from reel to real life and explain to her husband where she has been all day.
(He loves it.)
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Chuck Pfieffer plants a "Page Six" item and the next day socialites begin calling me to get into the film.
Thursday, November 5, Shun Lee Restaurant, West 65th Street
Oliver shoots a crowded tight interior scene with Michael, Carrie and Shia, who are having an intimate
Chinese dinner. Spontaneously, Oliver decides this is the perfect scene for Graydon Carter. After a flurry of
calls, Graydon arrives on set, and playing himself, sashays by the table. Gekko jumps up to say hello and
Graydon brushes him off with a few dismissive lines.
Monday, November 9, 25 Broadway
One hundred swells show up at the former Canard Shipping building, a massive Italianate hall, at the crack of
dawn for the Alzheimer's Ball, a grand charity event.
Susan Hess and I are chauffeured downtown with our Vera Wang gowns and report to the VIP extra holding
area where we join Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia in a bespoke dinner jacket, journalist Christopher Mason,
songstress Yanna Avis, photographer Kelly Klein, art dealer Larry Gagosian's girl friend Shala Monroque in
see-through Rodarte, beauty executive Olivia Chantecaille, producer Lawrence Robins, author Jackie Weld
Drake, Vogue film critic Joan Juliet Buck, fashion consultant Jill Fairchild, CNN's Felicia Taylor and Italian
newsman Mario Calvo-Platero.
Ellen Mirojnick and her costume department have assembled racks of the most expensive elaborate designer
gowns and work at break neck speed styling while we wildly strip to our undies in a makeshift dressing area.
Ellen pours me into a black tulle Marchesa with a enormous wired silver bow. Twenty hairdressers and make-
up artists systematically work on 250 extras. A mile of tables are alternately filled with steaming coffee,
fattening breakfast foods, hair sprays, mirrors, shoes and jewelry. It's a madhouse of excitement.
We are led to the part of the set used for the cocktail reception and placed around Michael Douglas and Charlie
Sheen stand-ins. Charlie has been flown in from LA for half a day's work to reprise his original character. He
is now the highest paid television actor commanding two million dollars an episode of "Two and a Half Men."
Oliver arrives on the set greeting, examining, tweaking the shot and always pulling the prettiest girls closest to
the camera. Michael and Charlie arrive from their trailers and run their lines as socials drift into their sight
lines challenging their concentration on pages of dialogue. Oliver yells, "Action" as the extras aggressively
jockey for face time. Charlie is not having an easy day and they do take after take. My corporate husband
Chuck Pfieffer has gotten his real girlfriend Lisa Crosby in the film and my marriage has become a threesome.
Sensing our concern of not making it onto the silver screen Oliver tells his first assistant director to seat a
dinner table with Susan Hess, Jill Fairchild, Prince Dimitri, Chuck Pfieffer, Grace Meigher and Mario Calvo-
Platero. He directs us to chat with each other turning left and right as the camera closely pans past our faces.
Elsewhere on the set are John Buffalo Mailer, as Shia's character's best friend, Austin Pendleton, 94-year-old
Eli Wallach and Natalie Morales. Also in this film are: the magnificent Frank Langella, as Shia's boss, who
throws himself in front of a train early in the film, Susan Sarandon as Shia's real-estate broker mother, Sylvia
Miles, who reprises her hilarious cameo as another real-estate agent and Jean Pigozzi as an international
banker.
Lunch is called at 4 p.m. and Michael Douglas takes seven heavily made-up and bejeweled women including
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Susan, Jill and me to a restaurant around the corner. Gordon Gekko hosts a hen party talking about children,
schools, country houses and vacations.
Back on the set Oliver is shooting the actual dinner. Assistant directors ask for volunteers to dance to the live
music. Prince Dimitri twirls and dips Jackie Weld. Kelly Klein, in her own Karl Lagerfeld sheer black organza,
watches from a table with scattered champagne glasses half-filled with apple juice along with her 86-year-old
father, Tulley Rector. Charlie Sheen leaves for LA and Shia is very annoyed he was not introduced to his
hero. Carrie Mulligan, costumed like Audrey Hepburn, chats with us between takes.
The final set up is a long tracking shot of Josh Brolin and his wife as they triumphantly enter the ball. It is
close to 9 p.m. and Lord William Astor arrives to pick me up for Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann's dinner
for artists uptown.
Oliver is introduced to William and delights in calling him Lord as he immediately moves him into the top of
the shot and instructs him to tell Eli Wallach, "We must do lunch". Ever the proper English gentleman,
William advises Oliver that Lords do not use American slang and improvises his own lines. The tracking shot
continues for numerous takes following Josh and NoeIle as every VIP extra gets another shot at instant stardom
with one-line greetings.
At last, "It's a wrap" is screamed after 10 p.m. Prince Dimitri tells The Wall Street Journal it was, "a day of
electrifying glamour," and "the longest gala of my life. I was in black tie for thirteen hours."
November 25, Tommy Gun Salon, Ludlow Street, last day of shooting
Donald Trump is on set at 7 a.m. ready for his close up. He is trying to make a mid-day departure on his jet
from Teterboro with wife Melania and son Baron for Thanksgiving weekend in Palm Beach. Back in
September, Oliver had invited Donald Trump to dinner at "21" to meet his leading men Josh and Shia so they
could observe New York's most charismatic powerbroker in his natural environment.
The scene is London so the grey skies are perfect. Gekko has moved abroad to make his financial
comeback. The scene opens on the back of his head in a barber's chair as he watches the financial news on TV.
The camera pulls back and Gordon Gekko is finally revealed as the powerful bull he once was in an exquisite
suit and signature slicked-back hair. Donald Trump walks into the shop for a cut and the banter begins about
the money market. From his chair, Donald leans into Michael and suggests a "comb over" like his famous
do. Gekko, with a slight grin, says, "No thanks Donald, I am a gel man."
The crew is yucking it up and Donald feels great. Paparazzi shoot the whole scene with long lenses from across
the street. The unit publicist is helpless to keep this under wraps. Donald emerges, poses and gives interviews.
Michael comes out, and the press think they have a scoop on the ending. Gekko is back in all his lovable titan
splendor. Full-page photos of Michael and Donald run the next day in the tabloids. Never underestimate Oliver
Stone's surprise endings.
Twentieth Century Fox releases "Wall Street 2: The Money Never Sleeps" on April 23rd and it's got hit written
all over it.
--
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Jeffrey Epstein
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