Actors - Wall Street

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	Actors - Wall Street

Wall Street has been the name of two movies, one released in 1929 and the other in 1987. Coincidentally, these two movies came out in December of their respective years, just less than two months after the two biggest stock market crashes in American history (Wall Street Crash 1929 and Black Monday (1987).

1929 movie

The 1929 movie was produced by Harry Cohn and starred Ralph Ince, Aileen Pringle, Sam De Grasse, Philip Strange, and Freddie Burke Frederick.

Errors

Depiction of insider trading

Despite the authenticity of its portrayal of the trading floor and brokerage houses, Wall Street makes several errors concerning the legality of insider trading. Bud's conviction under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is incorrect; absent a provision of section 10(b) passed in 1993 concerning the liability of family members for misappropriated information, Bud would not be held liable for passing on news of his father's airline reorganization to Gekko.

Nor could Bud be held liable for disclosing information on Gekko's rival raider to Gekko; except for the documents he seized from a locked office (while in the disguise of a janitor), all the information he provided Gekko was publicly observable, and therefore outside the scope of the law. Even Bud's college friend (James Spader), a lawyer who profits off of his occasional stock tips, would probably be safe from SEC investigators, much less the disbarment he fears, as he had no reason to believe that Bud's tips were anything more than the result of shrewd, legal analytical techniques.

In fact, the most clear-cut illegal behavior shown in the movie occurs earlier, when Gekko and Sir Lawrence Wildman (Terence Stamp) appear to negotiate a price for Gekko's Anacott Steel holdings above his tender offer to the rest of the market.

Anachronism

In the first shot of the film, showing the large expanse of the a trading floor, the year is noted as 1985. Moments later a character comments on how a broker (Gekko) had shorted NASA stock thirty seconds after the Challenger exploded. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in January, 1986, well after the events of the beginning of the film. And, of course, NASA is a government agency and does not have any stock (the comment is sarcasm).

Stone later explained that the "1985" title at the beginning was added after production was finished, to locate the film in a time before the mid-'80s insider-trading scandals began to break.

Other

In real life, someone in Bud's position would not be arrested on the trading floor (although that did happen in a few cases) but instead would be quietly brought in away from work, in order to keep the news from spreading if, as in this situation, they wanted the arrestee to cooperate in order to get to the investigation's ultimate target. It is thus highly unlikely that Gekko would talk to Bud after his arrest since word travels fast on Wall Street and he would naturally assume that Bud would be wearing a wire.

In the film's final shot, Bud is shown walking up the steps of the state court building in Foley Square to his sentencing. Insider trading is a federal charge, the investigators chasing after him have been from the federal SEC, and thus he should be going into the adjacent federal court building.

Original cut

The first version of the film had a 160-minute running time, as opposed to 120 minutes for the theatrical release.

Most of the 40 minutes cut involved a subplot in which Bud had an affair with Gekko's wife, Kate (Sean Young). As a result her appearance in the film is greatly diminished. It does, however, explain why Gekko is so angry with Bud in their confrontation at the film's climax.

While it certainly made the film more marketable, its excision may have had as much to do with Young being widely despised by many on the set due to the kind of bizarre behavior that would become more public several years later. Charlie Sheen (who has also admitted drinking heavily during production) reportedly at one point slapped a paper sign on her back saying "I am a cunt"; it took several hours before Young was aware of it.

There was thus a bitter irony, critics noted, at that year's Academy Award ceremony in Young presenting the Best Editing award.

Other cut scenes explain that Darien began her career as a call girl, the basis for Carl Fox telling off his son with "I don't go to bed with no whore, and I don't wake up with one" and the umbrage Bud takes at it. And yet another one explains how Bud becomes president of Bluestar without giving up his position at the brokerage firm, something that seems highly implausible in the final cut.

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