The Baby Wolf of Wall Street
Inside the restaurant, young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves.
– Jason Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), “The Wolf of Wall Street”
So after finally finding the time to sit down and watch The Wolf of Wall Street, my initial impressions were these. Yes, the language is foul and nasty. Yes, there are enough drugs ingested by the cast to kill a herd of horses. And yes, there is so much gratuitous sex I felt the need to go home afterwards and take a shower. That being said, I found the nearly three-hour movie to be funny, irreverent, and relentlessly entertaining. But after digesting the film for a few days, I have one more impression to add.
Man, did it hit close to home.
I’ve been a Wall Street broker for nearly thirty years, from paper tickets and the Crash of ’87 to electronic trading and split-second corrections. When I first walked through the doors of First Boston in August of 1986, I naively believed I was headed for an exciting career full of professional promise and a comfy bank account. Little did I know I had also bought a ticket for one long amusement park ride, filled with dizzying highs and jaw-dropping lows, and cast with enough amoral characters to make Charlie Sheen blush.
Wall Street has always been a bastion of unquenchable greed and dubious ethics, but the markets of the 80’s and 90’s took the industry’s standard of arrogance and avarice to a new level. Anything was possible, and everything was expected. Client entertainment was upgraded from Moderate to Debaucherous, and every broker worth his BMW used a skyrocketing stock market to raise their own personal target price from Competent to Genius. It was an exhilarating time, and Wall Street used those heady days to take itself way, way too seriously.
I’ll be the first to admit I left my own extravagant footprint. Though I managed to skip the drugs and hookers, I did order and consume my fair share of indulgence. Extravagant golf rounds were followed by gallons of Château de Expensive. But here’s the thing; this kind of professional behavior was the convention of the day. The expected, the norm. I enjoyed it all, and so did my customers. Not only because I could, but also because I should.
The rules have changed, thank goodness. Sanity has replaced superfluous. I have no regrets, but I’m not sure my liver agrees with me.
The Wolf of Wall Street takes those crazy days and multiplies the party and its subsequent hangover by a hundred. But one thing the movie doesn’t exaggerate is this; at the end of the day, money may buy experiences, but it doesn’t buy happiness.
But boy, was it fun while it lasted.