[Editor’s Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]
Oliver Stone has run out of original ideas and Socialist leaders to give a reach around to on film, so he’s regurgitated his past like a little bit of throw-up in your mouth and made Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, his follow up to Wall Street.
The script, written by Allen Loeb is an excellent example of screenwriting. Everything in the story happens as it should. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, boy loses father figure, boy gains father figure, boy crushes enemy, and becomes a man. I have no problem with Mr. Loeb’s dialogue, setting, or story. However, it’s a story filled with Oliver Stone’s subconscious. The bad guys are ambitious business people, a cable news network, and those evil pharmaceutical companies. You know the ones, they make cutting edge drugs that save lives, heal people, and employ millions.
I don’t know Mr. Loeb’s politics, but we all know Mr. Stone’s feelings on capitalism and free markets since he fawns over the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela. Reading the script, you can imagine the scenes where Mr. Stone pecked his Commie-loving fingers on Mr. Loeb’s keyboard to come up with scenes where the newly enlighten Gordon Gekko forgoes a fifteen minute wait at a New York Bistro for a bite at Whole Foods. Then, in a typical Hollywood environmental plug, we have an unsubtle scene where our hero Jacob (LaBeouf), and his hedge fund pal enter a Toyota car dealership in search of a Maserati but end up lusting after a…Prius.
Encapsulated in the new Gordon Gekko and young Jacob is Mr. Stone’s idea of sustainability. An overpriced grocery store Cubans can’t afford and cars they can’t drive because Mr. Stone’s pal Castro only lets his people drive 1957 Chevy’s. The only way Cuban people will ever see a free market Whole Foods and a Prius on their streets is when we invade the island, overthrow the government, and make Andy Garcia the governor of state #51.
In the script, Mr. Stone is a man who sees all ambition outside of Hollywood as greed. Mr. Stone and Mr. Loeb lay all blame on Wall Street for much of today’s financial crisis including the housing crash, and there is truth to that. However, Mr. Stone never moves the writer to point a finger at the meddling hand of government. He never points to Barney Frank and the US government who headed up the charge to give every sap from sea to shining sea a home, whether they could afford it or deserved it. That wouldn’t jive with Mr. Stone’s socialist agenda so it’s left it out.
Oddly enough, the most teachable moment comes at the hands of Hollywood’s most vile and hate-filled creature, Bill Maher, who has a cameo in the script. He’s MC to a fancy dinner for the elite rich, putting Maher in his most comfortable surroundings. In the script, he tells a couple of lame jokes and then goes on to show an educational video on how we got to where we are today in the market.
The video is narrated by children and uses stick figures to represent a character in the video described in the script as RICH MAN (but there’s no GOVERNMENT MAN, naturally). This sequence is a great piece of writing on the part of Mr. Loeb. The problem here and with much of the script is that it’s filled with this kind of typical, simplistic, liberal imagery as to who the enemy is. For example, all thirteen times a TV is shown in the script, it’s tuned to the evil Fox Business channel, and every chance Mr. Stone has to show the belittling of America he does, like in a scene with Gekko and Jacob where Gekko uses this early 1900s cartoon…
…to use JP Morgan as a parable for how we should only trust government and never business.
The dilemma with that scenario today is that we have a White House so hostile towards business that a JP Morgan could never step in and row the boat for the public.
The most telling statement in the script comes from the evil, wealthy, white Brennton Woods, played by Josh Brolin, star of Mr. Stone’s last blockbuster “W.” He seems to speak the unconscious sadness of a once great filmmaker when he talks of irrelevance being worse than death.
I see a gravedigger-opening weekend for Money Never Sleeps. Welcome to your coffin of irrelevance Mr. Stone.
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