Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Wall STreet" (1987). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987) set within the period of the mid 1980s when Wall Street broker firms and investment banks starting bidding for the Trillions in pension funds to be used as capital for the stock market (while you're poor in the meantime, you'll have some cash at the end of your retirement, if you make it.  In the meantime a broker out there was making money off you).  Stock market traders of the 1980s were mostly floor clerks and apprentices, who made it up the ladder, kinda, whilst trying to build client portfolio using a phone book, aka 'cold calling'.  And that luring temptation of greed and corruption for a quick buck, was ever present.  Stone's "Wall Street" certainly didn't glam up the so called legacy of those Wall Street traders, offering a more or less take that stock market trading is all about betting, of course, while using someone else's money.  Just don't lose it, and many did.   And to truly make money, you need insider information, better still, is to be like the main protagonist, and slick corporate raider "Gordon Gekko"  (played by Michael Douglas), by encapsulating that fervish, capitalistic sleaze and villainy resolve, which Douglas could have easily become type casted for, and kinda was, offering this famous line (and advice?) from the movie, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good".   And I ask; is not the 21st Century all about mortgages/housing prices and Netflix? Was "Gekko", via script writers Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser, right?

"Wall Street" is primary a crime drama, portraying the perils of  overt ambition from a young "Bud Fox" (played by Charlie Sheen) a working class roots guy, who wants to be a big time player on Wall Street, after being frustrated, and cash poor, with his looking through the phone book looking for clients going nowhere, decides, through a lot of persistent phone calls, to try and land Gekko as one of his 'wealthy' clients.  And in a coincidence of events, Bud's father (Martin Sheen), from a scene earlier, informs Bud, that the airline he works for, the fictional "Bluestar", is about to have a FFA ruling overturned.  And in a vain effort to impress Gekko,  gives him the insider headup, to which Gekko makes a killing on buying Bluestar shares before they spike, once the news is made public, thus the relationship with the Wall Street heavyweight, and Bud begins.  With Gekko mentoring Bud, on how real money is made on Wall Street, and, yes, it's all about insider trading and being very, very ruthless.  Bud, goes along for the ride, and gets the penthouse apartment, tons of loose cash, plus the blond haired 1980s styled, art gallery owner Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah), who is also Gekko's mistress on the side.  

Of course, and everyone has seen "Wall Street" by now, should know that Gekko's scheme of dismantling and attempting to bankrupt Bud's father's beloved airline, whilst sending Bud's father, inadvertently, to the emergency room with a heart attack, fails.  Bud, facing an existential crisis, and wondering what he had become, obviously to the audience he has become a mini version of Gordon Gekko, turns against Gekko using similar techniques of market manipulation, bets against Gekko and, well, wins (somewhat).  And gets his revenge, and receives his conscience back, Gekko goes to jail, and of course, Bud does too.

"Wall Street" hasn't aged too well, and the 2010 sequel was dreadful, but the redeeming cult aspect to the 1987 movie, is it 1980s charm.  The era we all miss so dearly, at least that nostalgia of glamorously portraying wealth, corruption and its decay simultaneously (rather than 221st Century gentrification), to which New York, Wall Street's home, portrayed so well throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

___

(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema