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Photos: Leonardo DiCaprio, In 1990s Power Suit, Films "Wolf Of Wall Street" In Financial District
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 26, 2012
Modified Sep 1, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 26, 2012
Modified Sep 1, 2012
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Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio might be playing Jay Gatsby in the The Great Gatsby, which will be released next year, but here he is as a 1990s-era stockbroker in the new Martin Scorsese-directed The Wolf Of Wall Street. That suit almost looks like an Arsenio suit!
DiCaprio and Scorese were downtown yesterday to film scenes, with sorta vintage buses, cars and taxis. The film is based on the memoir by Queens native Jordan Belfort, who ran Long Island-based boiler room brokerage Stratton Oakmont. Here's part of the Amazon description: "By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called…"
And CNBC's Jane Wells wrote in 2007, "Belfort hired young, hungry brokers. Some hadn't even graduated from high school. All they had to do was swear loyalty to him, read his scripts over the phone while cold calling, and everyone would get rich. It was a classic pump and dump scheme where brokers would drive up the price of stocks, and then Belfort would dump the large chunks he and his partners controlled, cashing out. Then the stock prices would collapse. And everyone at Stratton Oakmont did get rich. And then they all did a lot of drugs, drank a lot of expensive wine, bought a lot of outrageous toys, and threw outrageous parties populated by a lot of hookers. "
Belfort's bio—he's a consultant now, of course— reads, "As the owner of Stratton Oakmont, Belfort employed over 1,000 stockbrokers and raised over $1.5 billion and started more than 30 million-dollar-companies from scratch... Along the way, he succumbed to some of the traps of the high-flying Wall Street lifestyle, going through a spectacular—and well-publicized—fall from grace. Taking invaluable lessons from the mistakes he made and the prices he paid, he has re-emerged as a globally recognized potent force behind extraordinary business success."
The Wolf Of Wall Street, which also stars Jonah Hill, and, per IMDB, Kyle Chandler ("Clear eyes, full hearts!"), Matthew McConaughey, and Jean DuJardin, will be out next year. And DiCaprio and Hill have reportedly been going to Bank of America to learn to be wolfish.
Tagged
boiler room
film
jonah hill
leonardo dicaprio
martin scorsese
movie
pump and dump
stock broker
the wolf of wall street
wall street
wolf of wall street
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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