Re: My Wall Street 2 Story

Wrote this for the February issue of AVENUE Magazine. Thought it would amuse you. Tell me what you think of it.

xoxo Peggy

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HD: Wall Street, Take Two

DEK: In the upcoming sequel to Oliver Stone's groundbreaking film, Gordon Gekko gets out of jail and back to business. Peggy Siegal takes us behind the scenes where she got herself on camera along with a few of her famous friends. Nice work if you can get it.

In 1987, right after director Oliver Stone won the Academy Award for "Platoon," he immediately turned to a domestic arena and began working on "Wall Street" in New York City where his father had been a stockbroker. Although the film was widely seen as a scathing critique of the culture of Wall Street, Stone has said that part of the film is a defense of capitalism, his father's vision of finance (as seen through the Hal Holbrook character) and an homage to his father.

At the time Oliver was also fascinated with the connection between the psyche of Latino Miami drug dealers from his earlier "Scarface" script and the American-born 28- to 35-year-old, white collar stockbrokers. Both groups had an animalistic need to obtain big and fast money. They shared an obsession with corruption and greed.

Oliver sent his actors to Bear Stearns for research, including then-newcomer Charlie Sheen, who played Bud Fox, a kid from nowhere. When he learns to cold call, and lands one big client, Gordon Gekko, Fox is thrust into the fast lane with a rock star financial mentor who teaches him corruption.

Oliver needed an old-fashioned villain to create drama, and he cast Michael Douglas as Gekko against type. Michael was not known as a heavy at the time, but as a charming, handsome, sensitive leading man. Oliver also saw the anger, confidence, salesmanship and style that Michael brought to the role. Michael's Gekko looked a bit like Laker's coach Pat Riley with his slicked back hair and well-cut suits, and it became Michael's most important role, winning him the Academy Award for the villain no one could ever forget.

When Gekko delivers his speech, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works," cinematic history was made.

"Wall Street" was set in 1985, a time before ten financial news networks broadcasting 24/7 existed. The entire financial services industry was largely unknown and Oliver Stone nailed it.

Four years ago, Wall Street's producer Ed Pressman decided it was time for a sequel and met with Fox Film Entertainment co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos. Michael Douglas was immediately on-board pending script approval. Steven Schiff wrote the first script before the global economic crash of 2008 rendered it obsolete.

Alan Loeb was brought in for a rewrite. Pressman asked me to meet Loeb at the Carlyle Hotel to explain the social rhythms of New York's financial high society. Whereas Gekko's character was modeled after '70s junk bond kings (Michael Milken) and '80s mergers and acquisitions killers (Henry Kravis), Loeb bases the new villain on hedge fund billionaires like John Paulson and Mike Novogratz, geniuses who have created stratospheric wealth beyond Gordon Gekko's wildest dreams. When Oliver Stone agreed to direct, he rewrote a portion of the script to focus on bankers as well as hedge funders, taking no screen credit.

This past September, Oliver yelled, "action" as Gordon Gekko, with long grey hair, comes back to life as he emerges from a lengthy prison stint shot outside of Sing Sing in Ossining, New York. Gekko is desperate to redefine himself in a different era. The New York Post runs a full-page photo of Gekko and New Yorkers immediately become obsessed with the filming of Wall Street 2.

A week into shooting, a glorious fall day. Ed Pressman invites me on the set at the Central Park Zoo. Oliver designs an elaborate tracking shot around the seal pool where Gekko, fresh from jail, walks and talks to Jake Moore, a young idealistic investment banker played by Shia LaBoeuf. They discuss Gekko's daughter Winnie, Moore's fiancée, played by Carrie Mulligan, who is also having an off-screen romance with LaBoeuf. Oliver played Cupid. Moore invites Gekko to the Alzheimer's Ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gekko, who used to be a sponsor or honoree of such events, cannot even afford a ticket.

The shot starts with a barking seal jumping for fish, then pans down to the actors. Extras weave in and out. In one take Michael makes a wrong turn and ends up at the monkey house. Everyone laughs. The atmosphere on the set is courteous but quick and tense. There is pressure when you are making a sequel to a hit.

I watch the action on monitors while sitting on the producers' canvas chairs with Pressman, Eric Kopeloff ("Monsters Ball") and Celia Costas, who was a location manager on the first "Wall Street." They have asked me to be an extra in the Alzheimer's Ball scene and bring some friends to play rich Upper East Side socialites. Oliver wants over the top glam, go-to-the-vault jewels and couture gowns. "Give me the night before the Titanic goes down," were his exact words. Not a problem.

I pay a quick visit to Michael in his trailer on Fifth Avenue where he is resting. We go way back. I was his personal publicist when he won the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actor for "Wall Street" and we have remained great friends. Gekko is just as challenging for him the second time because of endless pages of technical financial dialogue. We discuss Catherine Zeta-Jones' Broadway debut in a "Little Night Music." Michael has a stack of partially finished handwritten thank you notes next to him for gifts received for their shared birthday party on September 25th at the St. Regis. Her 40th and his 65th.

I tell him I have been cast as an extra in two scenes and he laughs knowing I am desperate to hang around him and the production.

8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 21st, another warm, stunning fall day. I report to the wardrobe trailer on 65th Street and Madison Avenue. I carry four elaborate cocktail dresses and bags of matching accessories. My hair is in rollers. Statuesque Julia Koch walks over from her Park Avenue apartment carrying her white Valentino and long diamond earrings. Her real-life financial titan husband David is unaware where she is this morning.

Vanity Fair's keeper of the Best Dressed List, Amy Fine Collins, arrives totally organized in turquoise vintage Geoffrey Beene, and Vogue's fashion editor Hamish Bowles wears a riot of plaids, patterns and a large yellow fake flower on his lapel. Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick, who created Gordon Gekko's rich slick look in the first film, is ecstatic with the extras I invited.

Twentieth Century Fox releases "Wall Street 2: The Money Never Sleeps" on April 23rd and it's got hit written all over it.

terrific. i want to hear more about the trip

Will call you later. I am sick as a dog with a cold. I am supposed to go to Dr. Magnani this morning for a cleaning. If you get a cleaning with a cold does it make it worse of just infect the dental hygenist?

Had a great lunch for Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster for "The Messenger" at Monkey Bar yesterday and hung with Clooney at the New York Film Critics Awards last night. Tonight is the National Board of Review and I am thinking of staying in bed till show time. Have a party for Clooney Wednesday nigh Graydon is hosting at Monkey Bar that we are working on.

I have to fly to LA Jan. 14 and I am worried...I have emailed three doctors this morning!

Will call later...Mattie keeps saying she is going to show me how to email photos- will try to do today and call.

I think I got sick in economy class from Lamu, Nairobi, Amsterdan, Newark from all those wanna be terrorists breathing on me in the planes.

Did you see "Avator". I do not have a dvd because it's 3D.
The white American marines are wiped out by black people painted blue....it's going to be highest grossing film in the world is an few weeks beating out "Titanic" and will win the Oscar for "Best Picture."
xoxo Peg

sorry you are sick, go slow.. no cleaning. stay in bed.. sorry..