In The Trenches of Wall Street
Like a general getting his troops psyched for battle, Oliver Stone glared across the littered landscape of buy and sell orders, coffee cups, telephones and blinking green computer monitors. "Remember," the director of Platoon ordered the brigade of button-down young actors, "you're supposed to be making money." Loads of it, in fact. The Viet Nam soldier turned Oscar- winning filmmaker was on location in New York City to film Wall Street, a $15 million 20th Century-Fox production about the rise and fall of an ambitious young stockbroker, starring Charlie Sheen, his father Martin, Daryl Hannah and Michael Douglas. "I would have never cut the mustard on Wall Street," Stone admitted during a break between scenes. "I did poorly in economics -- I got a C, and my mathematics were suspect," he laughs. "I lost on every stock I ever invested in." It was not for lack of example, however. Stone was first exposed to the big-time financial world by his investment- banker father. Explains Stone, who co-wrote and directed the film: "I've always wanted to make a business movie ever since he was on the Street."
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While it may seem like a long leap -- both culturally and conceptually -- from the steaming jungles of Viet Nam to the concrete canyons of Manhattan, Stone had his problems with both. "I don't like to work in an office," he complains. "Being under fluorescent light for two weeks is almost equivalent to being under 105 degrees sun in the Philippines." Stone is not the only Platoon veteran who thinks so. Charlie Sheen traded his M-16 for an M.B.A. to play an overeager stockbroker named Bud Fox. The actor found the white-collar trenches of Gotham "much worse. When you get this overloaded mentality, it's tough to find ways to relax yourself. It's tougher than being a grunt."
To get inside Fox's heart and mind, Sheen spent a couple of days talking with David Brown, a former Goldman Sachs trader who pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in 1986. "A lot of these guys on Wall Street consider themselves to be warriors," reports Sheen. "They say, 'I'm going off to war today,' and they're not kidding." Sheen had an easier time relating to his real-life dad in the role of his onscreen father, an airline mechanic who senses the hidden price of his son's success. Hannah had difficulty even liking her character. She plays an interior decorator who loves both Fox and money. "I finally realized she doesn't have to be a total snot," says Hannah. "She can be human too." Douglas had no such qualms about his portrayal of Gordon Gekko, a "very high-powered guy" who becomes the younger Sheen's mentor and partner in crime. Says he: "The hardest thing was probably finding that balance of seduction yet killer."
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