Wall Street 2: “Hank Greenberg”‘s Missing Scene

By Shira Ovide

Everyone’s favorite Wall Street goon, Gordon Gekko, is returning to the big screen on Friday. But there’s a whole world theatre-goers will be missing.

Roger Hendricks Simon, a 67-year-old New York acting coach and theater director, landed a part playing a thinly veiled version of legendary former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg in “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The movie, opening Friday, reprises the 1987 Oliver Stone film that helped shape a generation’s attitudes towards Wall Street.

Sadly, Simon’s scenes were left on the cutting room floor, he said in an interview Tuesday. But he said it was a plum assignment to inhabit the Gucci loafers of Bernie Jacobs, the fictional AIG head.

Simon wasn’t an obvious choice for the part. First of all, he doesn’t look much like the octogenarian Hank Greenberg. Hendricks says he’s “short and slight” like Greenberg, and manages to capture some of his essence, if not his physical appearance. Second, Simon admits he was a tad shy on basic knowledge about finance, including about his character. “I never had heard of him,” Simon said of Greenberg. “When I look at The Wall Street Journal, it’s Greek to me,” he laughs.

In the end, Simon said he cast aside suggestions to read reams of material and watch interviews of the AIG honcho. “I used my own imagination,” he said, to create a character that goes from king of the world to “eating humble pie.”

At a pivotal setup scene –SPOILER ALERT! — at a glitzy charity party, Simon said his Greenberg doppelganger got to spew this memorable line to Michael Douglas’ Gekko: “Saw your book, didn’t see my name in it, so I skipped it.” In the end, Jacobs gets his comeuppance, admitting to the Treasury Secretary played by Hank Paulson look-alike John Bedford Lloyd that the company has run out of cash.

Simon said Oliver Stone sent him a thoughtful letter to say the cut scenes will be in the DVD version of the film. Simon said the famed director apologized for wielding the axe. “I think it was between Susan Sarandon and me,” Simon said of the Hollywood veteran cast as the mother of Shia LaBeouf, the “Transformers” actor who plays Gekko’s protégée

Simon said Stone found him from his role as a lonely old crank living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a 2008 film called “The Sublet.” Months after Stone got Simon’s cell phone number at a Los Angeles party, Simon was asked to audition for “Wall Street.” He said he auditioned for eight different parts before being tapped for Bernie Jacobs.

The alum of the famed Yale School of Drama saw “Wall Street” for the first time at a New York premiere Monday attended by the likes of Warren Buffett (who appeared in the movie) and Spike Lee. (“Wall Street” is distributed by 20th Century Fox, whose parent company is Wall Street Journal owner News Corp.)

Even though he won’t be on the screen, Simon said it was a thrill to be part of an A-list Hollywood production for the first time. “It’s an interesting thing to spend your whole life in this business and only towards the latter part to get into a project like this,” Simon said.