Oliver
Stone literally put me in the picture. I was seated
at an oval table under an eerie light in what purported
to be the office of the Chairman of New York Federal
Reserve Bank. As the meeting continued throughout the
night, people around screamed about the “moral
hazard” of saving a failing investment bank. At
one point, there was even a call from the White House
dooming the bank in question. The frenetic scene is
no more than a consensual hallucination directed by
Oliver Stone in his new movie Wall Street 2: Money Never
Sleeps. The magnificently wood-paneled room is actually
the executive conference room of an insurance company,
Metlife, which is serving as a location for this part
of the filming. The eerie glow comes from powerful lamps
lights ingeniously suspended from helium balloons above
us. The shouting is coming from actors Frank Langella,
Eli Wallach, and Josh Brolin. Although I had only a
bit part in this drama, it provided me with an opportunity
to see how a Hollywood is made from the vantage point
of the set.
The project was initiated in 2005 by Edward R. Pressman
, the producer of the original Wall Street, after he
saw the fictional villain of Wall Street Gordon Gekko
(portrayed by Michael Douglas) on the cover Fortune
accompanied by a headline about the return of greed
to Wall Street. Pressman reasoned that if 18 years after
the movie, Gekko was still the media’s icon for
greed on Wall Street, Pressman, a sequel was in order.
He owned the rights for the sequel but sought to interest
Twentieth Century Fox, which had distributed the original
Wall Street. Getting a movie made in
Hollywood when the hero is not a comic book character
was not an easy task. Just getting a script that was
acceptable to Fox took four years– and 3 different
(and very expensive) writers. Even then Fox’s
approval was conditional on the stars and director,
as are almost all movie deals. Pressman persuaded Michael
Douglas to again play Gekko, a role for which he had
won the Oscar in 1988, and Oliver Stone
(who had dropped out of the project earlier), to again
direct Wall Street 2. Fox then agreed to finance it.
Part of this $67 million budget could be retrieved from
New York State and New York City’s tax credits
(which effectively reimburses 35% of the production
budget spent in New York.) The Federal Reserve meeting
scenes were filmed over a long weekend about midway
in the 11 week shooting schedule. Through the seemingly
endless retakes in which actors repeats virtually the
same lines while extras behind them– each of whom
is called by a number rather
than a name– moves to the exact same “mark.”
or position, Stone gradually perfects the illusion.
Between each take, the time on the grandfather clock
in the office is reset to the exact time at the
start of the previous scene. The process is not unlike
the never-ending day in the movie "Groundhog Day."
But surrounding the illusion-in-the-making is an envelope
of reality. It is peopled by a small army of technicians,
including make-up artists, hair stylists, script supervisors,
technical advisors, continuity girls, stand-by carpenters,
wranglers, costumers,
sound boom men, camera operators, film loaders, set
decorators, and electricians. They work ceaselessly,
rushing onto the set between takes, to maintain and
repair the illusion. One of the advantages of a top
director such as Stone, is that he can get the best
of the below-the-line talent,
in this case such Oscar nominees as Rodrigo Prieto,
the Mexican-born Director of Photography, whose credits
include Frida, Brokenback Mountain, and Babel, Kristi
Zea, the production designer, whose credits include
Revolutionary Road, Goodfellas, and The Silence of The
Lamb,
and Tod Maitland, the versatile sound technician who
won the Oscar for Seabiscuit. Stone him self is constantly
moving around the set, viewing scenes from different
angles and talking to the actors and extras, often in
whispers. At other times, he confers with technical
advisors, including two former SEC lawyers who had actually
attended the Fed meetings, asking them about such details
as how coffee cups would be placed on the table or how
precisely a phone call from the White House would be
answered. When any unexpected difficulties arise, such
as the camera dolly creaks audibly on its tracks, he
jokes with the cast, having a gift for putting actors
at their ease. But even with the amicable atmosphere,
he has to keep the movie running on a tight schedule.
Just the below-the-line expenditures for Wall Street
2, which does not include the compensation for the stars,
writers, producers, or the director, is running about
$220,000 a day for interior scenes (exterior and crowd
scenes can be much more expensive.) So unless he shoots
the planned number of script pages a day, he will run
over budget. While Hollywood players are often depicted
in the media as profligate spenders, the opposite is
true when it comes to studio executives supervising
a movie that they are financing. Before Wall Street
2 went into production, Fox went through the budget
line by line, squeezing every penny it could out of
the budget., even attempting to reduce the fees of m
major actors (all of whom have a “quote”,
or established price per movie. If the shooting ran
over budget, Fox could ask that plans scenes be cut
out of the script to get it back on track or use money
from the post-production budget, which includes putting
in visual effects (which are crucial in Wall Street
2 since some scenes are shot with blank backgrounds),
adding sound, and editing. So Stone manages to adhere
to the schedule, even when it requires him– and
his assistant directors-- working grueling 14 hour days
in the Federal Reserve Bank scenes.
|