The insult that won Michael Douglas an Oscar in 1988: “Are you doing drugs?”
Oliver Stone is a director who has thrived on making movies out of his native country’s disasters, whether it’s war with Platoon, the 9/11 attacks with World Trade Center or the shooting of a president in JFK. But it could be argued that the most damage was done via the subject of 1987’s Wall Street starring Michael Douglas.
Because what has gone on in that immoral financial hub in lower Manhattan over the past century has often caused global catastrophe; the profligacy and decisions triggering widespread economic collapse and misery for tens of millions on several occasions, notably the 1929 crash and the 2008 worldwide recession.
But when Douglas was cast as Gordon Gekko in Stone’s movie, it was the cash-soaked 1980s, the film famously coining the phrase ‘greed is good’ and New York City proving to be the epicentre of money dealing, cocaine, shoulder pads and limos. Douglas was superb as the reproachable, scheming financier, the character being partly based on Stone’s own father, who was a stockbroker during the Great Depression.
Stone and Douglas’ own relationship during filming wasn’t always a smooth one, however. By 1987, Douglas was a seasoned industry pro, a producer since the mid-1970s on the likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and a star himself thanks to Robert Zemeckis’ 1984 action hit Romancing the Stone. His latest director decided to stir things up by challenging his ego.
Douglas recalled, “We were finishing the second week of filming, and there was a knock on my door. ‘Hey Mike, it’s Oliver. Can I come in? I say, ‘Yeah, come on in’. He [Stone] comes in the trailer and sits down. He says to me, ‘You OK?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m OK’. ‘Are you doing drugs?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not doing drugs’. And he said, ‘Because you look like you’ve never acted before in your life’.”
Stone, who was actually younger than his leading man at the time, wanted Douglas to look closely at what he’d done up to that point, pushing him to watch the daily footage from the set, something he never usually did, and see how he could improve his performance as Gekko. Once he did that alongside his director, Stone admitted that he had been good in the role and had just been trying to get under his skin in order for him to be darker and angrier.
Douglas would later admit, “He was willing for me to hate his guts for the rest of this movie to get that extra little push”. It proved to be a masterstroke as Douglas would win the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ for his work on Wall Street, which, despite its social commentary, proved to be a massive hit and actually inspired people to want to work in the famed institution.
Stone and Douglas reunited 24 years later for the long-awaited sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, in 2010, in which Shia LaBeouf stepped into the well-polished shoes worn by Charlie Sheen in the original, and which, while more financially successful than Wall Street, was not as much of a success with the critics.
Stone has not released a feature film since 2016’s Snowden, but that will change when he pairs up with Douglas for a third time on the forthcoming White Lies, a drama told across three generations also starring Willem Dafoe.
