An Inconvenient Truth

We went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” at the Mercury Cinema (echoes of Orson Welles?) in Nice, which was followed by a discussion organised by a Cafe Cine group.



In the title of my diary on Stone’s film “Wall Street” I said that greed was glamourous and deadly. In this case we come to the truly deadly consequences of our greed, which threaten to kill all of us.


Future generations ?

The film was grim viewing and afterwards a couple of invited scientists argued that the situation was probably worse than Gore had said, and that he’d exaggerated the possibilities for counteracting the effects of climate change. One of the scientists, a Brit who looked a bit like a Father Christmas, passed on this news with many a jolly chuckle. I felt relieved that I have no children and sorry for those who do - and even more for the children themselves.

Cf.:

When I said I was going to a press screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," a friend said, "Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor...ing!" This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Roger Ebert

John Doerr (who works with Gore) said (in a TED talk): “I’m really scared. I don’t think we’re going to make it.” After seeing the Gore film he had some friends round for dinner and they all agreed climate change was a real problem. Then it was his 15 year-old daughter’s turn and she said: “I’m scared and I’m angry. Your generation created this problem, you’d better fix it.” All eyes turned to him and he didn’t know what to say.

However he goes on to describe what he and his colleagues at Kleiner are doing to use their entrpreneurial skills to tackle the problem and to encourage others to do so:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128

Hero’s journey

I thought that “An Inconvenient Truth” combined the personal, the political and the scientific very well; they are, after all, aiming at the widest possible audience and people are interested in people. After having written that, I viewed the film again on DVD with the director’s commentary. He said that his father had made over a hundred documentaries and focused on how individuals and groups were affected by issues, because “people are interested in people.” His son agreed, hence the focus on Gore and not just the argument about climate. Gore’s biography has some dramatic episodes which explain his current dedication to this cause.

Guggenheim wisely structured the movie after the Joseph Campbell model, that is, it's a hero's journey. The director obviously grasped that in making An Inconvenient Truth, he was basically trying to capture a concert-type performance on film and says that the movies that influenced him most were Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978) and Jonathan Demme's Swimming to Cambodia (1987).

http://homevideo.about.com/od/dvdrevi3/fr/IncvntTruthDVDa_2.htm

CF.:

What elevates the book, and the movie, is the way that Gore’s personal story and the story of climate change move in carefully orchestrated counterpoint to articulate a vision of hope and a challenge for the future. If Gore indulges in fear-mongering, it is not the cheap partisan tactic that promises a war that will not end against an enemy that cannot be defined. Gore defines the enemy—and it is us. He promises a war, but it is a war against the darker aspects of human nature, the selfish, shortsighted worldview that drives us to plunder now at the expense of our neighbors and our children.

Jacob Foster is a DPhil student in mathematical physics at Balliol College, Oxford, and a PhD student in complexity science at the University of Calgary. His current interests range from the mathematical properties of complex networks to the geometry of the Big Bang.

http://www.oxonianreview.org/issues/6-1/6-1foster.htm

Updated and improved



The film was made very quickly - 6 months - whereas Guggenheim’s previous documentary had taken two years. The speed was partly due to the fact that Gore had done so much of the research and thinking about presentation already, and was constantly updating and improving it. CF.:

Churn, baby, churn

“One good piece of advice found in Guy Kawasaki's Rules for Revolutionaries is the idea of constantly striving for improvement, or churning. In Japanese we might refer to this idea as "kaizen" or an attitude of continually looking for ways to improve, even the smallest of details. It is interesting to see that Al Gore was constantly learning from each presentation and refining his message and his visuals along the way. This is a good lesson for all of us.

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/06/duarte_design_h.html

There’s another very comprehensive piece about the design in the “slide-show” and the film by a professional designer:

Good design is not about style

My favorite aspect of the movie’s presentation is the timelessness of its visuals. Gore’s slides use nothing but core graphic design fundamentals to do the job and become an important lesson on how the design aesthetic works.

There is a distinct lack of gradients, shading, fanciful fonts, cool transitions or any other spoils of modern presentation software. The motion graphics when used were judicious and focused. There was no specific template from one slide to the next. Thankfully, there was also a complete lack of bulleted lists.

The general design aesthetic clearly focused on the fundamentals.

http://www.designbyfire.com/?p=29

Freebies

In the DVD commentary Guggenheim makes it clear that he is very appreciative of Gore’s work and extremely impressed by Gore’s dedication and energy. I almost get the impression that he regrets the fact that he’s made this film relatively early in his career; he says that he doubts if he’ll ever make anything as important again. At the same time he’s clearly very glad that he has made it and feels privileged to have done so. It’s yet another heartening example that people want to devote themselves to things the can believe in and feel proud of - he also notes that many people and organizations gave them stuff - because they recognised it was an important project - ( cf Doerr of Kleiner above), cf. this offer from a designer commenting on the film (and it also makes the point about people responding to people):

“Sure, they can sell the DVD of the movie and people can show that, but it's more effective if people can interact with a real person in a live presentation setting. Come on Al, unleash this presentation to the masses and let others get out there and make the presentation too. (Note: I have just heard that Gore may be training 1000 people to make similar presentations. True? I'd offer my services for free to help train a group of scientists to do something similar to what Al Gore, a lay person, has done.)”

Here the team at Duarte Design talk about working with him, and they too were impressed:

Q: What was the process like?

A: "We had been working closely with him on his presentation for a while before the concept of a movie was proposed. He would call us with ideas and take us in a direction. Once we'd identified stories or images and had them animated, he would come in for a review. He was brilliant, charming and affirming. Our Account Manager and Designers put their own sweat into the piece because he (and the cause) were very contagious. He would call their cell and say "I heard about these bees in South America, check it out for me" or "I came up with a way to make this section more powerful, why don't you think about this or that." He was refining the file each time he presented it and calling us with feedback and we'd go for another round. As we researched facts and resourced images, people were very helpful when we told them who wanted the images and what it was for."

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/06/duarte_design_h.html

Guggenheim stresses that he wasn’t an environmentalist before this film and had his doubts about making such a film - a guy talking about a lot of charts and graphs ? But when he went to see Gore and watched his presentation he was hooked within ten minutes. Cf.:

“Al Gore's presentation is so good, so compelling, that they made a movie about it. A movie that is essentially an Al Gore presentation with solid, simple use of multimedia. What a concept -- who the heck thought *that* would be interesting? But it is.
‘A movie about Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation about global warming doesn’t sound all that exciting, but if you liked “March of the Penguins,” you’ll love “An Inconvenient Truth.’
-- Eleanor Clift, Newsweek “

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/05/al_gore_another.html

This is partly because Gore is a very good presenter and a number of people have remarked on how different he is from his “stiff” and “wooden” performance in the 2000 campaign, though a very different Gore, relaxed, smart, funny, self-deprecating, emerges in a Spike Jonze documentary made during the campaign. Cf.- well worth viewing:

(NB 5 mins in, his dedication to conservation climate issue is clear. He explains through what they’re doing - filming - the camera, he points out, is smaller, lighter and better than few years before - and he says we can do that with all technology - and make it less polluting)

“This is the man the media mocked as wooden and stiff? In part I and part II Gore addresses his reputation for being stiff on several occasions. The same guy we see hanging out with his family in this video is the same guy we see giving Keynote presentations about global warming to packed houses across the US. In both cases he seems different from the Al I saw on TV six years ago. Maybe he's just learned to take "the real Al" public. Maybe he's just learned to be himself in front of the public. Whatever the reasons for his transformation, he is today quite the speaker. And thanks to Duarte, Al Gore is a pretty savvy visual communicator as well.”

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/06/duarte_design_h.html

Audience of millions

While the director hadn’t given the issues a lot of thought, he says in the DVD commentary that now he thinks about them daily. He didn’t think there would be much of an audience for the film and that maybe some schools would use it. But the fact that by the time of recording the DVD 2 million people had seen the film - “blows my mind.” That number must have increased dramatically with the release of the DVD - in FNAC in Nice they had a lot of copies on the shelves. So Gore doesn’t have to do it personally city by city - though he will go on doing that - but now millions more can see him present his powerful case - and, with the DVD, get an update with reports which have come out since the film was completed and which confirm the case it makes in a disturbing way.

Cf.:

Before going to a multiplex theater to see An Inconvenient Truth (2006), I had not given much thought to global warming, and I certainly had no expectation that any politician could bring the topic alive for me. But I was stunned by Davis Guggenheim's film, a compelling version of Al Gore's presentation on the topic. The movie is intellectually and emotionally engaging, and it merits watching regardless of what you think about climate change or the former Vice President.

The DVD containing An Inconvenient Truth would be worth buying for the feature film alone, but it comes with bonus materials that enhanced my appreciation of the movie. The best of these is Gore's half-hour update on the information given in the film, and there's a good director's audio commentary as well.

http://homevideo.about.com/od/dvdrevi3/fr/IncvntTruthDVDa.htm

When “balance” lies

The case spelled out in the film and Gore’s “slide show” is quite clear, massively supported by the scientists working in this general area (despite the attempts of the Right to spread doubt) and it’s quite scandalous that the basic facts are still being questioned with the stupid collusion of the media.

IPCC's 2nd Working Group Report Shows Temperature Increases and Corresponding Global Warming Impacts Updated April 17, 2007

The IPCC has released the summary and North America Chapter from its Working Group II report.

http://www.net.org/warming/ipcc_briefing2.vtml (National Environment Trust)

One of the most telling things in the film was when Gore said that a study had been done of peer-reviewed scientific papers on the climate, using a sample of about 10% - about 920 papers. They found ZERO papers which questioned the basic facts of climate change and our role in it. When they compared this with a similar sample of media reports, they found that over 50% included dissenting views ! This is disgraceful distortion, partly due to the media’s corporate nature and connection with corporations involved with energy sources, but also, as Gore himself has complained, to do with the dogmatic adherence to the idea of “balance” - getting both sides of a story, even when the other side are flat-earthers. Cf. Ebert again:

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, has said, "Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I hope he takes his job seriously enough to see this film. I think he has a responsibility to do that.

Ibid.

Truth doesn’t always lie somewhere in the middle of competing views; some people’s views are warped by their vested interests, e.g. tobacco corporation executives - as the documentary record now shows. Included in the film was Upton Sinclair’s “It’s hard to get people to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it.” Some energy corporations have tried to undermine the case for climate change by spreading doubt and funding dissenting views, just as the tobacco corporations had tried to undermine the case for the link between smoking and cancer.

“Unfortunately both for Lorillard and their customers, the reality was a little different. The Micronite filters were 30% crocidolite, otherwise known as Brazilian blue asbestos, considered to be one of the most dangerous forms of asbestos. Implicated in both asbestosis and in mesothelioma, a particularly virulent form of lung cancer, asbestos is not exactly considered a health benefit for the lungs. Even worse, the filter made the cigarette hard to draw, resulting in the smoker using heavy suction, and drawing the smoke and filter particles deeply into the lungs.”

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=394

Cf.:

Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still "debatable" that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future, starting in the lives of those now living.

Roger Ebert

Real science

On the internet there are a lot of attacks on Gore and his film - fortunately there are also sites like www.realclimate.org:



Real Climate's assessment of AIT:

... it is interspersed with personal reflections from Gore that add a very nice human element. Gore in the classroom in 1968, listening to the great geochemist Roger Revelle describe the first few years of data on carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere. Gore on the family farm, talking about his father's tobacco business, and how he shut it down when his daughter (Al Gore's sister) got lung cancer. Gore on the campaign trail, and his disappointment at the Supreme Court decision. This isn't the "wooden" Gore of the 2000 campgain; he is clearly in his element here, talking about something he has cared deeply about for over 30 years.

How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299

After the favourable review of “An Inconvenient Truth” on realclimate.org there is a long set of responses - a course on climate change in itself. Some of them are very technical, but some are very illuminating even for the lay-person. One, for example, is a rebuttal of some of the main sceptics’ arguments and begins with a refutation of the claim that Gore has exaggerated the claims of his former professor, Roger Revelle:

Response 177 CM Says: 6 June 2006

Robert Balling, the global warming skeptic, has recently published an article, “Inconvenient Truths Indeed,” in which he outlines six scientific criticisms of Gore’s movie.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052406F

This article has been trumpeted by lay pundits and certain segments of the political blogosphere as a “full debunk of the misleading scientific arguments.” Below is my response to his points. Any additional comments, corrects, additions? Thanks -CM

...
Climate research exploded as a field of science thoughout the ’90s, and an extensive amount of research has been done in the last 16 years. Revelle died in 1991 and therefore cannot comment on his statement in light of much more significant and conclusive data. Balling’s first critique, a cherry-picked 16 year old quote, is not a substantive criticism of the current data presented by Gore in the movie. Many people would read this first criticism and discount the remaining article; however, because Balling’s first point is incredibly inane does not a priori disqualify the remaining five. So let’s continue.
…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299

There’s a fuller refutation further on from Justin Lancaster, a friend of Revelle - response 222

Also contained in the responses is a link to a BBC Panorama programme which showed that the disinformation campaign about climate change starts at the top in the US :

A US government whistleblower tells Panorama how scientific reports about global warming have been systematically changed and suppressed.

Some of America's leading climate scientists claim to Panorama that they have been censored and gagged by the administration.

One of them believes the publication of his report, which catalogues the unprecedented rate of ice melt in the Arctic, was delayed as Americans prepared to vote in 2004.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5005994.stm

Cf. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml

But, thanks to Gore, many dedicated scientists and, for example, all those local politicians in the US who have got the climate change message and oppose central government's absurd and dangerous denial, even Bush is having to admit the facts. Indeed - as the responses also show - even the Wall Street Journal is starting to admit this inconvenient truth:

Journalists are already beginning to grasp the difference. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley writes “Scientists Explain How They Attribute Climate-Change Data” (May 12, 2006; Page A15). Begley explains how climate scientists attribute increasing global average temperatures to increasing levels of greenhouse gases, rather than natural variations in climate:

...Again, changes in the sun's output since 1861 are too small to have warmed the world enough to weaken the Walker circulation that much, the scientists calculate. Adds Dr. Vecchi, "We looked at 2,000 years of data and asked whether internal variability could produce the weakening. There is less than a 1% chance it did."

The debate over what has caused the increase in severe hurricanes centers on whether they're just something Earth kicks up from time to time or are the result of seas warmed by anthropogenic climate change. In a study presented at an American Meteorological Society conference, scientists noted warming in every ocean basin where hurricanes form. Natural variations tend to hit one basin at a time.

WSJ

What is to be done?



Even often jaded and sceptical film critics have been shaken by this film, and Ebert was moved to include in his review a list of what you can do to help :

An Inconvenient Truth is a deeply troubling and extremely well made film that makes a complicated subject accessible to everybody. (The use of a Futurama cartoon as a teaching tool is an especially nice touch.) Shaken as I was after the credits rolled, I was also able to be just a little bit proud of myself-at least I hadn't driven to the movies that day.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=12305

What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and, yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize the fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off the lights.

Ebert

The climate of opinion is changing, even in America:

We asked the question: Who's a Leader? On November 3, we found out the answer: YOU ARE! You organized hundreds and hundreds of rallies in all 50 states and sent over 14,000 invitations to politicians to join you and offer their plan to stop global warming. And together, we united under 1Sky - the solutions that science and justice demand. We are the leaders we have been waiting for - and our movement has just begun.

http://stepitup2007.org/

From Austin and New Orleans:



This (rather long) article is is my contribution to the cause. I also recommend that you buy the DVD - watch it with friends and give copies to others - an xmas present which can help save the planet.



The trailer:



The film' site: http://www.climatecrisis.net

See also: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org

Le nouveau tramway

... est arrivé ! (Nov. 24th)

A surprisingly large number of people turned out for the free ride offered on the first day, unusually dull and wet for Nice.



It didn't seem like much of a liberation; although they were very frequent ...



... they were VERY crowded.



This one closed its doors and stayed at the stop for about two minutes - I was happy to wait for a quiet time one day next week.



Lots of the work has been finished, most pavements have been re-laid, but there is still stuff to finish:



The building on the right is supposed to become a new mediatheque - in 2008. I'll believe it when I see it.

Now there's now space to walk past pavement cafes in comfort - this one is not satisfied with being on the Cote D'Azur.



Now, having done our bit for cutting CO2, in January all the smokers (and there are so many of them in France) will have to keep THEIR pollution outside:





A band wanders back after the celebrations in the centre.


Avenue Jean Moulin is more like an avenue again, while Avenue Malausenna is mercifully free from cars.



Unfortunately lots of the traffic has been shunted into our little street which runs parallel. This is a quiet time - during rush-hour it's jammed with tooting cars, buses and lorries. Still, it's called Rue Diderot - one just has to be philosophical.

Greed is glamourous

A while ago I thought the streets I lived in were telling me something ( my “Haunted by Philosophers” post Haunted ), now it seems as if I’m getting messages from the media. Don’t worry - I think I’m OK. :-) Recently I bought the DVD of Oliver Stone’s "Wall Street". I still found it quite powerful. I thought I might write about it, linking it to the current crisis brought on by the “greed is good” credo. A few days later “Wall Street” was shown on French TV - surely it’s a sign! :-) Then the media were full of stories about Merrill Lynch’s problems, a current film review spoke about the dangers of glamourising villains - finally I’m writing it, before the gods punish me for ignoring their encouragement.



The script by Stone and Stanley Wieser is excellent and Gekko is given a lot of good lines. As one critic put it:

If it's possible to have dialogue that's too stunning for the film's own good, that's the case with "Wall Street."

Whenever Oliver Stone's drama about powermongering in the stock market starts to sink into a theme, out pounces Michael Douglas with another audacious line to sock you sideways.

As Gordon Gekko, a reptilian fiend with an Empire State Building-sized chip on his Versace shoulder pads, Douglas leads a hostile takeover of your attention in a role that won him a best-actor Oscar. So alive is his character, you half expect him to jump out of the film and bite you.

Part of what makes Douglas so great in the film is ...

"You're walking around blind without a cane, pal. A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place."

Dang, I lost my train of thought. That's how it works in the film. Whenever you think you know the score, Gekko spits out another dose of venom. He's more than a match for his co-lead, fledgling stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who seeks out Gekko's tutelage in order to make a better . . .

"Lunch is for wimps."

There he goes again.

http://www.azstarnet.com/accent/171697

Wall Street trailer:



The “greed is good” slogan was an improvement on Ivan Boesky’s “Greed is all right, by the way.”

Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937, in Detroit) was notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s.
…
By 1986, Ivan Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers. He was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders. These stock acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover.
…
The character of Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street is based at least in part on Boesky, especially regarding a famous speech he delivered on the positive aspects of greed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, where he said in part "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Boesky

Stone's DVD commentary - settling scores

One of the things I especially like about DVDs is the fact that you can get so many extras with them; documentaries on the making of the film, and the commentaries, especially by the director - often a little film school in itself. In the “Wall Street” commentary, Stone is at pains to explain that all they took from Boesky, in the “greed is good” speech was his “greed is all right”. All the rest was original.

Despite this some critics, who make it clear that they have listened to Stones’s subsequent DVD commentary (or so they say) repeat the allegation which irritates him, e.g.:

(Parts of Gekko's famous "Greed is good" speech are freely paraphrased from comments Boesky made in 1985.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2174672

Stone also points out that the speech is more complex than it’s often taken to be, and that he agrees with much of it.

He was objecting to criticism like this, by Rita Kempley:

Stone has an agenda that's all too easily read. And yet, it was his political ambiguity that proved the strength of "Platoon," a universality that let us all live through the Vietnam war.

But Stone puts us above it all in "Wall Street." Though we are meant to descend with the camera as it dives from the skyscrapers, we sit with Stone in judgment, castigating the one-dimensional money-grubbers ...

Washington Post

In fact there is ambivalence throughout the film; while Stone is clearly rather appalled by people like Gekko, he is also clearly fascinated by him, and it’s no surprise that this glamourous villain earned Michael Douglas a best actor Oscar. Stone is on the side of Martin Sheen, who plays the union leader and father to Bud, played by Martin Sheen’s real-life son, Charlie. But Gekko gets most of the best lines.



However Stone wasn’t too happy with the way Douglas was delivering them at the beginning of shooting and had a few hard words with him. He also made him do many retakes until he got angry, which clearly had the desired effect - Douglas got his Oscar. But, in becoming more dynamic and charismatic, Douglas/Gekko adds complexity and ambivalence to the general moral thrust of the film.

Bad is attractive

The glamour of bad guys is a constant problem for film-makers who are supposed to be condemning them, cf. this review of current release “American Gangster”:

Like many moviemakers (and watchers), Mr. Scott loves his bad guy too much. And by turning Lucas into a figure who seduces instead of repels, an object of directorial fetishism and a token of black resistance, however hollow, he encourages us to submit as well. Part of this is structural and economic: blood and nihilism are always better sells than misery and hopelessness.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/movies/02gang.html

Stone did not want it to be a simple condemnation of Wall Street, after all his father had worked on Wall Street for decades. But that was another era and Stone says that while there was some corruption, there were still some principles involved and it was more of a gentlemen’s club. The mentor to Bud, Lou Mannheim, played by Hal Holbrook, was based on Stone’s father. Stone recorded the commentary years after making the film (in 1987), and, understandably, he used the opportunity to answer some of his critics. Thus some had complained that the Holbrook character spoke in an unrealistically aphoristic way, e.g.:

“Stick to the fundamentals, that's how IBM and Hilton were built...good things sometimes take time.”

"The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Wall-Street.html

However, (apart from the fact that this is fiction not journalism) Stone maintains that this was the way his father used to speak. In fact his father used to write a newsletter about Wall Street which was translated into many languages. Sadly Stone’s father died while the film was being made and Stone dedicated it to his memory. Bud, like the character played by Charlie Sheen in Stone’s earlier film “Platoon”, is torn between two father figures, in this case his own (in the film and real life) and Gekko.

The Boiler Room

Ironically Gekko has become a hero for young Wall Street traders as depicted in the more recent film “The Boiler Room”:

"Greed is good... greed works," Gekko intones famously in Wall Street, and it was meant to be a shocking pronouncement at the time. That's the attitude that feels old-fashioned now. That greed is good is a given today, when suburban ladies' investment clubs are pulling down 20 percent returns and dotcom IPOs make twenty-somethings millionaires overnight, and heroes for it. Even Boiler Room's hero starts with that assumption, and isn't punished for it. Gekko himself feels like a charming antique compared to Boiler Room's snakes. Though J.T. Marlin's brokers idolize Gekko - in one scene, they watch Wall Street and recite Gekko's dialogue like a prayer - they haven't a clue how to emulate his sense of style.

... Boiler Room may show us the fruits of what the likes of Gekko wrought, but Bud, back there in the 80s, still has a chance to escape.

... Greed, Wall Street wants us to know in the end, isn't good. Boiler Room, on the other hand, accepts the reality of greed with resignation and assigns it a neutral value - it's what we do with our sense of greed that makes it good or bad.

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2000/02/boiler_room_and_wall_street_re.html

“Boiler Room” trailer:



Again this over-simplifies “Wall Street” somewhat, as Stone wouldn’t really disagree with that conclusion.

Even more recently British City traders have been the subject of a study by a young artist and again there are very conscious echoes of “Wall Street”:

The Hogarth of hedge funds offers a glimpse into a hidden world

Artist spends six months documenting the mysterious lives of the wizards of finance

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent, Saturday November 3, 2007, The Guardian

… Adam Dant was commissioned, appropriately enough, by Spear's Wealth Management Survey (a quarterly magazine aimed at that special breed of humans known as high-net-worths) to document the professional lives of the mysterious creatures who, behind closed doors in Mayfair and St James's, engage in abstruse activities such as short-selling and leverage.

... He saw the hedgies disport themselves at Annabel's nightclub and private gambling establishments such as Crockford's in Curzon Street and the nearby Aspinall's, founded by John Aspinall, perhaps most famous as a chum of Lord Lucan. He saw them quaff cocktails at Harry's Bar on Mount Street, and buy up art at Sotheby's, Christie's and the best contemporary art galleries.

... The walls are adorned with samurai swords and a shark's head. "It's always very aggressive, male stuff," said Dant. "And they really do regard the Art of War as their bible." He is referring to the 2,500-year-old Chinese manual on military strategy by Sun Tzu. [Quoted in “Wall Street”]
…
Over the fire is a bust of Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, from the 1987 film Wall Street.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2204641,00.html

Cf.:

… one of the unexpected side effects of Wall Street: the cult of personality attached to Gordon Gekko. Douglas says he's still stunned by the number of people who tell him that his Oscar-winning role was the reason they went to work on Wall Street. "It's so depressing and sad," Douglas says.

... "I recall looking at that film and saying, 'That's what I want to be,' " recounts the late hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias in one of the Wall Street DVD featurettes. Somehow, an oleaginous villain meant to embody the worst excesses of his era became a folk hero and highly persuasive career counselor.

http://www.slate.com/id/2174672/pagenum/2/

Greed has consequences

But now we are seeing once again the results of the “greed is good” ideology, with no redeeming principles to channel it and when there is inadequate regulation, and they are quite frightening:

On the way home, I sat with a very engaging and smart retired Austrian arts dealer who told me he believes that the economic system is on the edge of collapse but says he wonders why Americans are in denial about these problems. He thinks there is a lag between the news reports we are reading now and when most Americans will be inpacted by the crisis. He says the most Americans will face the reality in 2008 - which, of course, just happens to be an election year.

... The Financial Times published in London, went further in editorial titled "CREDIT SQUEEZE-THE DISASTER MOVIE."
...
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest broker, on Tuesday reported its first loss in about six years, saying bad judgment and weak risk management strategies forced it to write down almost $8 billion of mortgage and related assets, well above its own previous estimate.

Merrill shares fell almost 8% to a near two-year low of $62" . Note: Merrill did another write down a week later of $4.5 billion. The Financial Times commented: "The sense that valuation is still matter of 'pick a number and divide by the chief trader's golf handicap' seems to be pervasive." Can you believe this? Even Hollywood couldn't make up something as flip as that.

News Dissector

But even when they screw up, the greedy make obscene amounts:

Mr. O’Neal [CEO of Merrill Lynch] would be entitled to a payout worth more than $274 million if he left after a deal, according to a pay analysis by James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm, using yesterday’s closing price.
… Just last year, the board paid Mr. O’Neal $48 million, making him one of Wall Street’s highest paid chief executives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/business/27merrill.html

But then it’s not hard to achieve that if you choose the people who decide how much you get:

Like the Morgan Stanley board, Mr. O’Neal’s board is largely handpicked. He has recruited people like John D. Finnegan, the chief executive of Chubb and a friend for more than 20 years. The two men worked together in the General Motors treasury department. Mr. O’Neal is also close to another director, Alberto Cribiore, a private equity executive who runs his own firm, Brera Capital.

Ibid.

As Stone emphasised, there was much he agreed with in Gekko’s “Greed is good” speech, e.g. Gekko condemned this kind of rapacious cronyism:

You own Teldar Paper, the stockholders, and you are being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats with their steak lunches, golf and hunting trips, corporate jets, and golden parachutes! Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over $200,000 a year. I spent two months analyzing what these guys did and I still can't figure it out.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Wall-Street.html

Gekko also pointed out the general economic problems facing the US - which have got worse since the 80s and after Bush’s disastrous regime:

...well ladies and gentlemen, we're not here to indulge in fantasies, but in political and economic reality. America has become a second rate power. Our trade deficit and fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions.

Ibid

Update: "Money Never Sleeps"

There are plans to do an update, but without Stone as director:

… Douglas's Gekko is the brand in his own right - and one that is likely to sell more these days with business enjoying a wider audience than 20 years ago. Schiff says: "The first film was a moderate hit at the time [it took about $60m at the box office and cost $16m], but Gekko became a household name."

Pressman [producer of “Wall Street”] denies that "Money Never Sleeps" [another of Gekko's lines] is an attempt to cash in, but the marketing potential is impossible to ignore. "It will be fun to do a film about this and it is an area certainly worth exploring," he says.

Pressman and Schiff talk convincingly about their determination to maintain the standards of the original and not just churn out an imitation to clean up at the box office, probably in 2009.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/08/28/cngekko128.xml

But with the current dire warnings about the global economy, perhaps this will not be the time to bring out another film glorifying greed.

Seven years ago, the bursting of the dot-com bubble triggered a collapse in business capital spending that took the US and global economy into a mild recession. This time, post-bubble adjustments seem likely to hit US consumption, which at 72% of GDP, is more than five times the share the capital spending sector was seven years ago. This is a much bigger problem - one that could have grave consequences for the US and the rest of the world.

http://www.fxstreet.com/futures/market-review/outside-the-box/2007-10-23.html

As the hero of another recent film would say: "Good night, and good luck."