Characterization
Co-written by Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser, Gekko is said to be based loosely on several real-life financiers, including Stone's own father Louis Stone, [6] Wall Street broker Owen Morrisey, an old friend of Stone's [7] who was involved in a $20 million insider trading scandal in 1985, investment banker Dennis Levine, arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, [8] corporate raider Carl Icahn, investor and art collector Asher Edelman, [9] agent Michael Ovitz, and Stone himself. [10] For example, Gekko's line "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" was adapted from a remark by Boesky, who himself was later convicted on insider trading charges. [11] [12] Delivering the 1986 commencement address to the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, Boesky said, "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." [13]
Edward R. Pressman, producer of both films, said, "Originally, there was no one individual who Gekko was modeled on", but that "Gekko was partly Milken", the "Junk Bond King" of the 1980s. [14] According to Weiser, Gekko's style of speaking was inspired by Stone: "When I was writing some of the dialogue [...] I would listen to Oliver on the phone and sometimes he talks very rapid-fire, the way Gordon Gekko does", he said. [15]
Cultural impact
Gekko has become a symbol in popular culture for unrestrained greed (with the signature line, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good"), often in fields outside corporate finance. [16] [17] [18]
In the movie Boiler Room , a group of stock brokers (played by Vin Diesel, Nicky Katt, and Ben Affleck) gather at a friend's house and watch Wall Street. The characters begin to perfectly quote Gekko's phone conversation when he first is introduced to Bud.
In 2003, the American Film Institute named Gordon Gekko No. 24 on its Top 50 movie villains of all time. [5]
On September 25, 2008, Michael Douglas, acting as a UN ambassador for peace, was at the 2008 session of the United Nations General Assembly. Reporters sought to ask him off-topic questions about Gekko. He was asked whether he "bore some responsibility for the behavior of the greed merchants who had brought the world to its knees". Trying to return to topic, Douglas suggested that "the same level of passion Wall Street investors showed should also apply to getting rid of nuclear weapons." [19] Douglas was also asked to compare nuclear Armageddon with the "financial Armageddon on Wall Street". After one reporter inquired, "Are you saying, Gordon, that greed is not good?" Douglas stated, "I'm not saying that. And my name is not Gordon. It's a character I played 20 years ago." [19] [20] [21]
On October 8, 2008, the character was referenced by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his speech, "The Children of Gordon Gekko" concerning the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Rudd stated "It is perhaps time now to admit that we did not learn the full lessons of the greed-is-good ideology. And today we are still cleaning up the mess of the 21st-century children of Gordon Gekko." [22]
In the October 30, 2008, episode of American comedy series The Office, Ryan Howard's Halloween costume is Gordon Gekko.
On July 28, 2009, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone cited Gekko's "Greed is good" slogan in a speech to the Italian Senate, saying that the free market had been replaced by a greed market, and also blamed such a mentality for the 2007–2008 financial crisis. [23]
The FBI has used Michael Douglas' Gekko for an anti-insider trading campaign. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
In 2013, psychiatrists Samuel Leistedt and Paul Linkowski published a study of the portrayal of psychopaths in film, and cited the Gekko character as a realistic portrayal of the successful, "corporate psychopath": "In terms of a 'successful psychopath'", they write, "Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987) is probably one of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date." [29]
The character Gordon Gekko is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of gecko, Cyrtodactylus gordongekkoi . [30]
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Dennis B. Levine is a corporate consultant and former investment banker. He was a managing director at the investment banking firm Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980s. Levine was one of the first of several high-profile insider trading defendants in the Wall Street insider trading investigations of the mid-1980s. As a result of the investigation by and subsequent proceedings, Levine pleaded guilty.
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Stanley Weiser is an American screenwriter.
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"Greed is good" is a catchphrase based on Gordon Gekko's quote "greed, for lack of a better word, is good" from the 1987 film Wall Street.
