Glamorizing Crime – The Wolf of Wall Street misses the mark!

A movie critic I’m not, but I do know a thing or two about white collar crime (something I’m not proud of, but facts are facts) and the new movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” fails on so many fronts.  Don’t get me wrong, is the movie depiction a fairly accurate portrayal of the real life Jordan Belfort’s actions?  Yes!  So then why would I say that this movie misses the mark?  Simple – it glamorizes illegal and unethical actions for financial gain.  To me the question is what is the redeeming value that one comes away with after seeing the flick?  For me the answer was nothing!

How is it that a smart person chooses to make unethical and illegal choices?  Simple – the combination of three things: (1) Need; (2) Opportunity and (3) Rationalization.

So let’s combine those with the story spun about the real “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort.  What did he need?  To begin with Belfort wanted to be wealthy and thought that he could use his skills in selling on Wall Street to accomplish that – Belfort’s first NEED.  According to the story Belfort lost his job after a collapse of a firm he worked for on Wall Street.  So now having a taste of success his NEED is further reinforced!   Most of the time if you take away something that someone had, they will strive to get it back and more.  The NEED tipping point seemed to be his need to provide for himself and his first wife.

Enter OPPORTUNITY.  As the story is told his wife shows him an ad for a stockbroker.  Replying he finds the “brokerage firm” is selling penny stocks (stocks with little to no value) that have incredibly high commissions.  Combine Belfort’s NEED, with his skill in selling (crafting a story that someone would buy – because he’s helping to fill their need “greed”) and this new OPPORTUNITY…you have the foundation for success (by his definition – and disaster by mine).  The only thing left is the cement needed to solidify the unethical and illegal actions that eventually follow.

RATIONALIZATION is the cement.  Here’s the facts.  If I can rationalize my behavior then I can sleep at night.  So let me take a stab at how Belfort might have RATIONALIZED his behavior. (1) Selling penny stocks is not illegal.  (2) If I don’t sell them someone else will cause the buyers will buy – so why not me?  (3) Some people make off like bandits with the gains on these stocks, so all I am doing is filling a need in the market.  (4) Since I was good selling the big stocks, then why not sell stocks that create for me and others a higher commission?

NEED, OPPORTUNITY cemented with a good dose of RATIONALIZATION and you have the perfect storm for unethical and illegal behavior.  The poster child is Jordan Belfort or Chuck Gallagher or any other white collar criminal that has followed a similar path to prison.

WHY DOES THE WOLF OF WALL STREET MISS THE MARK?

To me the question is simple – The Wolf of Wall Street glamorizes crime.  You see more naked women in a movie than I could count.  Drugs are glamorized as normal fare in the business world (by the way they are not).  Language…well this movie has now claimed the title for most use of the “F” bomb.  But that isn’t the issue.  Perhaps in Belfort’s life all of that was true including opulence and greed.  But what about the truth behind the glamor? On December 29, 2013, Christina McDowell wrote the following as an open letter in the LA Times (the full letter can be found here):

Let me introduce myself. My name is Christina McDowell, formerly Christina Prousalis. I am the daughter of Tom Prousalis, a man the Washington Post described as “just some guy on trial for penny-stock fraud.” (I had to change my name after my father stole my identity and then threatened to steal it again, but I’ll get to that part later.) I was 18 and a freshman in college when my father and his attorneys forced me to attend his trial at New York City’s federal courthouse so that he “looked good” for the jury — the consummate family man.

And you, Jordan Belfort, Wall Street’s self-described Wolf: You remember my father, right? You were chosen to be the government’s star witness in testifying against him. You had pleaded guilty to money laundering and securities fraud (it was the least you could do) and become a government witness in two dozen cases involving your former business associate, but my father’s attorneys blocked your testimony because had you testified it would have revealed more than a half-dozen other corrupt stock offerings too. And, well, that would have been a disaster. It would have just been too many liars, and too many schemes for the jurors, attorneys or the judge to follow.

But the record shows you and my father were in cahoots together with MVSI Inc. of Vienna, e-Net Inc. of Germantown, Md., Octagon Corp. of Arlington, Va., and Czech Industries Inc. of Washington, D.C., and so on — a list of seemingly innocuous, legitimate companies that stretches on. I’ll spare you. Nobody cares. None of these companies actually existed, yet all of them were taken public by the one and only Wolf of Wall Street and his firm Stratton Oakmont Inc in order to defraud unwitting investors and enrich yourselves.

The day my father had to surrender to prison, I drove him. My mother had locked herself in the bathroom crying and throwing up, becoming nothing short of a more beautiful version of Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. Ironically enough, Marty, she looks like a cross between Sharon Stone and Michelle Pfeiffer. Totally your leading ingénue type. Anyhow, after my father successfully laundered money in my name, hiding what was left of our assets from the government in a Wells Fargo bank account, I arrived home to discover multiple phone calls from creditors and attorneys threatening to sue me. He’d left me in nearly $100,000 worth of debt. He left and never told me.

After all of that liquidated money was gone from the Wells Fargo bank account, things got pretty bad. My younger sister ran away at 17. My older sister struggled to finish school in Texas. I couch-surfed for two years, sometimes dressing out of my car and stealing pieces of salami out of my boyfriends’ refrigerators in the middle of the night, because I was so hungry and so ashamed that I couldn’t feed myself. Tips at the restaurant weren’t cutting it. It’s a pretty confusing experience to go from flying private with Dad to an evening where he’s begging you for a piece of your paycheck so he can buy food for dinner.

But, here’s the real kicker —

I believed him.

I believed everything my father told me. I believed it was the government’s fault he was going to prison and leaving his little princess, I believed it was your fault, Jordan Belfort. I believed that by taking out all those credit cards in my name, my father was attempting to save me. I believed him when he got out, and when he told me everything would be OK. I believed him until he tried to do the same thing all over again — until I was at risk of being arrested myself (and I’m saving that story for the memoir).

So here’s the deal. You people are dangerous. Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers’ fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees.

BINGO!

Her comments are so on point.  “Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts are schemes are entertaining…”  That’s the issue.  This film has no redeeming value other than glamorizing a path of destruction that left many in the wake of distrust and greed.  What about the families destroyed in the path to prison? What about the people who trusted their investments to this charade?  What about restitution?  What about being the ring leader only to turn Judas on those who trusted you – Jordan?  I don’t know, but to me none of this is entertaining – rather it is sad!

Christina goes on to say:

Did you think about the cultural message you’d be sending when you decided to make this film? You have successfully aligned yourself with an accomplished criminal, a guy who still hasn’t made full restitution to his victims, exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior. And don’t even get me started on the incomprehensible way in which your film degrades women, the misogynistic, ass-backwards message you endorse to younger generations of men.

But hey, listen boys, I get it. I was conned, too. By. My. Own. Dad! I drove a white Range Rover in high school, snorted half of Colombia, and got any guy I ever wanted because my father would take them flying in his King Air.

And then I unraveled the truth. The truth about my father and his behavior: that behind all of it was really just insidious soul-sucking shame masked by addiction, which we love to call ambition, which is really just greed. Greed and the desire for fame (exactly what you’ve successfully given self-appointed motivational speaker/financial guru Jordan Belfort, whose business opportunities will surely multiply thanks to this film).

I feel her pain…

BUT AREN’T YOU THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK?

Perhaps by some people’s standards anyone who has been convicted is always a crook.  But I know different.  The Wolf of Wall Street misses the mark for me is the depiction of what happened, but rather what happened following.

Belfort’s victims, my father’s victims, don’t have a chance at keeping up with the Joneses. They’re left destitute, having lost their life savings at the age of 80. They can’t pay their medical bills or help send their children off to college because of characters like the ones glorified in Terry Winters’ screenplay.

Wonder what would have happened if the story were told from the perspective of the children, the families and those victimized by Belfort and his gang?  Wonder if a tale of truth showing the carnage that follows such a scam might have more redeeming value?  Wonder if anything has changed, since pocketing revenue at the expense of those victimized by Belfort’s crimes in the name of entertainment isn’t any different than what Belfort did to begin with.  Need (Oscars, Big Actors and Ticket Sales), Opportunity (a story just waiting to be told) and Rationalization (someone’s gonna tell it so why not me) seems to have once again come together to create the perfect storm…yet another film Glamorizing Crime.

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