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] However, it has been reported that Gekko's infamous "greed is good" speech was largely inspired by Boesky, who famously once claimed "greed is healthy." [16]
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. [17] [18] [19]
When creating the character for Gekko, Weiser wrote that " I formed an amalgam of disgraced arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, corporate raider Carl Icahn, and his lesser-known art-collecting compatriot Asher Edelman. Add a dash of Michael Ovitz and a heaping portion of, yes, my good friend and esteemed colleague Stone (who came up with the character’s name) -- and there you have the rough draft of ‘Gekko the Great.’ Gekko’s dialogue actually was inspired by Stone’s own rants." After the film's original character Gordon Gekko began being perceived as a hero instead of a villain, for his line "Greed is good," in 2008, Weiser wrote in op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled "Repeat After Me: Greed is Not Good." He wrote that when he wrote the screenplay, "I never could have imagined that this persona and his battle cry would become part of the public consciousness, and that the core message of “Wall Street” -- remember, he goes to jail in the end -- would be so misunderstood by so many." [20]
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." [21] 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." [21] [22] [23]
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." [24]
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. [25]
The FBI has used Michael Douglas' Gekko for an anti-insider trading campaign. [26] [27] [28] [29] [30]
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." [31]
The character Gordon Gekko is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of gecko, Cyrtodactylus gordongekkoi . [32]
Michael Robert Milken is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds, and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. With a net worth of US$6 billion as of 2022, he is among the richest people in the world.
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Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award.
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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.
Alan J. Flusser is an American author and designer of men's clothing. He owns and operates Alan Flusser Custom in New York City.
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Kidder, Peabody & Co. was an American securities firm, established in Massachusetts in 1865. The firm's operations included investment banking, brokerage, and trading.
Stanley Weiser is an American screenwriter.
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The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders, by Wall Street Journal writer Connie Bruck, largely recounts the rise of Michael Milken, his firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, and the leveraged buyout boom they helped to fuel in the 1980s.
James Tomilson "Tom" Hill III is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, the former president and CEO of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), Blackstone Group's hedge funds business.
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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.
