Wall Street September 23, 2010, 5:00PM EST

How Oliver Stone Got the Greed Right

A cadre of trading floor veterans helped Oliver Stone capture the details and nail the nuances in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

By Joe Pompeo

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Standing on the Manhattan set of his latest film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Oliver Stone was surrounded by a fictitious who's who of banking. His actors were sitting at a wooden conference table in a dark-paneled room intended to resemble the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The scene was an interpretation of the late-night negotiations that took place on Mar. 14, 2008, as Bear Stearns teetered on the brink of collapse. Frank Langella was in character as Louis Zabel, the head of proprietary trading firm Keller Zabel Investments. In plot time, it was about 1:30 a.m. on the worst night of Zabel's life. His firm's stock had plummeted amid rumors of its multibillion-dollar debt; Zabel was trying to persuade the surrounding bank presidents and government officials to bail him out, but there were few takers. Then Stone yelled out, "Where's the china?"

According to Vincent Farrell, a veteran Wall Street investor and one of Stone's consultants on the film, the men assembled that night would have eaten steaks from the Palm restaurant, just like JPMorgan Chase (JPM) executives had at a similar meeting. Hours after eating, the remains would have been stacked up in the background. However, Farrell noted, the New York Fed doesn't have paper plates or Styrofoam. It uses fine china. That was the problem—there wasn't any. Stone was miffed. "So they went out and bought it," Farrell recalls. "It took a couple hours, but they sent five or six guys out and they came back with boxes of this stuff."

The china didn't end up being visible in the film, but that it could have been underscores Stone's obsession with nailing even the minutest details of the financial industry. For the sequel to his 1987 film Wall Street, he recruited dozens of consultants to help. "We went to all levels, anyone who would speak to us," Stone says. "We must have talked to 25 or 35" Wall Street experts. In the spring of 2009, Stone presented an early idea of the movie to short-seller James Chanos, the president of Kynikos Associates. According to Chanos, the version revolved around a short-seller who was bumping off CEOs. Chanos says he pressed Stone to abandon the plot and instead tie the script to the financial collapse of 2008. "Wall Street covered the first era of greed and criminality in trading," Chanos says. He told the director: "We just had the financial crime of the century, and you're writing about short-sellers trying to murder CEOs?" Stone doesn't recall this lethal subplot but confirms that the script originally focused on a short-seller. The final product, out Sept. 24, centers on the wreckage of 2008.

The director also spoke to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who led investigations into investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS) and insurer American International Group (AIG) while Attorney General; Michael Novogratz, a director at Fortress Investment Group; and economist-superstar Nouriel Roubini. Stone even picked the brain of Donald Trump—because, he says, "the way he thinks and talks, the optimism, the implied arrogance—all these things come into play." Stars Shia LaBeouf and Josh Brolin were sent to observe various Manhattan trading firms. Michael Douglas, reprising his role of Gordon Gekko, sat down with Samuel D. Waksal, who served jail time after offering Martha Stewart tips about the stock of his company, ImClone Systems.

Stone, however, was equally concerned with the finer points. The traders in Money Never Sleeps are outfitted in Armani and Ralph Lauren suits with Etro ties. They're often shown guzzling caffeinated drinks like 5-Hour Energy as they stare into endless rows of terminal screens. The phrase "You vindictive prick!" was changed in the script to "You vindictive bastard!" after one adviser noted a bank executive's language would be accordingly softened in the presence of high-ranking government officials.