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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Wall Street with Joe Saul-Sehy: Deep Thoughts About Mentorship, the Culture of Money, and Just How Many Yachts You Can Water Ski Behind
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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
On today's episode, the Guy sisters welcome Emily's friend and co-author Joe Saul-Sehy, co-host of the wildly popular Stacking Benjamins podcast, to talk about the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street. Even though it has had an enormous impact on the culture of finance (and Emily has written in the realm of finance for 15 years), neither of the Guy girls had seen the film, which Joe first watched in the theater as a teenager.
While Oliver Stone's storytelling offers pointed social commentary about the lack of morality and ethics on Wall Street, his masterful directing of Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, and Daryl Hannah also makes the culture of insider trading seem not only understandable but even glamorous to the audience. Sheen's Bud Fox follows the hero's journey as he learns that the high-flying life of immoral wealth he thinks he wants is nothing more than a fantasy--and it's not worth selling his soul to be accepted into Gordon Gekko's culture of greed.
Slick back your hair, grab those red suspenders, and take a listen!
Find Joe at stackingbenjamins.com
Check out the book Joe and Emily wrote! Stacked: Your Super-Serious Guide to Modern Money Management
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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It’s free, but please register at guygirlsmedia.com/happyhour, so we can share the zoom info with you! (Also, who doesn’t like knowing who’s coming to their party?)
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.
We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com
We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.
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I remember during the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, every year or two you'd have a Wall Streeter that's a big deal going away. It's been a long time since that's happened. Which I find disturbing because as I watch the film, I'm fairly certain this stuff is still going on. Oh sure.
SPEAKER_03:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just up culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
SPEAKER_02:I'm Emily Guy Birkin, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'm delighted to welcome my dear friend Joe Saul Sehai to discuss his deep thoughts about the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street with my sister, Tracy Guy Decker, and with you. Let's dive in. So I am so excited to have my friend Joe here. Joe is my co-author on my most recent book, Stacked, Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management, where Joe was kind enough to let my humor off the leash because I usually have to uh they usually edit it out if I ever make a joke. And he's like, no, no, no, lean into it, Em, which was awesome. And the entire process of writing was about my goal was to make Joe laugh. So if you're not familiar with Joe, he is the co-host of Stacking Benjamins, which is one of the most listened to podcasts in the personal finance sphere. Seriously, if you haven't listened to Stacking Benjamins, you really ought to. Kip Ligner's Personal Finance has called the show the best personal finance podcast, and Fast Company has described it as striking a great balance between fun and functional. And Joe lives in Texarkana with his spouse Cheryl and Kat named Cooper. And he records shows in his mom's basement because that's where podcasters do their work. So, Joe, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_01:I was disappointed that neither of you are in your mom's basement.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, come on. Yeah, unfortunately, that's just not where we we record from. We'll have to do better.
SPEAKER_03:Although when mom hears this episode, she's gonna say, Yeah, why aren't you in my basement?
SPEAKER_02:That is a good point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You should come on over. And you know what's funny, Emily? Thank you for the kind words. And back at you. I don't know if you know this, Tracy, but when I was writing my half of the book, I had an audience of one. There was one person I was writing for, and it was Emily.
SPEAKER_03:Well, as someone who's red stacked, I have to say, whatever you did, it worked. So thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. Just entertaining ourselves, like we're going to do for the next hour. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_02:Let's do it.
SPEAKER_03:So I guess we should start with what is in each of the guy girls' heads about this movie Wall Street, which for me, I don't know that if I I've ever seen it. So whatever's in my head is just sort of the osmosis that it's about like rich and ruthless people. That's about all I've got. Rich and ruthless, and like power suits with big shoulders.
SPEAKER_01:Have have you, Emily? You've read it or read it. You've you watched it. I have.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, what's in your head? I've actually never seen it. This is one of those where like you haven't seen it either. I know, I know. So this is so I'm explaining it to both of you.
SPEAKER_01:I saw it again yesterday for maybe the 110th time. It's a number.
SPEAKER_02:You are a financial expert, so you know numbers. That's right. So it's another one.
SPEAKER_01:No, this is one of you don't even have to look it up.
SPEAKER_02:This is one of those films where I have Gordon Gecko in my head. He's a a financial figure that I reference even though I've never actually seen the movie. Even though you've never seen it, it's like greed in a word is good, is in my head. And like the idea of Michael Douglas with the slick back hair and the red suspenders like means something. And I make reference to it in my writing sometimes, even though I've never actually seen the movie.
SPEAKER_03:So that's really interesting. So it's just because it's a cultural touchstone that I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:It has become, I mean, any movie that's become that ubiquitous in society, even for people that haven't seen it, it really, and it's funny how well this movie held up when I watched it again yesterday for this episode. It held up really, really well. And in some ways, because it's so disappointing that we haven't changed.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Well, before we get there, tell us, Joe, what's at stake for you? Why is this the one that when we invited you to come on the podcast? You were like, I'm gonna talk about Wall Street. Why is this the one? What's it what's in it for you?
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is the this is you know the stupid shit in my head because of the fact that I wanted to go back myself and see if this film, which really for some weird reason, I mean, at the end of this movie, and uh I don't think I need to say spoiler alert, because a movie that's this old, if you haven't seen it, I think it's on you. Yeah, it's on us. But at the end of the film, uh everybody goes to jail. Like they all go to jail. And yet I watch this film and I'm like, I want to get into finance. I think I look good in orange. I think it'll be great.
SPEAKER_03:So there's definitely something at stake here.
SPEAKER_01:I was so fascinated, and it's funny watching it no longer like I did the first time in my I was maybe 17 when I saw this movie the first time, and it hit this raw, masculine piece of me, right? There's this masculinity movie that Oliver Stone has in a lot of his films, and even yesterday at 57, like beating my chest. And but I wondered if that would continue. And I also wondered this idea of greed is good, which you referenced earlier, Tracy, which comes from this very famous true speech that a guy named Ivan Bosky made that they that Oliver Stone decided to attribute to Gordon Gecko instead, because he's very much this insider trading guy that Ivan Bosky was in real life, if how far away we are from that now. And also the cultural and the gender roles. I also wanted to know because Wall Street in the 1980s, such a sexist culture. I mean, part of the chest beating was women is objects. And I wanted to go back and see if in this movie if they depicted that, because at the time it was just so much of what you expected. Like I didn't know if Oliver Stone was really calling it out on purpose or not. So that's what was at stake for me.
SPEAKER_03:Great, cool. Well, I haven't seen it. Catch me up. What happens in this movie?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:What's the plot?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the movie begins. I love the way the movie begins. Charlie Sheen, who plays the part of Bud Fox, who's this young guy just starting off on Wall Street. He is on a very crowded street. Like the scene opens and it shows all the crowds of New York. And then he goes into one of these big, huge office buildings that looks exactly like the office building next to it, looks exactly like the one next to that. And he's herded onto an elevator. In fact, you can see in that first scene people shoving, and they make a big deal about everybody shoving into the elevator and people getting upset that they're being shoved into the elevator. They've crammed as many people as possible. Then they open up the doors into this office that at the front looks really professional. But once you get past the secretary's desk, which Charlie Sheen takes a second, Bud Fox takes a second to flirt with the secretary who flirts back. And then they go around the corner and this room is packed with traders, just tons and tons of people. And you really get this feeling of Oliver Stone looking at us like we're ants climbing over each other, right? And this idea that in these big buildings they're full of tons and tons of people who are just pushing and shoving to try to get to the top. And Bud Fox is another one of these ants. And very early on, you see that he wants to do what he calls Bag the Elephant, which is he wants to work with this guy, Gordon Gecko. So every day he places a call to Gordon Gecko's office, and every day Gordon Gecko's assistant tells him, Stop calling us. We're not interested. Please, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so that's the beginning, this idea that we are all so it starts off with this ladder climbing trying to get ahead of other people, feeling that sadly, I feel is a lot of people today. It's a ton of people today.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Keep going. What happens? What happens?
SPEAKER_01:All right. So so in the film, then he finally, he on the second day, he sees on his little computer that it's Gordon Gecko's birthday. So he gets Gordon Gecko's favorite cigars, and he takes the cigars to Gordon Gecko's office and he presents it with the cigars. Gordon Gecko actually finally sees him. There's a very iconic, memorable scene where once Bud Fox finds out that Gordon Gecko's going to see him, the secretary comes to get him and says, You have five minutes. And Bud looks in the mirror, adjusts his tie, and he says, Life comes down to a few moments. This is one of them. And it's an incredibly, incredibly memorable line that you know what? Life does come down to a few moments. You can think about the few little things. He goes into Gordon Gecko's office, and Gordon, as Bud Fox says later, when he gets back to the office, his guy sitting next to him in the office says, Well, did he see you? And he goes, He didn't just see me, he saw right through me. Because it's very dismissive. The bad news is that halfway through that meeting, Bud Fox realizes that to get Gordon Gecko's attention, he's going to have to sell his soul. And now we're starting to set up this idea of good versus evil. And the fact that he takes a couple good stock picks to Gordon, and Gordon goes, Yeah, no, I don't think so. First one he calls a dog. Second one he says it's a dog, but it has different fleas. Nope. And then Charlie Sheen in an earlier scene has been with his dad, which is funny. His dad works in maintenance at this airline called Blue Star Airlines. And his dad is played by none other than his real dad, Martin Sheen.
SPEAKER_03:Martin Sheen's in it as Charlie Sheen's dad. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so earlier he'd been borrowing money from his dad in just a very quick scene to show Charlie struggling to make ends meet. It also has shown Charlie on the phone, cold calling people, and really just this nightmare of a life that he's living. But his dad said something to him that was insider trading that this airline was going to have a major event with the FAA that was going to make an announcement the next day and nobody knew it. And so you get this great view Oliver Stone shows Charlie Sheen's face and the fact that he knows he's lost Gordon Gecko's attention. He's got one more shot and he doesn't want to miss it. And he said, I think you should look at Blue Star Airlines. And Gordon Gecko goes, Oh, airlines, forget it. Nothing. He goes, Well, what you don't know is the FAA is about to rule tomorrow and it's going to be in Blue Star Airlines' favor. And Gordon Gecko says, How do you know this? And he goes, I have a, I just do. I just know it. And you can see the look on his face that he's disgusted with himself. But he's doing it because he wants to climb the ladder, because he thinks Gordon Gecko is this person that can take him out of that cramped elevator and change his life. And so he walks out of the office. Gordon says he'll consider it. The guy next to him says, Yeah, did he see you? He saw right through me. Three minutes later in the movie, there's a phone call, Buddy pickup line two. Buddy at his desk with all the other people around picks up the phone and says, Yeah, this is Bud Fox. And then it hands to Michael Douglas, who is Gordon Gecko, and he goes, Okay, Bud Fox, let's go buy some Blue Star Airlines and put some money in these other dog with flea stocks you told me, but let's see how you do. And then he hangs up the phone and Charlie Sheen stands up and goes, Woo! I bagged the elephant. Super great moment. From that moment on in the movie, Bud Fox's life begins to change. After Blue Star Airlines goes through the roof the next day on this FAA news, the other stocks that he recommended that Gordon put a little bit of money in, lost money. Gordon has him come to play racquetball with him. And it's Gordon Gecko's way of telling Bud Fox that he's fired. That, you know what, unless you've got another person you know at the airline, unless your dad works for some other company, I think is what he says. I don't think we can do business anymore. And Charlie Sheen, Bud Fox, says, please give me another chance, just one more chance. And Gordon Gecko says, follow me. Let me show you my charts. And it's all insider trading. And he tells Bud Fox, if you want to work with me, you got to get me information. This is not about working hard. In fact, they pull up at a stop sign and there is a homeless person next to a guy in a suit. And Gordon Gecko says to Bud Fox, You think the difference between these people is luck? You think it's hard work? It isn't either one of those things. That person has information about the world that that person doesn't have. Now, patently not true. 100% not true. Yeah. Right, right. Watching the movie even yesterday, I buy into it.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Because Gordon Gecko and Michael Douglas plays this guy so well, is so charismatic and has made so much money and is such a mentor figure to Bud Fox, which you completely buy into this mentor-mentee relationship. And the fact that he's now sold a soul to Gordon Gecko, he's listening to every word and is a guy watching it. I'm watching every word. So Gordon says, So that's what I need from you is information. You let me know if you want a piece of that. So he lets Bud Fox out of his limousine. Then there's a knock immediately on the window. Gordon Gecko rolls down the window, and Charlie Sheen, another iconic scene, says, Okay, Gordon, I'm in. Which means I am now going to be a criminal for you. And then his life throughout the movie gets better. It just gets better and better and better and better and better. Which brings up, I think, another topic, which is how much is enough? There's this whole subtext of enough. Gordon Gecko makes fun of wealthy people because they're not wealthy enough. He actually talks in one scene about how I'm not talking about writing first class rich. That's everybody. That's nothing. I'm talking about command the room rich. I'm talking about hundreds of millions of dollars rich. That's who you want to be, Bud Fox. And I can make you that guy. And again, the most masculine lizard brain piece of me, even at 57, a guy that no longer believes any of this stuff, just watched the movie yesterday. Let's go own everything. I want to own it all.
SPEAKER_03:And it's funny. Joe just beat his chest for those of you who can't see him.
SPEAKER_01:I found myself horrified by my reaction. Yeah. Which I think is why there were so many. The movie won an Academy Award. It was up for a ton of Academy Awards. And I think it was Oliver Stone's ability to bring this out in us. And part of what I found fascinating about the movie was to find my reaction to the scenes, these visceral reactions I was having, which was phenomenal. It was outstanding. Partway through the film, as they're going on this lovely insider trading jaunt together, Gordon and Bud holding hands, becoming best friends.
SPEAKER_02:Tripping through the daisies of insider trading. Right.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And Daryl Hanna is dating another guy. Gordon Gecko sees the fact that Bud really likes Daryl Hannah's character and sets them up, makes sure that Daryl Hanna is able to begin dating Bud Fox instead. And her name is Darien in the piece. You find out later on in the film that Darion, who's an interior designer, at this point she's head over heels for Bud Fox. In fact, she tells Gordon Gecko, I think I'm really falling for Bud. And Gordon says, You don't want to do that yet. He hasn't been around the bases yet, and you've been around them several times. You know what this life is like, and he doesn't know what this life is like yet. So I'd pump the brakes. But he also says that to her while he's holding her hand. And he just said to her, after this art exhibition they go to together, and they bid on some pieces, millions of dollars on pieces for Gordon, and she's advising him. He said, Why don't we go, why don't we go to a hotel and do what we used to do? And she's like, Yeah, those days are over. And he said, You haven't told Bud about us, have you? And Darien says, No, and I don't want him to ever find out about us. You get this feeling throughout the film that Gordon Gecko has leased a woman to Bud Fox. And the woman is okay with it, which is creepy, because of the fact that Gordon Gecko has given her so much money and so much stuff. And Bud initially kind of knows it, but he doesn't want it that to be the case. He wants them to be falling in love. Until a scene later on with his dad, he tries to get Gordon Gecko to help him save Blue Star Airlines later. So he brings his dad to this meeting. He brings the head of these different unions at Blue Star Airlines into this meeting so that Gordon can save the airline. And Gordon comes up with this great plan that everybody likes except Martin Sheen. And Martin Sheen immediately has this line where he said something like, I don't go to bed with a whore at night and I don't wake up with one the next day. And it's funny because he's not referring to Darien. He's referring to Gordon Gecko, who he sees every day, who he thinks is a whore. But during that time, also Bud Fox goes, wait a minute. You see the light also come on, going, I'm also in this relationship where I don't think this woman is as attached to me as she is attached to the fact that I'm gonna make a ton of money. I'm a hetchman to Gordon's and I'm close to Gordon. It's a way for her to stay close to Gordon. And she she loves this idea of who he is, which is incredibly creepy. It is, it's incredibly creepy. In fact, it's funny. I was a little creeped out by it. I remember when I was 18. But the fact that, come on, it's Daryl Hannah. I mean, I heard Emily last time talk about Keanu Reeves. I mean, come on. In your last episode, doing that, I can do it today about Daryl Hannah, right? I mean, 17-year-old Joe was like, oh, Bud Fox, Daryl Hannah. Wow. Says this gloss over part, but it's it was the idea that we're all for sale. And Bud Fox during the movie, realizing three quarters of the way through the movie, that not only is he for sale, Daryl Hannah's been for sale. All these people who are lined up to serve Gordon Gecko, who doesn't want to save Blue Star Airlines, he tells Bud Fox he's gonna save Blue Star Airlines. Bud let out the fact that there's an overfunded pension and he can get his hand on$57 million very easily. Gordon's just going after the pension, and Bud Fox finds out very accidentally that Gordon Gecko is going to break up the airline. He's just gonna destroy it. And then at the end of the movie, it's this quest. The movie then is a quest at the end for Charlie Sheen, for Bud Fox, to try to redeem himself and to try to go back to this what's right and wrong, to kind of right all the wrongs in his life and save the airline and save his dad's company and save these jobs. In fact, that's another undercurrent of this movie. Lives and jobs, often throughout the movie, in lots of ways, people that are making money just to sustain themselves, and these people who are destroying it with no thought whatsoever about the lives that are being destroyed. In fact, early in the game, Bud Fox is in on it. Gordon Gecko is breaking up a company or is going after another trader who's trying to save a company. Gordon Gecko knows he's trying to save a company. So Gordon uses it as a way to make a ton of money. He breaks up the fact that this inherently good thing that stocks and money can provide for tons of people, it can provide for an entire community. Gordon goes in and breaks it up because it's an easy way for him to make just more money in his pocket, which becomes another iconic line in the movie. How many yachts can you waterski behind? Bud Fox, near the end of the movie, says to Gordon Gecko, How many yachts can you waterski behind? What's enough? What is enough? So I think there's this idea of beware what you ask for, right? He wants to stop ladder climbing and Gordon Gecko's his way out of it. It turns out Gordon Gecko's not his way out of it, he's climbing a different ladder now. Right. And he's climbing a much more malicious ladder. And I thought about this as I finished the movie, I'm like, was Bud Fox better off having gone through this journey than he was when he's crowded in the elevator at the beginning?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And the sad news is I think he was. I think he actually was better off that he did this insider training stuff. And maybe, and Martin Sheen says this to him during one of the last scenes, maybe it's actually good that he's going to jail. Maybe there's some good in it. Maybe it is the universe helping him course correct, even though when he ends up getting Gordon Gecko good and gets Gordon Gecko caught by the he helps the feds get Gordon Gecko. So he's already had some redemption, but going to jail and serving time might have been a good thing. I agree with Martin Sheen. One more thing that I found disturbing about this movie now, and this is not me 57 versus me 17. I think the last time that happened that somebody got taken out on Wall Street in handcuffs that made big news was during the financial crisis. And there was only one person, and it was a person who felt if you go look this up, I don't remember the guy's name. I should have done it for today's prep work, but I do know there was one guy, and it was because he felt guilty that he had bilked so many people when all the banks, you know, all of this underhanded stuff was going on.
SPEAKER_02:So like the Lehman brothers and all of that stuff that went down. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. All the bankers trying to save themselves, right? Only one person went to jail during that. Was the one with the conscience. Yeah. And I don't remember, Emily, anybody since then. Like I don't remember the I remember during the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, every year or two you'd have a Wall Streeter that's a big deal going away. It's been a long time since that's happened. Which I find disturbing because as I watch the film, I'm fairly certain this stuff is still going on. Oh, sure. I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, that we had the too big to fail thing, which I remember being so infuriating. Gosh, now that's been like more than 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. With the mortgages and stuff.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I'm going to bring it back to the movie because something that as you're telling the story of the actual plot of the film, Emily and I have been talking offline a lot about the hero's journey and sort of the heroine's journey or the virgin's promise. And I'm realizing, like as you're talking about this, that there's a degree to which Bud goes through the hero's journey, right? The ordinary world in this packed elevator and then this extraordinary world with Gordon Gecko. And then he has to return to the ordinary world. That's how the hero's journey works, but he returns changed. And so I think there's something really interesting in your question like, is he better off? If we look at it in that narrative frame, he's better off because he grew. And that's the point of the hero's journey. That's what makes Bud the protagonist. He grows and changes as a result of the action of the story. So I think that's a really interesting like layer to lay on top of this. Cause you're looking at the ethics, right? The morality. Like I hear you regretting almost that this guy's better off for having been a criminal and like hurting people. And yet, narratively, we need him to grow and change in some way as a result of the action. Otherwise, why are we watching this? Right? Like, there's no story there if there's no growth, or there's not a story that Westerners find interesting if there's no growth. So I think there's something like really interesting about that. I also am very interested with that layer about the dad, Martin and Sheen's role. Because like, Emily, help me out here. Like the hero's journey from Joseph Campbell, there we move from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and there's mentors. That's one of the components of the hero's journey. So obviously Gordon is one of them. But dad is one too. And he's actually the moral mentor. And when he is in jeopardy, that's when Bud actually wakes up from the moral ambiguity of this extraordinary world that Gordon has taken into.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Well, I what's interesting, I'm gonna layer on top of that. So one of the things that I find fascinating in the financial world is talking about money scripts, which both of you have heard me talk ad infinitum about this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but our listeners haven't. Catch us up.
SPEAKER_02:So that's Dr. Bradley Klantz and his research partner Sonia Britt. Dr. Sonia Britt came up with this. These are unconscious beliefs that we have about money that we created in childhood and then never really challenged because we don't talk about money. It's a taboo subject in our culture. So the example I give of like other kind of thing that we come up with in childhood because children are great observers but not great interpreters, is our mom, when she was a very little girl, thought that doctors went to jail if they got sick. And of course, she was disabused of that notion because we talk about doctors. But if talking about doctors were taboo, she might still hold on to that belief. Whereas money, because it's taboo, we don't talk about the beliefs that we come up with about money. And so these money scripts are like reinforced over our lifetimes. And so we talked a little bit about money scripts in our Avalon episode, but Klantz and Britt came up with four basic types of money scripts. There's money avoidance, money worship, money status, and money vigilance. So, anyway, within those money scripts, they are like the way that we interpret how money works and we take it as like a given. This is just how money is. And it's the reason why the knockdown, drag up fight you have with your significant other, your partner, is most likely to be about money because you're going like, well, this is just how money is. And they're going, like, you're making me crazy because that's not how money is, it's how this is, and you're coming at it from different directions. So what this is telling me is that Bud Fox would have been incapable of getting how ethically wrong what Gordon Gecko was doing without actually experiencing it. Because until he had gone through the experience of seeing what this actually cost someone he cared about, it had to be someone. It had to be someone he cared about. Because he did see he did see the cost. But it had to be someone he cared about because for him, presumably he had either money status or money worship or both. Because those are both the those are commonly definitely both. People commonly have them together. And so for that, what if you have those those two money scripts? The idea more money is better, and I need to have that money to show people that my life is good, that I am good, and damn the consequences, it's worth it to sell my soul to get there. And until I actually see the devastation that this causes, and I really recognize that okay, the people who are losing their jobs and losing their pensions, it's fine, they'll be okay. That's a lie I'm telling myself. And so putting that with Joseph Campbell's hero's journey is necessary for someone with those money scripts. To be able to get to that point where they like, oh my gosh, I have done a terrible thing. And it sounds like Bud Fox would not have ever gotten there. He would have continued to idolize Gordon.
SPEAKER_01:Emily, they articulate exactly what you're saying several times during the movie. Bud Fox says it, Darien says it when he is, he's getting ready to break up with her and he realizes this relationship is toxic. It's not at all what I want. And she repeats something that Bud Fox had said earlier and now was rejecting, which was if Gordon Gecko didn't break these companies up, somebody else would have. So Gordon's not bad. This was inevitable. This was, and it is, Emily, 100% this lie that you tell yourself that no, it it's okay. This isn't that bad. These people would have been out of work anyway. Because look at this company, Gordon Gecko said himself, this company was breakable. I think he said. He said, Why are you breaking Blue Star Airlines? Gordon says, because it's breakable, because I can. And if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that reminds me of it's not a great film, but my kids recently, for our weekly movie night, they had us watch the Lorax, the recent one. And it's a musical, and there's a song that's actually quite good where I can't remember the, but the one who creates the thneeds, that guy, sings, How bad can I be when he's destroying all the truffula trees? And it's like that, where instead of asking, like, is this the right thing to do? Am I doing something wrong? You ask, How bad can I be? Is it really so bad? And that is like when you're putting it that way, you're asking the wrong question.
SPEAKER_01:On a scale of one to 10, it's only an eighth of three. Yeah, exactly.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:I I think there's something really interesting in this movie itself and in your response to it, Joe, even now at 57, when you've gotten past all the things, like the fact that like watching it, and you named that this is Oliver Stone's gift to make you not just sympathize with these guys, but like really like want to be them. I want to unpack this a little bit because it's it seems clear to me that we've got good and evil, we've got white collar and blue collar. And I'm putting those in the same column, right? Or sorry, the opposite column. The white collar or the evil, the blue collar or the good, right? We've got Martin Sheen, he's the good mentor. We've got Michael Douglas, he's the bad mentor, white collar, blue collar. And there's money scripts baked into that that Oliver Stone clearly has about like where merit and honor and morality lie vis-a-vis money. And it's not with Gordon Gecko and the extraordinary word that Bud Fox eventually rejects. And yet, here you are, and you know a lot about money and how money works and how wealth works. And here you are, like beating your chest as you're watching this movie. Like, what is he tapping into? I mean, you named masculinity. Can we dig into that a little bit? Like, this is a masculinity. It's not like I'm the biggest and the strongest and I can beat you up, but it's in that direction with money.
SPEAKER_01:I think you feel viscerally the dopamine hit of having, of acquiring. When he moves from this, they make a big deal that he's in this little Upper East Side apartment, and then he moves into one of the swankiest parts of town, and he is in this beautiful high-rise. Of course, Darien, because she's an interior designer. She outfits it with all this art that he thinks is absolutely horrible, but still is this chic place. I looked at the art, I look at this place. I don't know that I'd want to live there, but he's on the phone talking about futures in the Asian markets while he's mixing a drink and the lights are low, and you can see Manhattan down below while he's on the phone and this beautiful bar. And and I immediately thought, I want that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like, wow, can I have? Please just give me this very human thing. It frustrates me every time I go into a mall and you see how many, which isn't that often. And it's funny that the less often I go into the mall, the more it strikes me. Why are so many people entertained by walking around this place where every single thing in here, at some point, no matter how good we are to it, no matter how much we take care of it, it's all going to end up in a landfill at some point. And when you think of a mall as a future landfill, it grosses you out. It's horrible. And yet, inside of me, last time I was at a mall, I had the same feeling. I'm like, oh, maybe I want that. Ooh, I want that. I want that. I want that. And so I think there's that piece of all of us that says, as I'm watching this movie, also this aspirational piece, I think that's the Hero Horatio Alger man pulling himself up by the bootstraps, right? And finding a way to do better than his dad did, right? His dad clearly blue collar gonna be okay, but he tells his dad, he's like, I don't want to live in Queens. Who wants to live in Queens? Yeah. And then by the end of the movie, he's like, I would love to live in Queens. I would absolutely love to have this family that my dad has. I would love to have the people around me that care about me that my dad has. And this big, huge house with a spouse. By the way, Gordon Gecko's spouse, this is an interesting side note also about gender roles. Sean Young plays this part, and she was kind of a big deal back in the 80s, and she's a throwaway actress in this playing Gordon Gecko spouse. Because in Gordon Gecko's world, again, women for sale, she is just a accessory in his game, and Oliver Stone is doing that with her as an actor. He's taking her and giving her this throwaway, this wonderful actor, and is just dumping her into these scenes where she's just the person going to get drinks for everybody, introducing people at the party because of the role that she plays. So I don't know, this idea that I have to own it, the disgusting idea of I have to own other people is um the I am reminded of we just we recently recorded, it hasn't been released yet when we're recording this.
SPEAKER_03:It will be by the time this goes live. We recently recorded an episode about the jerk where Steve Martin's character wants to be somebody. And like there's a place where you can arrive when you get the drink with the umbrella in it when you are somebody. And I'm that's I'm hearing echoes of that, but not funny in what you're talking about right now, right? You could be talking about futures on the Asian market on the phone with the low lights and the drink you just made yourself with Manhattan in the background and the beautiful girlfriend or wife, like then you'll be somebody. And it's all about sort of yeah, the accessories rather than what he realizes at the end about the relationships and the real meaning and the real life. There's a juxtaposition there, but Oliver Stone showing us that like taps into the thing we have all imbibed that, like to be somebody, you gotta have these things, and you gotta be a dude with a good-looking girl on your arm.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Just one more point on that near the end of the movie, and I didn't remember this from the bajillion times I'd seen this film before. Bud Fox is looking out the window from this gorgeous apartment over Manhattan, and he's just staring off into this place that you think that we would all want. And he says out loud, Who am I? Which is just a huge, huge line now for me. Because he's unrecognizable even to himself, because he's gotten all these things that he thought that he wanted. And in the course of getting everything he wanted, he's taken the piece that is most core to his being and he's lost it. It's gone. It's 100% gone.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That actually piggybacks really well into what I was going to get into, which is so something I end up talking about a lot to people is in 15 years of writing about money, I have become radicalized in ways that I would never have expected. One of them being is, and I say this a lot, is that money doesn't actually exist. It's this shared delusion. We have all collectively decided that these little green pieces of paper and these small discs of metal are worth money or worth something.
SPEAKER_03:And bits and bites. And what bits and bites.
SPEAKER_02:Which is so weird if you think about it. And then because it doesn't exist, so like we could all of us survive off the grid, or if the meter comes without money. We can't survive without food, without clothes, without shelter, without water, but we can survive without money. And so because of that, we put our own interpretation on money, our own meaning on money, our own neuroses, our own like psychological definition, morality, ethics, all of that. And so when it comes to Gordon Gecko and Bud Fox, and so they're putting Gordon is putting meaning on money where he's like making fun of wealthy people for not being wealthy enough, because for him, it's a score. Like he's saying you are not playing the game well enough. You don't have a high enough score in that game because that's what it means to him when it's like it doesn't have anything to do with actually being able to live a good life or get the resources he needs or be generous to others or any of the other things that money can be used for. Or even like luxury and water skiing behind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can only waterski behind one at a time. So, and then that fits into bud asking himself, who am I? Because like he thought he wanted money and all the things that it can buy him. But once he has that, he realizes he doesn't know who he is anymore because he's lost the thing that made him who he is. And that's because money doesn't actually exist. He's chasing after a phantom, he's chasing after this shared delusion by giving up the things that are real, like his own ethical code, his father, his relationships. His father.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And those are real things. And he's given them up for a shared delusion for someone who is completely amoral and doesn't care about him. Doesn't care about him at all and will completely betray him at the first opportunity if he can get a higher score in the money game. There's money. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And tried to. I mean, he tried to break up, use his connection with Bud Fox to destroy the company. Yeah, destroy the airline and his dad is hired at him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, his own dad's gonna lose his job, and Gordon Gecko doesn't care if Bud Fox's dad loses his job. Right. It's like I don't care. I think he even says at one point to Bud, he said, Well, your dad's close enough to retirement. Who cares? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but wasn't he stealing his pension too?
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. Good point. Yeah. And that's what struck me this time. And this is looking back on my own personal money journey. I think about some of the things in life that I've personally asked for, that I've wanted out of life. And I think this is a lesson this movie really goes into that. I don't know if it went over my head. I saw it before, but I really felt it this time, which is this idea of beware what you ask for. Because Bud Fox tied Gordon Gecko to the answer to all of his problems, he ended up with a whole different set of problems. Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Affected People says, when you pick up a stick, you pick up the other side. I think you have to ask yourself what the other side really is.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because once he saw the other side, once he got on the other side, and how often do we do that in life? And how often, Emily, to your point, do we do that with money? We think in our money script that the other side is going to be so much better. It's going to be so, oh, if I just do this thing, if I have this thing, if I live in the great apartment, if I have the phenomenal girlfriend, if I have the whatever, my life is going to be great. He gets all this stuff and his life sucks. It's just it's no good. And then of course, then it really sucks when the feds show up.
SPEAKER_03:Right. That's uh right. This question of like oh, that's something that this question of like enough.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, you go, then me.
SPEAKER_03:This question of enoughness that Bud asks Gordon, I think is really interesting when we sort of talk about like wanting to be somebody and what we want. Because money is a delusion, there will be never be enough if that is in fact what we're seeking, because there's always more.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I think that's and that's here in this film, clearly, explicitly, he underlined the thesis. Like Stone underlined the thesis. We didn't need to guess. And yet, a lot of people went into trading because of this movie. So I think there's like an interesting circle there. You go, Emily.
SPEAKER_02:So that brings up something I tell my kids all the time, which is life is not a buffet. So if there's something that you want, you think that you're just going to, well, for one thing, you'll if you are jealous of something someone has, you're imagining that you just take that thing and you put it on your plate, and that's not how it works. No, it's more like, do you really want their life? Because that's what it would be like. But also, if you imagine there's something that you want, you have to imagine the entire thing. It's not a buffet where you just put it on your plate. That it comes with a bunch of other stuff that you may not even know about. And so it's not a matter of like, oh yeah, you're just gonna put the potato salad on your plate. It comes with like you gotta peel the potatoes and you gotta do a lot more than just imagine you get the finished product and the feds are gonna be after you, or whatever it is, because life is not a buffet. And so whatever it is that you think is missing from your life, you have to know that there is a lot more to it than whatever it is that's missing, whatever it is that you imagine is missing. And that is something like I feel like often people miss the point of movies in the same way that people saw Fight Club and they didn't they started Fight Clubs. And I was just like, did we watch the same movie?
SPEAKER_03:Or it's also like though, it's also like what you talk about, Emily, what you talk about horror films, where we end up Freddie Krueger is everywhere, and we all know his name and his likeness and his quippy quips, but we don't know Nancy Thompson's name, even though she is actually the hero. She's the one that beats him and he's the bad guy. I feel like this is one of those where Gordon Gecko becomes sort of the guy whose name is in our heads and whose phrases are in our heads, even though he is in fact a villain in this movie.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there is a piece of him all the way through, though. And this is the miracle, I think, of Oliver Stone. His ability to make you want to be the villain, to make you want to be that guy, to take the risks that he's taken, to climb the mountains that he's taken, to be the person who's the disruptor instead of the person on the other end who's being disrupted, right? I think there's a piece in all of us that fears that whatever life we're living is going to have someone come in from the outside and disrupt it. Well, I want to Gordon Gecko, he's the prime mover. I want to be the prime mover. I don't want you to be the prime mover. I found that fascinating.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that is fascinating. I mean, even in the as I just said, like this movie that is really a meditation on the moral mess of trading that convinced a whole generation of people to go into it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, heck, even just the moral mess of money, even today. I mean, even and I think that that moral mess because we because it's so human. The movie is so human in its approach, that's why it holds up. You you mentioned at the beginning, Tracy, about stakes. There's a piece of this film that I did not mention because there's so many sub, like any good textured film, there's all these little subplots going on. But one subplot in the film, there's a wonderful actor who passed away a few years ago named Hal Holbrook, who's in this movie. And Hal Holbrook plays the guy who is a pretty good trader, not a phenomenal trader, but he's crafted this nice life for himself. Bud Fox sees him at the beginning of the film, like just just stuck in the middle ground, not really going far enough, but not really going all the way. He believes Hal Holbrook could be this bigger thing. And Hal Holbrook consistently in the movie puts his arm around Bud Fox. And if you know who Hal Holbrook is, this totally's gonna sound like him. There's no shortcuts, Bud. You can't get there the quick way. Whatever's happening now, it's not gonna continue, Bud. I don't know what's going on here because Bud Fox all of a sudden's making tons of money. Hal Holbrook puts his arm on and goes, I don't know what's going on here, but I gotta tell you it's not gonna last. I gotta tell you, this isn't it. And at the end of the film, when Bud Fox walks into his office and everybody's just staring at him because they know what Bud doesn't know, that the feds are in his office. He says, Did somebody die? And his buddy that he used to sit next to on the trading floor before he had his own office said, Yeah, somebody died and just looks at him. And then Hal Holbrook puts his arm around him and said, Bud, when man stares into the abyss, that's when he finds out who he really is. And Bud Fox looks at him because he still has no idea what the hell's going on and is like, good talk, Al. Like, thank you, thank you so much. Okay, weirdo, whatever. And then he gets it 10 minutes later. But they're contrasting this old guy on one hand with a guy who really I think Hal Holbrook is enough in the movie. He has enough. He does take this straight narrow path with another old guy who at the beginning of the film is struggling and two-thirds of the way through the film is getting fired because he's not a productive trader. And you see this guy that spent his whole life doing something and he hasn't made enough money. He even tells the sales manager who's firing him, he goes, Well, after the divorces, I just can't. And you can see this guy never built anything, he never built for himself a life. So you can see the stakes in this old guy who isn't making it forcing Bud to think I can't be the guy who's not making it. And also then when he gets a taste of Gordon Gecko, I don't want to be Hel Hobrook because Gordon Gecko is living this life. Uh Hel Hobrook has to come in and still pedal stocks every day. I don't want to be that guy. I want to be this super superman. And I found this juxtaposition to be really uh important because I think sometimes, like Bud, we get these signals in our life that we think we got to do something. And maybe we do need to move, but we take the wrong action because of the fact that we see somebody failing in front of us. There were 50 things that Bud Fox could have done with the information of this guy's failing and I don't want to be this guy. I don't want to be 70 years old and being fired because you can't keep up.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. Yeah. I'm actually gonna look back and try and wrap us up. I'm gonna reflect back to you what I heard, Joe. So you guys should nuance me, correct me, make sure if I forgot anything. I think the number one thing I heard from the lesson from this movie was really about beware what you ask for, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. And sort of we said it in a couple different ways. Life is not a buffet, there's the other end of the stick. We used a couple of different metaphors for the fact that like it's a whole package. And so if you get Gordon Gecko's life, you get the criminal uh charges as well. So that was sort of the biggest thing. But we also spent some time talking about the kind of very human sense, which maybe is influenced by my scripts and also by our culture, and also just sort of like the dopamine hit of possessing, of being somebody. I'm putting quotes around that, of having. And I equated that with sort of being the biggest and the strongest, but it's also just sort of about like, yeah, being the guy who is the disruptor, is the way that you just named it. Like the person who is in some sort of control, or it seems as though they are, and so we chase what they have. That picture is very specific. Picture, and it's a dude, and he's white, and he's got lots of stuff, and he's got a pretty girl. And in fact, girls in this world, women, are just accessories. They're the same as the drink and the apartment and the yacht. They're not actually human beings, they're just accessories. You also brought to us, we sort of spent some time teasing out the morality of money and the hierarchy of money, white collar versus blue collar, like sort of worthy money that we actually earn by blue-collar workers or by Hal Holbrook, who doesn't take shortcuts versus like not worthy money, evil money that we get by hurting people through breaking stuff up because we can. The lies we tell ourselves in order to continue to do that. We brought in the narrative structure that Oliver Stone used, that this is maybe a hero's journey from the ordinary world to the extraordinary, growth and change back to the ordinary and to jail. Emily brought in the fact that this also was dependent upon sort of money scripts. That was the growth and change that Bud needed to make. He needed to be able to confront his own money scripts, which we don't ever talk about. And there was also in the sort of blue-collar worthy money, no shortcuts, worthy money, and white-collar shortcuts, not worthy money. There's also sort of a meditation about real lives and real jobs and real people versus money that's just about more, and when is it enough? And how many yachts can you waterski behind? What did I forget?
SPEAKER_01:No, I don't think I don't think you forgot anything.
SPEAKER_03:I think you got it. I'm sure I forgot something. No, no, you know what I did forget is the fact that Stone, I think you pointed this out, Joe, that part of Stone's Oliver Stone's sort of genius is like making us not just sympathize with the villain, but actually sort of want to be him. And like that sort of moment that even now, even though you are so much more evolved than you were when you were 17, you're still watching this movie and beating your chest, like, yeah, I want that too. I want that too. And there's a certain degree of just really psychological genius, I think, is what I heard from the way that Oliver Stone portrays that story and that villain in such a way that we don't just sympathize with him, we want to be him. That's why I've heard.
SPEAKER_01:Which is scary.
SPEAKER_03:It is really scary, honestly. It really is. It really is.
SPEAKER_01:Which is why I think this film was so deserving of all the accolades that it received. And also why, as we mentioned at the top of the show, that it's such a cultural touchstone, even for people that haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_03:Like us. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know what's wild? All of this, we talked about this film for an hour. An hour. Uh huh. James Spader's in this movie, and we didn't even like there's all these other people in the movie that we didn't even mention to. Like that's how good it is. They're just, oh, it's crazy. Yeah, good stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Well, our guest today has been Joe Solsi High, who is a co-host of Stacking Benjamin's podcast, which is the number one podcast in finance. And y'all should go listen. Thank you so much for coming on, Joe. Emily, next week I am going to bring you my deep thoughts about home for the holidays with Holly Hunter just in time for Thanksgiving. Awesome. Can't wait. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompotech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?