Trivia / The Wolf of Wall Street

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • The chest-thumping Matthew McConaughey does in the lunch scene at the beginning is something he does to warm up for scenes in real life. Martin Scorsese asked him about it and then had the idea of having McConaughey do it on the next take without telling Leonardo DiCaprio to get his genuine reaction.
  • Originally, Martin Scorsese offered Margot Robbie the opportunity to appear wearing a bathrobe during the seduction scene between her and Leonardo DiCaprio. Robbie refused and insisted on doing the scene fully nude, her first ever. According to Robbie: "The whole point of Naomi is that her body is her only form of currency in this world ... She has to be naked. She's laying her cards on the table." Robbie said she had three shots of tequila in succession before shooting the scene to relax. After shooting was complete, Robbie initially fibbed to her family and friends about actually doing the nude scene to delay any personal repercussions, claiming CGI was used to superimpose her head on a body double. She eventually changed her mind and confessed when the film was released.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Jonah Hill made only $60,000 (the lowest possible SAG-AFTRA rate) on the film; he simply wanted the opportunity to work with Martin Scorsese.
• Banned in China: This movie was banned in five countries due to high sexual content.
• Billing Displacement: Matthew McConaughey is billed fourth, but only appears in three scenes at the beginning of this three hour long movie.
• Channel Hop: The film was originally going to be made by Warner Bros., with Ridley Scott directing and Brad Pitt starring. After Paramount Pictures got the rights to the film in North America and Japan, they handed the international distribution to Universal Pictures.
• Corpsing: Jon Bernthal covers his mouth trying not to laugh when Jonah Hill calls him the "emperor of Fucksville."
• Dyeing for Your Art: Kenneth Choi gained nearly twenty-five pounds for his role as Chester Ming.
• Enforced Method Acting: Jonah Hill wore a prosthetic penis while masturbating at the party to draw genuine surprised reactions from the actors and extras.
• Fake American: The Australian Margot Robbie as Anglo-American Naomi.
• Fake Nationality: The French Jean Dujardin as a francophone Swiss banker.
• Harpo Does Something Funny:
  • A lot of scenes in the movie were improvised, notably Matthew McConaughey's humming and chest-beating, which is something the actor does to hype himself up for filming in real life. Scorsese saw it and decided to Throw It In! — And have all of Stratton Oakmont do it during Belfort's non-retirement speech.
  • Music supervisor and frequent Scorsese collaborator Robbie Robertson then worked with McConaughey to create "The Money Chant," which plays over the end credits.
  • Jon Bernthal asked the extra playing the waitress to serve his cheeseburger last to add to his frustration with the whole meeting, then improvised the whole bit with the empty ketchup bottle on the spot.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Not really "cast", but the man who funded the film, Jho Low, is himself a fraudster as well as a fugitive.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Margot Robbie revealed in an interview that for the scene where Jordan and Naomi have sex for the first time in her apartment and her dog tries to jump up and bite him that they had trouble getting the dog to jump, so they had to put dog food and chicken livers all over Leonardo DiCaprio's feet and between his toes.
• One-Take Wonder: Martin Scorsese claimed that the sequence of Jordan attempting to get in his car while extremely impaired on Lemmons was improvised on the day of filming, and that it was Leonardo DiCaprio's idea to open the car door with his foot. DiCaprio strained his back during the scene, and could perform the stunt only once.
• Playing Against Type: Leonardo DiCaprio usually plays brooding anti-heroes in dramas. Here, he plays a Villain Protagonist in a dark comedy. In his Golden Globe acceptance speech, he said "I never would've guessed that I would've won for Best Actor in a comedy." However, he's still playing the conman.
• Production Posse:
  • The fifth collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio, the film also reunites Terence Winter and several actors in character parts from Boardwalk Empire which Scorsese served as executive producer, in addition to directing the first episode.
  • Behind the scenes, Scorsese once again worked with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, costume designer Sandy Powell, and visual effects supervisor/second unit director Robert Legato, while the film became his first collaboration with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, replacing Robert Richardson.
• Promoted Fanboy: Jonah Hill had established as far back as in 2010 (well before he had even earned his first Oscar nomination) that GoodFellas was his favorite film of all time.
• Similarly Named Works: There is a pre-Hays Code film (released in 1929, to be precise) entitled The Wolf of Wall Street. It's also about a ruthless financier.
• Star-Making Role: It's debatable whether this film was Margot Robbie's Breakout Role or her Star-Making Role considering she was already a known quantity in Australia beforehand. Whichever it was, her turn as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad certainly cemented her place in the A-list.
• Underage Casting: Margot Robbie was newly twenty-two when she played Naomi, who was in her mid-twenties to mid-thirties over the course of the events in the film.
• Voice-Only Cameo: Edward Herrmann appears as the narrator of the Stratton Oakmont commercial at the beginning of the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Julie Andrews was offered the role of Aunt Emma.
  • Chris Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt auditioned for Donnie Azoff.
  • Blake Lively and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were considered to play Naomi. Teresa Palmer and Amber Heard auditioned before Margot Robbie was cast. Olivia Wilde auditioned, but was deemed too old to play Leonardo DiCaprio's wife, even though he's ten years older than she is.
  • Alan Arkin turned down the role of Max Belfort in favor of Grudge Match.
  • Gene Hackman was considered for the narrator of the Stratton Oakmont commercial at the beginning of the film.
• Write What You Know: While a law student in the mid-1980s, screenwriter Terence Winter worked part-time as a legal assistant in Merrill Lynch's equity trading department, an experience which provided some background for this movie.

---