Trivia / Wall Street

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Gekko doesn't exactly say "greed is good", he says: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good." This is because the theatrical trailers cut off the "excess" words and showed Gekko saying, "Greed is good. Greed works."
• Billing Displacement: Michael Douglas gets top billing as Gordon Gekko, who is the Big Bad of the film. Charlie Sheen, who plays protagonist Bud Fox, is billed second.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Sean Young told Oliver Stone that she should play Daryl Hannah's role. Stone later admitted that Young and Hannah should have swapped roles.
• Creator Backlash: Daryl Hannah was never happy about playing Bud's materialistic girlfriend Darien. It was at odds with everything the actress and activist represented.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Oliver Stone had been thinking about this kind of a movie as early as 1981 and was inspired by his father, Lou Stone, a broker during the Great Depression at Hayden Stone. He originally pitched the premise of two investment partners getting involved in questionable financial dealings, using each other, and they are tailed by a prosecutor as in Crime and Punishment.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Charlie Sheen and Sean Young didn't get along at all. Sheen hated her so much that he stuck a sign on her back saying "I am a cunt". Nobody bothered to tell her about it, which gives an indication of how popular she was on-set with everyone else.
  • Oliver Stone later admitted that everyone involved told him Daryl Hannah was miscast, but he was too proud to replace her. This caused tension on set, particularly with Young who wanted the role herself.
• In Memoriam: "Dedicated to Louis Stone, Stockbrooker."
• Old Shame: Daryl Hannah has never seen the film. She said in an interview that it was a "rough experience" and she and Oliver Stone had an "unhealthy working relationship". At the time of filming, she accused Stone of being a misogynist. She said "film is a collaborate medium. Sometimes you hook up with people you don't collaborate well with."
• Playing Against Type: Michael Douglas had just come off heroic roles like Romancing the Stone and was looking for something dark and edgy. The role of Gekko ended up redefining his "type".
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen, as Bud and Carl Fox.
  • Gordon Gecko's son was played by Oliver Stone's son Sean.
• Reality Subtext: Charlie Sheen said his inspiration on the hospital scene was remembering how he felt when Martin Sheen had a heart attack during Apocalypse Now.
• Technology Marches On: The miniature TV Gordon bought for his son became completely obsolete after June 12, 2009, when all TV stations in the US ceased broadcasting analog signals over the air.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Oliver Stone had written a subplot involving Fox having an affair with Gekko's wife (which would have explained Gekko's anger towards Fox in their final confrontation) but had to abandon it due to Charlie Sheen and Sean Young's hatred of each other.
  • Stone wanted Richard Gere to play Gordon Gecko, but he turned it down. He later cited this as the biggest regret of his career. The studio wanted Warren Beatty, who also turned it down. Jack Nicholson was offered the part, but he turned it down in favour of Ironweed. James Woods was offered the role, but he was committed to Cop. Al Pacino was also considered, while William Petersen was offered the role.
  • Stone gave Charlie Sheen the choice of having either Jack Lemmon or Martin Sheen play his father. Charlie chose his dad.
  • Tom Cruise wanted the part of Bud Fox, but Stone had already cast Charlie Sheen. Matthew Modine was offered the role, but turned it down.
    • Sheen would later play a comical version of Cruise in the 1991 Top Gun spoof, Hot Shots! and its sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux.
  • Stone talked extensively to Burt Lancaster about taking a role in the film, but the timing didn't work out. Soon afterward, Lancaster suffered an incapacitating heart attack.
  • To his regret, Matthew Modine turned down the film because Stone wouldn't give him the script to read.
  • Originally, the lead character was a young Jewish broker named Freddie Goldsmith, but Stone changed it to Bud Fox to avoid the stereotype that Wall Street was controlled by Jews.
  • According to a 2015 interview, Stone said Jerry Goldsmith was the original composer for the film but Stone was unhappy with the score he heard and fired him. Stewart Copeland of The Police replaced him.
• Working Title: Greed.

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