My editor called me 59 days in a row asking me to review The Wolf of Wall Street; I told him I could save him $112.50 on a movie ticket as I already saw the movie when Michael Douglas starred in it. Being a humor writer, he assumed I was joking.
Rather than throw a dart at the listings, I looked at 100 movie times and picked one. It was an afternoon showing and instead of the typical movie theater patrons, I was surrounded by a pack of Gordon Gekko-ites wearing silk ties, suspenders, brightly colored socks, and with their hair slicked back like Leo in a Titanic tuxedo; and that was the women.
The men were holding those big brick cell phones and saying thinks like 'money never sleeps,' 'there's no nobility in poverty,' and 'if you're not inside, you are outside.' And I thought to myself (who else would I be thinking to?) that makes sense; inside and outside are the only two options unless you're walking from the inside out or the outside in which case you are both inside and outside, or is it neither? Where is Noam Chomsky when you need him. And I was glad I was inside as the temperature declined 28 degrees and I froze my options off on the way to the movie.
With smuggled Twizzlers stuffed down my pants and Cafe Latte in my inside jacket pocket, I found my seat in the dimly lit theater in the acoustic sweetspot. Thankfully the lights were low as I had no desire to see the stains on my seat and what my feet were stuck to but I was sure of four things: a) my pants would see the inside of a garbage pail before morning. 2) no balm can heal the coffee burns on my ribs, and d) if I timed it better, I could've hopped theaters and watched Disney's Frozen instead.
The Wolf of Wall Street, or TWOWS, didn't star Michael or Charlie Sheen or even some macho mega-star but had Leo from the sinking ship movie who made Kate Winslet seem masculine. Gone in the this movie are Leo’s boyish good looks which we haven't seen since The Quick and the Dead where Leo played second pistol to Sharon Stone who had a bigger 'gun.'
But TWOWS isn't just about Leo's bad acting, it's also about Scorcese's bad directing; under Scorcese, Goodfellas was turned into a cliched gangster movie with unnecessary voiceover by a mono-tone Liotta, and a really cool scene with a 'made man' getting his face kicked in by a clownish Pesci.
Scorcese was asked why he would try an improve on Oliver Stone's Wall Street which was about as close to perfect as one can imagine, he replied "because it's wreckable and if you have more questions like that, I'll make you take a walk with Tony, Bobby and other Bobby."
But Leo and Marty can't be the only ones to blame, Hollywood played a part as well. And Hollywood is not just about making movies, it's about making big budget movies that get Oscar nominations and TWOWS didn't disappoint. If saying ‘son of a bitch’ once got Leo zero nominations in Titanic, dropping the F-bomb over 500 times in TWOWS should win him the Oscar as it Trumps Raging Bull’s 128 occurrences which earned Bobby D the statuette and made Deniro play punchy Jake Lamotta ever since.
TWOWS is so riddled with bad words, upon its release, Pulp Fiction had its rating changed to PG13 and Reservoir Dogs had to be reclassified by IMDB into the category of Disney Films. And TWOWS is not just a movie with lots of bad words, it's a $100 million dollar movie with boobs and drugs and lots of bad words. This movie has inflated Leo ego so much he actually thinks he is, wait for it, Leonardo DiCaprio.
When he knew he'd be playing Jordan Belfort, Leo watched classic Oscar winning movies like Wall Street and Chinatown and Wall Street again to make sure he had Gordon Gekko's Jordan Belfort's lines down. After watching The Deer Hunter, Leo petitioned to have his name changed to, you guessed it, Meryl Streep. Meryl objected to the name change as Leo has higher cheekbones.
With the Academy Awards a few weeks away, Leo's made his long list of people he won't get to thank, he's staring in the mirror to perfect his 'it's fine I didn't win' smile, and he's practicing clapping for Christian Bale. By most accounts, LD's Oscar chances are going south faster than Sherman with frostbite and GPS. But unlike other years, Leo has been nominated for both actor and producer so he’ll not be disappointed just the one time, it’ll be twice.
In a desperate attempt to sway the Academy, in TWOWS Leo created a signature move of raising an alcohol filled glass which he oddly used in The Man in the Iron Mask, Gangs of New York, Revolutionary Road, Cool Bourbon, Inception, Django Unchained, The Great Gatsby, The Departed, and the Titanic where in a dramatic scene, Leo did his impression of an ice cube in a drink getting raised.
The Academy has not just recognized Leo. TWOWS has quite a few Oscar nominations including:
Most f@€¥s per minute.
Most consecutive Oscar losses for Leo.
Best Motion picture lasting longer than Justin Bieber's fifteen minutes and most movie theater previews.
Most dramatic scene of Federal Agents getting lobsters thrown at them.
Best Jonah Hill impersonation of Jonah Hill masturbating at a party.
TWOWS dropped a lot of F-bombs and A through E bombs as well. And since I'm not one to disagree, I'd say that 'F' and 'Bomb' sum it up quite nicely.
