by Paul Parcellin
Writing about people who live on the wrong side of the law is nothing new to Terence Winter. After all, he was a writer and producer of the HBO gangster opus, The Sopranos. He’s also the creator and showrunner of the current HBO crime drama, Boardwalk Empire. With The Wolf of Wall Street, he turns his gaze to the world of fast-paced, down and dirty stock trading that is detailed in two books written by penny-stock whiz kid Jordan Belfort. The Wolf of Wall Street, a story that Leonardo DiCaprio, the star of the film, likens to a modern day Caligula, has created a storm of controversy since it opened Christmas day.
Belfort, the fresh-faced boy who created an empire from his underhanded “pump and dump” stock trading scheme, bilked untold numbers of investors who were taken in by his get-rich quick come-on. Belfort was exceedingly successful, but was ultimately sunk, both figuratively and literally—his yacht ended up on the ocean floor after a harrowing experience at sea—by his own hubris and mind-bendingly enormous hunger for illegal drugs.
In short, it’s the kind of material that would make any screenwriter salivate.
So, how did Winter find himself writing a feature film screenplay for legendary director Martin Scorsese? The assignment came about when he got an early look at Belfort’s jaw-dropping memoir. The publisher sent him the galleys of the book and asked if he would read it. Winter did, and he devoured it in one sitting. “I thought it was fabulous. I definitely wanted to be involved in this. Leo then optioned it, took it to Marty, and we were all off to the races.”
Terence Winter
What Winter found so magnetic about the book was the man at the center of the story. He says he recognized the guy, and perhaps saw a little bit of himself in Jordan Belfort. Winter grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Belfort in Queens, N.Y. They’re roughly the same age. Belfort was a real hustler when he was a kid, and Winter says he was the same way. Belfort worked on Wall Street in 1987, and Winter was toiling away as an attorney at Merrill Lynch at exactly at the same time. “There were so many similarities between his background and my own that initially, I felt, wow, I really understood who this guy was.”
A boiler room operation that would grow in The Wolf of Wall Street
In addition to the shock or recognition he experienced as the book revealed Belfort’s upbringing and career path, there was the tale that the young stock manipulator told. “This was just an unbelievable roller coaster ride of insanity, and comedy and debauchery, and everything in excess and everything in between. It was so compelling I just couldn’t put it down. I thought, if I’m this interested and compelled reading the book, imagine this playing out visually on screen with Leonardo DiCaprio and Marty behind it. It was just too good to resist.”
While the book seemed ready made for a screen adaptation, there were decisions to be made about the way the text could be transformed into a screenplay. Early on in the project, Winter flew to New York and met with Scorsese and DiCaprio. He notes that the book is thoroughly imbued with Belfort’s voice, and that’s good for a book but tricky for the screenwriter who is adapting it. The book is written from Belfort’s perspective, and it gets a lot of its comic power from his asides and the way he described things. In the movie, Belfort describes the various phases of being high, and the three different types of hookers. “These were the things that were really fascinating and funny,” says Winter, “But they didn’t really lend themselves to dialog. I really was hoping that Marty would agree to let me do it with voiceover.”
Winter noted that Scorsese used voiceover in Goodfellas and Casino, and to a lesser extent in Mean Streets. “He (Scorsese) said, this would make a good companion piece to Goodfellas, so let’s write it like that.”
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort addresses the camera in The Wolf of Wall Street
“We were going to tell the absolutely unflinching version of this story. It’s really raw, and Jordan is incredibly forthcoming, and honest about some incredibly bad behavior. We decided we were either going to do this all the way or not do it. We just went for it, and that’s how I wrote it and that’s how it was shot.”
Voiceover proved to be an effective means of conveying the astonishing details of the story. In parts of the film, Belfort looks directly into the camera—straight at the audience—and tells his story. “He’s being extremely forthcoming, and you’re hearing it from his perspective. He’s so willing to share every raw detail of his life. Things you can’t believe anyone did, let along would admit. He’s just completely willing to take that ride with you, and give you the whole thing, so in that sense it is confessional.”
According to Winter, after meeting the real Jordan Belfort it was easy to see how so many people were taken in by him. He found the stock hustler to be extremely disarming. “He’s very boyish,” says Winter. “He’s roughly my age but he looks like he’s about 15 years younger. He’s very charming and funny, very intelligent, and speaks very quickly, and self-deprecatingly. You begin to realize how he was able to do what he did and get away with it. People just trusted him. He comes across as very sincere and very likeable. So, I liked him immediately and I still like him.”
Jordan Belfort
Winter surmises that Belfort didn’t set out to become a master criminal. He was an ambitious kid from Queens who wanted to be successful. Unfortunately, his ambitions got the better of him.
Belfort kept drawing lines in the sand that he would never cross, things he would never do. And slowly he’d begin rationalizing his behavior, and started taking drugs, and before he knew it he was in hot water and he didn’t know how he got there. “He went to jail,” says Winter. “He paid his debt to society, he’s making restitution. From what I understand, he’s paid a ton of money and is continuing to pay a ton of money. So, I don’t think anyone’s more contrite than Jordan is. Certainly, I’m sure he wished it never happened, but it did, and he’s telling the story and he’s at least telling the truth about it.”
Aside from Belfort’s detailed recounting of the facts in the book, Winter did his own research. He met with Belfort numerous times, met his parents, his ex-wife, and even spoke to the FBI agent who arrested him. In addition, he talked to people who worked for Belfort, and drove out to Long Island to see Belfort’s luxurious homes as well as Stratton Oakmont, the offices that were the stock-trading headquarters, ground zero for all of his shady dealings.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street
As for gathering background details, Belfort even helped give the writer the flavor of his famous speeches that so hypnotized and united his loyal staff of stock con artists. Winter had Belfort come to Creative Artists Agency and recreate one of the speeches that is in the movie. “I filled the conference room up with a bunch of young assistants and had Jordan come in and do that for me, so that I could watch him in action. He was really incredible.”
The process of breaking down the book was straightforward. “I initially read it and any scene that struck me as a movie moment, I wrote down. I said, okay, I have to have this. I had to have the Quaalude scene, Donnie swallowing the goldfish. The butler who got beat up, that’s a movie moment. I didn’t know how I was going to work it into the story, but I knew these were things I had to have. They were just too good to be left behind. Once I had all of these things identified, how do I now arrange these things in a narrative that makes sense and makes an arc that is the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort. The book itself is massive, and if we had actually told the full story of Jordan it would be an 18-hour movie. So, in order to get my arms around it I knew I had to combine characters, I had to truncate timelines, I had to figure out ways to tell the story in a way that wasn’t repetitive, yet told the full thing and honored the full book. So, it took a little outlining, but that’s how I always do it. Once I had an outline, I just forged ahead.”
Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff in The Wolf of Wall Street
Having completed the legwork that was needed, Winter got down to business. Having already met with Scorsese and DiCaprio, he was clear about what his approach was going to be. “Once I started writing, it was about four weeks. I locked myself away and immersed myself in the project. Somewhere after the fourth week I came out of my cave with a script and turned it in.”
“Leo said, I’m in, and Marty said I’m in, too. And that was in 2007. And so it took us a couple of years to actually get it up and running, getting a company behind it that would let us do the movies that we really wanted to make,” he said.
When the film opened, the film got a warm reception from critics, but social networks and news media came alive with detractors—some who had watched only the trailer, and not the film. And so the controversy began over whether or not the filmmaker was glorifying the excesses and criminal behavior depicted in the movie. Winter says that in The Wolf of Wall Street, neither the screenwriter nor the filmmaker is telling the audience what to think about Belfort and his cronies. “We’re telling the story as it happened and letting you draw your own conclusions about what you think of these people and what you take away from it.” He noted that, in that way, it’s similar in style to Goodfellas, Scorsese’s 1980s gangster film that told the story of criminals who were near the bottom of the Mafioso totem pole.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort and Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff in The Wolf of Wall Street
As for making Belfort a character that audiences could empathize with, Winter says he faced the same challenge with Boardwalk Empire, the HBO Prohibition-era gangster series that he created, writes for and for which he acts as showrunner. Ditto for The Sopranos, or with any movie about a person who lives outside the boundaries of society.
“I think if you depict any human being in the full range of colors that we all have, you’re going to find moments of humanity, and moments of relate-ability and maybe even moments of likeability,” says Winter. Jordan is also very charming and funny. The audience can be excused for being taken in by him, at least for a while.
“You’re almost meant to take the place of the people on the other end of that telephone. He’s funny, and you’re watching him, and, ‘Oh, my God,’ the lifestyle, the cars and the girls and the drugs, and it looks so fun. And you’re laughing along with him, until every once in a while you hit a little bump in the road, where, he’ll say, ‘The guy who married the girl at the office who slept with everybody, well, that guy killed himself, so anyway… ’ And you’re like, wait! What? What do you mean the guy killed himself. Before you can even register it fully you’re on to the next thing. Then you’re suddenly (thinking), ‘Oh, look at these girls in bikinis.’ And it washes away like a wave and you’re plowing on. And it’s not until the very end of the movie that it gets really dark, and it’s, ‘Oh, my God, this is bad’.”
For the record, Winter’s tenure on Wall Street as a Merrill Lynch attorney was not nearly as colorful as that of the employees at Stratton Oakmont. The Wall Street he worked on was much more of the corporate, conservative company. “The level of excess I saw on Wall Street was much more in the vein of exorbitant salaries, guys with custom made suits and houses in the Hamptons,” he says. “Jordan isn’t really on Wall Street. They’re on Long Island, which is a suburb of Manhattan. He created his own kingdom, his own version of Wall Street. It was complete debauchery from 9 to 5. It was just across the board crazy excess, drugs, sex, all of that stuff. I didn’t really see any of that stuff in my version of Wall Street. But who knows what went on after hours?”
The Wolf of Wall Street
For all of the bad behavior at Stratford Oakmont, the most surprising development, according to Winter, was the point where Belfort had the opportunity to walk away from his shady business practically unscathed by the law after the government clamped down on him. He chose to stay instead. “That was surprising. But then, when you’re talking about addictive behavior, I guess it wasn’t surprising. How does a person who’s thriving on this lifestyle ever leave it? And Jordan even said, he had the opportunity to leave and he was even telling his people that he was leaving, and he looked out among all of those adoring faces and realized he couldn’t live without that. That adulation was part of what he was addicted to.” “With the level of excess, the thing that I found surprising was that the guy who had written this book was still alive. How do you do that level of drugs, how do you live this lifestyle for years on end and come out the other end of it. He’s not only alive, but he looks pretty healthy and sort of intact, so that was kind of surprising.”
Lest anyone think that the wild story told in The Wolf of Wall Street is just the product of Belfort’s drug addled imagination, Winter has an authoritative source that says Belfort is telling the truth. “I spoke to the FBI agent who arrested him. He said, ‘I tracked this guy for 10 years and every word of that book is true.’ And I was thinking, that’s pretty incredible, because I’m reading and thinking, all right, he has to be exaggerating. He said, ‘He’s not exaggerating at all. It all happened and I can vouch for that’.”
Having written about the semi-fictional Nucky Thompson, the central figure of Boardwalk Empire, the transition to writing a non-fiction script was not a difficult for Winter. “The facts were so outlandish I don’t know that I could have made half of them up. If anything, I was thinking, are people going to believe this? It was actually easy because the underlying material was just gold. I just couldn’t believe what I was reading. He would describe it and I just couldn’t believe how forthcoming he was.”
Steve Buscemi as Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson in Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire
As compelling as any book might be, adaptations from book to screenplay generally require that the writer, at the very least, jettison some of the details on the printed page, or even transform some of the storyline and characters. When it’s a question of being true to the book or to the movie, inevitably, the movie is the winner. Winter acknowledges that the book and screenplay involve different writing processes, and are in fact different animals. Ultimately, I am adapting a story even though it is very close to what’s in the book. “At the end of the day, I had to service the movie and not the book,” he says. “As long as I was staying true to the story, true to the spirit of who Jordan was, I felt that I had the creative license to take some liberties with how some of the things actually happened, what the time line was, and things like that. Ultimately it was about writing an effective screenplay and not replicating the memoir in screenplay form.”
Winter never saw the first rough cut of the film, which is said to have run four hours—an hour longer than its final running time. “It’s interesting,” he reflects. “There aren’t really scenes or sequences that are cut. Marty said they were just longer versions of scenes that still exist in the movie. So, he just let things go on much longer and then pulled back.”
Despite the lengthy source material, Winter says there was really nothing that he wished he could have included in the script but was unable to do so because of running time constraints.
“It’s all up there on the screen,” he says. “Marty just did a tremendous job, as I knew he would, as did Leo and everybody else.”
Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street
So, for all of the bad behavior, self indulgence and substance abuse the film depicts on screen, what is the overall lesson we can learn from Jordan’s story?
“That’s the big question,” says Winter. “Are we going to learn any lesson at all, or do we not ever learn anything. I think by the end of the movie the message is nothing changes. We go full circle. You go through all that and at the end of the movie all people want to do is know how I could be Jordan and how do I get that Ferrari? And it’s sort of, the more things change the more they stay the same. Here we are five years after the economy almost completely collapsed, and Wall Street’s going strong and the same people responsible for that are still raking in millions of dollars. I think the line of kids who want to work on Wall Street stretches around the block. So, that’s kind of the message. Are we ever going to learn anything?”
