While the real Jordan Belfort has said he won’t be making any money off the film adaptation of his memoir “The Wolf Of Wall Street,” one can only imagine that the man who makes his current living as a motivational speaker, will earn a boost in folks curious to hear what he has to say following the movie. And with the stories he’s accumulated from his hedonistic days in the financial game, it’s no wonder that Belfort is an engaging raconteur, and this 13-minute video from a few years back proves it.
One of the wildest sequences in a film already filled with unbelievable, outrageous acts, is Belfort’s European yacht trip which starts in sun dappled Italy and soon finds drugs, disaster and near death looming for everyone involved. It’s one of the moments in “The Wolf Of Wall Street” where you wonder if it really happened, but to hear Belfort himself tell the tale, it’s so outlandish it just has to be true. In a conversation with The Room Live (via Reddit) Belfort shares the entire story from beginning to end, even detouring slightly to explain the phases of being high on quaaludes. Yes, really.
Meanwhile, back in November we had the chance to talk with the film’s screenwriter, Terence Winter, who revealed that the “Goodfellas” template is one that ‘Wolf’ didn’t veer too far from. “It is very much [in that vein],” he explained. “It’s sort of written in the same style, voice-overs, it’s a very fast movie, it’s really a wild roller coaster ride.” And now with film in theaters, director Martin Scorsese elaborated and defended his choice of approach.
“If you’re gonna use a voiceover to tell people what’s missing, that’s cheating in a way, right? But if you use it for other reasons—if you use it for commenting [as in Wolf], ‘Brad died at the same age as Mozart. I don’t know why that came to mind. It doesn’t matter.’—I mean, that’s interesting. It’s about character. It’s about speaking. It takes you into the story,” he told THR.
“I guess it’s a way of exposition. That’s kinda the key, in a way. Look, I’ve done it, you know? We’ve done it at times. And sometimes, by the way, you can do the exposition and just get away with it; it’s extraordinary just being able to do it, flat, straight out, move on, because there are more important things than specific exposition. And then there are some kinds of exposition that you get stuck in…” he continued. “So maybe it’s better to avoid it completely and just try to find other ways. But the voiceover work that I like is voiceover about character. He could be listing everything he owns and cares about, but it’s more about him—him or her, you know? It’s not about what an IPO is, for God’s sakes. [In Wolf the character of Belfort starts to explain what an IPO is and then acknowledges that the audience isn’t following what he’s saying.]”
All we know is that while Leonardo DiCaprio does a good job in channeling Belfort’s self-destructive energy, there’s no better narrator than the man himself, so check out his insane story below.