The Brutal Piece Of Feedback Michael Douglas Received From Oliver Stone While They Were Filming Wall Street

It’s a rare thing for a single performance to encapsulate an era, but I think there’s a fair argument to be made that Michael Douglas’ work in Wall Street is a terrific example of it. There were still a few years left in the 1980s when the Oliver Stone movie first arrived in theaters, but Douglas’ turn as the villainous, avaricious Gordon Gekko is a perfect representation of the hyper capitalism that defined the penultimate decade of the 20th century (summed up in the iconic line “Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good”).

It’s a sharp and vicious performance – and the story of how it was cultivated is pretty shocking. During a recent interview on Turner Classic Movies (via People), Douglas spoke about how things didn’t go swimmingly in early days of making Wall Street, with the actor being on the receiving end of some brutal criticism from his director. He explained that he had a sitdown with Stone that featured some extremely blunt feedback, saying,

We were finishing the second week of filming, and there was a knock on my door. ‘Hey Mike, it’s Oliver. Can I come in?’ I say, ‘Yeah, come on in.’ He comes in the trailer and sits down. He says to me, ‘You okay?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ [He asks], ‘Are you doing drugs?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not doing drugs.’ And he said, ‘Because you look like you’ve never acted before in your life.’

For those who need some context here: Michael Douglas wasn’t some kind of up-and-comer or just a promising performer at this point in his career. By the mid-1980s, he was already a big name with titles on his filmography including The China Syndrome and Romancing The Stone (not to mention he had all of the clout that came with being the son of big screen legend Kirk Douglas). These were some harsh words from an acclaimed director to his veteran star.

As for Douglas’ response, he was a bit blindsided, in part because he was not accustomed at that point in his career to watching back his own performance (a tendency that a lot of actors share). He wasn’t checking out footage, but Stone urged him to do so:

So I said, ‘Well, I don’t like to look at the dailies because I’m one of those guys that always sees what’s wrong or what’s not going to be in the film’… so I don’t pay attention to the dailies. So I said, ‘I guess I’d better take a look,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you better.’

The two men watched a couple of scenes together, including a key moment in which Gordon Gekko is really trying to sink his metaphorical teeth into Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox and make him an acolyte. Michael Douglas didn’t see much wrong with what he was seeing, but Stone insisted that the performance was wrong.

In the interview, Douglas doesn’t get into exactly what it was that wasn’t working in his performance, but he does say that it manifested a certain antagonism between him and the director, and that was an energy that he was able to use in his performance and give Gekko an extra darkness. Said the actor,

He was willing for me to hate his guts for the rest of this movie to get that extra little push… His record of successes with actors is quite impressive. So I’m deeply, deeply appreciative of the fact that it gave me part and the fact that he pushed me to another level.

Michael Douglas and Oliver Stone have only made one movie together since then – the 2010 sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – but that film didn’t make quite the same kind of pop culture impact.

If you haven’t seen Wall Street or haven’t seen it in a while, it’s a movie worth revisiting. While it’s not presently available on any subscription streaming service, it is widely available for digital rental and/or purchase, and physical media collectors can easily find the film available on Blu-ray.

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