Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Open Up About 'Wolf of Wall Street'
In a candid roundtable with Jonah Hill and writer Terence Winter, the film's major players open up about airplane orgies, scoring quaaludes, Steven Spielberg on set and why DiCaprio was drawn to the real-life story: "It was like a modern-day Caligula."
In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio won a bidding war against Brad Pitt for the rights to Jordan Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, which followed the downward spiral (and eventual jailing) of one of the Street's brightest stars as he got hooked on drugs and prostitutes -- while the FBI nipped at his heels. “It was almost like a modern-day Caligula," says DiCaprio, who stars as Belfort alongside Jonah Hill as his henchman Donnie Azoff in a movie that also features Matthew McConaughey and Margot Robbie in prominent roles. The film held the promise of reuniting DiCaprio with director Martin Scorsese (The Departed), but nobody wanted to finance it until indie producer Red Granite Pictures agreed to fully fund the $100 million-plus drama, which Paramount is releasing domestically.That was just the beginning of the film's rollicking ride -- which included a lawsuit demanding credit from executive producer Alexandra Milchan; a battering by Hurricane Sandy (the movie had to shut down for several days); a race against time as Scorsese cut the film from four-hours-plus to just under three, delaying its release until Dec. 25; and "multiple rounds" of cuts with the MPAA (in the words of Red Granite vice chairman Joey McFarland) to qualify for an R rating. Says Paramount chairman Brad Grey, "There were really not major cuts in this movie; there were trims." Despite the trims (which included the removal of many f---s and the tightening of an airplane orgy scene), all those connected to Wolf say it remains the story they wanted to tell. "Films exploring [humanity's] darker nature are the most profound," says DiCaprio, who joined Scorsese, Hill, screenwriter Terence Winter and THR on Nov. 21 at New York's Le Parker Meridien.
Why was it so hard to get this film off the ground?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: You know, it's a hard R rating. This film was not easily financed. We had one opportunity to finance it [at a much lower budget], and then many, many years down the line, we found the right financiers, and Red Granite basically said to us: "Here's the budget. We want an epic that pulls no punches. We don't want to limit or censor anything." Ultimately, that was attractive to Marty getting back on board because I had gone down the road looking for other filmmakers, but I didn't think there was anybody that could quite capture the dark, sadistic humor in Terry's screenplay.
MARTIN SCORSESE: There was resistance based on the material. In a studio situation, this kind of picture would have been very difficult and wouldn't be worth making. And so we stopped. And we said, "Look, we want to do something together," so we wound up doing Shutter Island. [However], over the years, Leo's been talking to me about it.
What were the challenges of adapting this story?
TERENCE WINTER: We were all in agreement that we wanted to tell the truest version of this story and not the sanitized version. I mean, it's an incredibly wild ride. I read [the book] in galley form. Jordan is absolutely forthcoming to the point where you can't believe some of the things he's admitting. Stylistically, some of the early conversations were [about using voiceover]. Jordan is so funny, talking about people, how he goofed on people. And I didn't want to lose that, so I broached the subject of voiceover, and said, "It feels like Goodfellas and Casino. Would it be OK if I wrote it in that style?" And everybody was on board with that. I met with Jordan and downloaded as much information as I could. He was incredibly boyish and naturally charming. Talks a mile a minute. He used to give these incredible motivational speeches to his sales team twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. I said: "God, I would love to see you do that. If I could fill a conference room with assistants from CAA, would you come in and do that for me?" And he said, "Yeah." So I got a bunch of young agents and assistants and …
SCORSESE: That was before you even wrote, right?
WINTER: Yeah. He was a little nervous. But he came in and loosened up, and within minutes he basically just ripped, yelling at people. And I couldn't write fast enough.
There are some extraordinary scenes -- especially one when Jonah's and Leo's characters get high on "Lemmon" quaaludes. Jonah, what did you think when you read that?
HILL: Leo and Marty really built that scene as an end of my character's screw-up journey. You guys had the brilliant idea to make taking the Lemmons really to numb Jordan to the information that I screwed up.
At one point in that sequence, Leo is on a pay phone and can't even form words, then has to crawl to his car.
SCORSESE: Leo hurt his back on the telephone when he was talking and fell backwards on a rig that we worked out.
DICAPRIO: It was a few days of crawling around like that. You contort your body and …
SCORSESE: You hurt yourself. What he did was almost like Jacques Tati or Jerry Lewis in that scene. How you gonna do it? You can't just be talking on the phone, because you can't form the words because of the drugs.
Did you have drug experts? I'm assuming you didn't try Lemmon quaaludes?
HILL: I tried as hard as I could to find a quaalude, and I could not find any. (Laughter.) I mean, I'm not like a drug person, but I genuinely would've tried one to see. We had a drug expert. I spoke to a drug expert who …
SCORSESE: She was stoned. No, I'm only kidding. And I also remembered things from years ago. I had my times. I said, "You try to form the word, but it isn't there." The tongue and the mouth, the palate just won't respond.
The film's release was delayed. What happened?
SCORSESE: It took longer to cut the shape of the picture, that's all. Very simple.
The final cut is 2:59. How long was your initial version?
SCORSESE: It was over four hours.
Would you want to release it at that length?
SCORSESE: No, not really. That talk about these "director cuts" -- it doesn't really [apply]. In the old days, if the [studio] took the film away from you and they made a cut and there was a director's cut here and somebody found it -- that's a director's cut. But a longer cut is a longer cut. There's a couple of lines of dialogue I would've liked to put back in. [But it's been] quite an experience putting this together in the editing room. For the past five weeks now, it's been day and night, seven days a week, mixing, cutting, re-cutting.
DICAPRIO: At the end of the day, no one's going to prohibit Martin Scorsese from making the film he wants to make. The only conversations were about whether the film should be released at a certain date or not. Nothing else.
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