Summary
The film opens in the early morning in New York City as Frank Sinatra's version of "Fly Me to the Moon" plays. We see throngs of people arriving to work on Wall Street, the financial capital of the United States. Bud Fox, a young stockbroker, arrives at work, and rides a crowded elevator up to his floor. He greets the secretary, then goes down the hall and greets an older man named Dan, who warns him to get out of the business while he can. "I came here one day, I sat down, and look at me now," Dan says.
Bud greets some more coworkers, telling one of them that he has a feeling they're "going to make a killing today." An older man, Lou, comes in and complains about the economy, that it's all gone downhill since "we let Nixon get off the gold standard." He tells Bud and another stockbroker, Marvin, to check out a new drug company, advising them that it will have success in the stock market. A man makes announcements about the stock market over a loudspeaker, and as the clock hits 9:30, the market opens.
A supertitle tells us it is 1985, and we see the stock market, as traders make high pressure phone calls in the office. Bud speaks to a caller about "the extraordinary opportunities presently emerging in the international debt market," and the caller promptly hangs up. The day goes on. Marvin yells at someone on the phone, as Bud speaks in a tense whisper to one of his customers, before handing the phone over to a sales manager, Harry Lynch. Harry manages to calm the caller down, and when he hangs up, threatens Bud that if the client doesn't pay him tomorrow, he will charge Bud. "I don't think you're being fair, sir," says Bud, "You assigned me to this guy, you know he has a history of this kind of bullshit."
When Harry leaves, Marvin laughs at Bud, but hands him some money to help out. He then advises his friend that he has to be more ambitious and ruthless if he wants to ascend the corporate ladder. Bud calls Gordon Gekko, a renowned businessman, and demands to speak with him. We see his secretary on the phone with Bud, telling him that Gekko only deals with investment bankers, not traders. Meanwhile, Gekko goes into his office with a group of men.
Bud visits a small dive bar at an airport and greets his father, Carl. He tells his father to stop smoking and Carl orders him a beer. Bud tells his father that he had a bad day and is going to have to pay up, and Carl tells him he should never have gotten involved in the stock market and calls him a salesman, even though Bud insists that he's an account executive. Carl scolds Bud for having made so much money in the stock market, but remaining unable to pay off his student loans. "50K does not get you to first base in the Big Apple, not anymore," says Bud, defensively. When his father presses him about why he doesn't move home if he wants to save some money, Bud insists, "I gotta live in Manhattan if I want to be a top player, Dad. There is no nobility in poverty anymore."
Bud asks his father for $300, then asks him how work is going. Carl, a foreman at a failing airline, Bluestar Airlines, tells Bud about the fact that the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) recently cleared Bluestar's record for a major accident. Carl notices that Bud has a mischievous smile on his face, the same one he used to have as a kid when he was sleeping.
We see Bud at his apartment at night, having just slept with a woman. He gets up and goes to the computer, where he sees on his computer that it's May 6th, Gordon Gekko's birthday.
That day at work, Bud goes directly to Gordon Gekko's secretary and makes chauvinistic jokes to her about wanting to marry him. Alarmed, she tries to send him away, but he persists, insisting that it's Gekko's birthday, a fact he learned from reading Fortune magazine. Bud pleads with the secretary to let him deliver a gift of very rare Cuban cigars to Gekko, and she tells him that she'll see what she can do. When she comes back out, she tells him to wait. Eventually, she brings him in, telling him that he will have 5 minutes.
They enter Gekko's office and he is on the phone. In between calls, he notes that Bud has called him 39 days in a row, and marvels at Bud's persistence, before taking another call. Eventually, he signs off and introduces himself to Bud, asking him how he got the cigars. "I got a connection at the airport," says Bud, which make Gekko laugh. When Gekko asks him why he wanted to talk, he also measures his blood pressure and explains that he needs to keep an eye on it.
Bud tells Gekko that he's always admired him, and Gekko asks him whether his firm is doing well. When Bud makes some business pitches, Gekko is unimpressed and wants to know what else he knows about the airport. Suddenly he receives a call and gets disappointing news, angrily yelling at the person on the other end of the line. When he hangs up, Bud tells him that Bluestar Airlines is covering up a crash, but doesn't tell Gekko that he knows this because his father works for the airline. Gekko is intrigued, takes Bud's card, but doesn't promise anything.
Back in his office, Bud solemnly sits down at his desk, before Marvin asks him how it went. "He saw right through me," says Bud, and Marvin assures him that there will be more opportunities. Harry Lynch comes out of his office and asks Bud where he's been for the last three hours, and warning him that he cannot miss so much work. After he leaves, Martin offers to bring Bud to the Knicks game that evening, but Bud insists that he wants to look at the charts that night. The two of them commiserate about their workplace, before getting back on the phones.
We see Gekko smoking a cigar and calling Bud on the phone, telling him to buy Bluestar stocks and becoming one of his clients. When he hangs up, Bud is elated, and tells Marvin, "I just bagged the elephant." Bud gets dinner with Gekko at a restaurant, and Gekko recommends that Bud have the steak tartare. After Bud orders an Evian, Gekko shows him a tiny television that he's giving his son, Rudy, who's "three years old and a technology freak." Gekko asks Bud how work was, then jokes that he probably did some illegal maneuvering after he left his office. When Bud doesn't bite, Gekko seems surprised, then hands Bud a check for a huge sum of money to buy some more stocks. He tells him what to buy, then tells him to get a decent suit at Morty Sills. Bud shakes Gekko's hand and makes a pleasantry, but Gekko tells him to "save the cheap salesman talk, it's obvious," before threatening Bud that he gets very angry when he loses money, but that Bud will get "perks" if he does well.
Analysis
The film starts off with a lighthearted tone. As Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" plays, we see the streets of New York City bustling with activity. People file in and out of elevators and down city streets, and the viewer is transported into the heavy traffic and bright lights of the big city. The pairing of city scenes with Frank Sinatra music evokes an archetypal and idealized version of New York, the one that Sinatra describes in another song when he sings, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere." There is a buzz of anticipation and excitement in these opening moments that pulls the viewer in almost immediately.
However idealized this image of New York may be, the film wastes no time in showing the rather ambivalent and specific position of the Wall Street stockbroker. The promise of New York, and particularly of finance, is that it is an elite place in which to "make it," but that one must make some requisite sacrifices in order to gain entry. When Bud enters the office, he answers his secretary's pleasantries with, "If I was doing any better, it would be a sin." Then, when he greets an older coworker, Dan, Dan tells him almost immediately that he ought to get out of the business while he still can. While his negative attitude is expressed glibly, Dan's proclamation that he came to work one day and before he knew it, he was older, is emblematic of the ambivalence surrounding the shark-like and tempestuous world of stockbroking.
Director Oliver Stone dramatizes the rather abstract and dry world of the stock market and depicts it as a fast-paced and vibrant stage, a snappy scene of smooth-talking and hot-headedness and equal measure. As the markets open up, at exactly 9:30 AM, we see the office erupt in activity. Traders speak quickly into the phone, some yelling, others speaking with a calm reserve of confidence. While the subjects of these conversations are obscure to the audience, the impression leaves us with a crisp and evocative aestheticization of 80s corporate culture. Paper litters the floor, the spoils of a high-intensity workplace.
Soon enough we see the psychological drama that dictates the dreams and ambitions of protagonist Bud Fox. His father, a working man who believes in making an honest buck at a blue-collar job, cannot understand his son's ambitions and wonders why he became a "salesman" rather than a doctor or a lawyer. This misrecognition motivates Bud even more; if he can ascend the corporate ladder, he can show his father once and for all that he's a mover and a shaker, not a pathetic wannabe.
In this first section, we meet Gordon Gekko, the epitome of Wall Street greed and success. He is smooth-talking and powerful, barely able to spare five minutes of his day, one minute yelling into the phone, the next calmly hanging up, the next measuring his blood pressure. So huge is Gekko's power in finance, that Bud will stop at nothing to get an interview with him, and will even hand over information that could impact his father's career in order to ascend the corporate ladder. Gekko represents all the power and influence that Bud so craves, as well as the ethical price he will have to pay in order to achieve it.
