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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

I'm highly suspicious that most of wolf of wall street was complete bullshit, that was fed as a true story.

The guy made loads of money from lying. Why would we trust him about some sort of crazy rich man's lifestyle story that almost perfectly stereotypes what a crazy evil wall street boiler room guy would do.

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The story, in fact, was mostly bullshit. It was being "narrated" by Belfort (DiCaprio) all along, and the mere presence of some very obviously outlandish/fickle claims serve to establish the unreliability and narcissism of the narration.

For example, at the start of the movie, he talks of driving a red Ferrari, and immediately changes it to white [1].

Another example is the 400lb bench press [2].

I also saw an interpretation on how Scorsese sought to present money and opulence as the ultimate salvation. So it only made sense to write the gospel in a way that extended that narrative. [3]

Edit: Formatting

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/bvt20s/in_the...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8

The third link you posted seems to be the same as the first?

Some of the scenes in the story were based in truth but were pulled from other Wall Street scandals. For example, the little person tossing depicted in the opening scene[1] did indeed happen[2] - at Fidelity. And the SEC took action.[3][4] The scandal is more or less responsible for the heavy gift and entertainment regulation in the mutual fund industry.

[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8

[2]https://money.cnn.com/2005/11/04/news/newsmakers/fidelity_pa...

[3]https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/business/06fidelity.html

[4]https://www.reuters.com/article/fidelity-trader-idUSN0818028...

The movie box-officed $400M which alone probably exceeds how much Stratton Oakmont earned, let alone streaming, etc. Scorsese's whole thing is to sell you on some despicable figure, but really the movie is portraying a very glamorized version of Belfort's already extremely inflated version of reality - the fact that this guy was played by DiCaprio is already a big departure into fantasy-land.

I knew is was BS because I used to trade penny stocks and the volume was too tiny and illiquid, especially in the 80s, to actually make as much money as these guys were claiming.

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