Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987)
Gordon Gekko is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the 1987 film Wall Street and the antihero of the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, both directed by Oliver Stone. Gekko was portrayed by actor Michael Douglas, whose performance in the first film won him an Oscar for Best Actor.
Co-written by Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser, Gekko is claimed to be based loosely on arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, who gave a speech on greed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, real-life activist shareholder and corporate raider Carl Icahn and also Stone's own father Louis Stone. According to Edward R. Pressman, producer of the film, "Originally, there was no one individual who Gekko was modeled on," he adds. "But Gekko was partly Milken", who was the "Junk Bond King" of the 1980s, and indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud in 1989.
In 2003, the AFI named him number 24 of the top 50 movie villains of all time.
In 2008, Gordon Gekko was named the fourth richest fictional character by Forbes who attributed him with US$8.5 billion.
Gekko grew up on Long Island and went to City College of New York. His birthday is May 6, though his year of birth is unknown. His father was a salesman of electrical supplies who died of a heart attack at 49. He married Kate and had a son, Rudy, and a daughter, Winnie. Rudy committed suicide while in college because of Gordon's illegal activities. His on-again-off-again mistress is Darien Taylor, with whom he maintains a friendship. During the mid-1980s he had a rivalry with fellow corporate raider Sir Lawrence "Larry" Wildman, though the conversation between the two men clearly indicates that Larry is the wealthier of the two.
Gekko becomes rich in the 1970s through buying real estate, and soon turns his attention to corporate raiding. It turns out, however, that much of his wealth comes from a heavy reliance on insider trading. His tactics finally catch up with him in 1985 when his latest protègé, Bud Fox, is arrested for his role in their illegal trades and agrees to turn state's evidence against Gekko in return for a lighter sentence. On the strength of Fox's testimony, Gekko is convicted of multiple securities violations. He is sent to prison in 1990 for his crimes and is released in 2001, finding himself the only released ex-convict without anyone greeting him.
Quotes·Quotation by Gordon Gekko
Finance·Money
¶ Greed is good. [Finance·Money]
Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987)
¶ If you need a friend get a dog.
¶ Lunch? Lunch is for wimps.
¶ Money never sleeps pal.
¶ Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gekko
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