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 The three-hour real-life tale of financial skullduggery and personal
excess has become the hottest screening ticket in town in the first
few days of its guild screenings, with Paramount turning away
viewers at SAG, AMPAS, DGA and WGA screenings that began on Saturday
afternoon and will continue all week in Los Angeles, New York, San
Francisco and London.
The studio is also rolling out the film to critics on a need-to-vote
basis, showing it to members of the Hollywood Foreign Press
Association and the New York Film Critics Circle ahead of their
voting deadlines, and scheduling additional screenings for other
critics' groups who will cast ballots in upcoming weeks.
Reviews are embargoed, but it's safe to say that early reaction has
been on the wildly positive side for Scorsese's take on the rise and
fall of stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a freewheeling, excessive and
wickedly funny 179-minute chronicle of sex, drugs, enormous wealth
and even more enormous misbehavior.
The most controversial praise for the film came from the
International Press Academy, a group of journalists formed in 1996
by Mirjana Van Blaricom, a former president of and defector from the
Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The group gave the "Wolf" five
nominations for their 18th annual Satellite Awards.
The curious thing about the nominations: IPA members hadn't been
invited to see the movie.
Did they vote for Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and
screenwriter Terence Winter because they thought they should, or
because they were hoping to up the star power at their March 9 show?
That's the conclusion drawn by Hitfix's Kris Tapley, who broke the
news that the IPA had nominated "Wolf" without seeing it.
Van Blaricom disputed that account in an interview with GoldDerby's
Tom O'Neil, claiming that she and 26 other IPA members had seen it
as guests of SAG members at a Saturday screening, and that many
members saw the film at other weekend screenings. AFTRA and SAG
members, she said, "are permitted to bring two guests and we go with
them. That way we get to see movies first."
Paramount, though, pointed out that the only SAG nominating
committee members were allowed to bring guests to the "Wolf of Wall
Street" screenings – and that only 20 nom-com members brought
guests, all of whom were known to the studio. "The IPA was not at
the SAG screening this Saturday," a Paramount rep flatly told TheWrap.
UPDATE: In an email to TheWrap, Van Blaricom claimed that she was
misquoted by O'Neil. "The International Press Academy who could
attend the SAG-AFTRA Film Society 'The Wolf of Wall Street'
screenings did so, and subsequently submitted their votes for the
film, resulting in enough votes for the film to be nominated," she
said.
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 O'Neil told TheWrap that he did not misquote Van
Blaricom, and that he "took careful notes" while she twice repeated
the specific numbers about how many IPA members attended the
screenings.
But regardless of how "Wolf" fared with Satellite voters, it seems
likely that the movie will also fare well among voters with
considerably more credibility.
Based on Monday night's Writers Guild screening (at which WGA
members were allowed to bring guests), Scorsese's big, bold and
excessive movie is the kind of last-minute entry that could impact
the awards race the way Quentin Tarantino's big, bold and excessive
"Django Unchained" did last December.
As a matter of record, I updated my predictions at
the Gold Derby website late Monday night to put Leonardo DiCaprio
and Jonah Hill into the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor
categories, respectively; to add Scorsese to my Best Director
predictions; and to move Terence Winter's screenplay into the second
spot, right behind "12 Years a Slave."
In a conversation with "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner that
followed Monday's WGA screening, Winter said that he wrote the
script in 2007, and that Scorsese had only one request: "Could I write it in the
style of 'Goodfellas?'"
"Marty sparked to the idea right away … that this could be a great
companion piece to 'Goodfellas' and 'Casino,'" he said.
In pre-production, Winter said, he sat in a room with Scorsese and
DiCaprio every day for a month, going over each line of the script.
"Didn't you get defensive?" asked Weiner.
Winter laughed. "Oh yeah," he said.
One thing he learned during that time: Don't get too technical.
"Marty and Leo didn't really understand it," he said of the details
of Belfort's financial transgressions, which sent him to federal
prison for securities fraud and money laundering. "I had to explain
what an IPO is to them about 90 times. And finally I said, 'All we
need to know is, they made $27 million in three hours.' And we put
that explanation in the film."
Winter said he spent a lot of time with Belfort, as did DiCaprio.
But while the writer heard what a great speaker Belfort could be,
none of his subject's legendary exhortations to his staff had been
filmed. So at one point, he said, he asked Belfort to deliver a new
speech.
"I asked him, 'If I could fill a room at CAA full of assistants and
young agents, could you [give a speech]?'"
Weiner cringed at the idea putting a motivational speaker in front
of a room of young agents. "Now, that's all they need over there,"
he said, laughing.
[By Steve Pond] |
