《华尔街之狼》与商业无关

    除了大家知道的经典作品，比如《门口的野蛮人》( Barbarians at the Gate)和《硅谷传奇》(Pirates of Silicon Valley)，还有一些电影为影迷们展现了大量真实的商业场景。2004年上映的电影《大公司小老板》(In Good Company)讲述了一位推销员的故事。这位老好人原本是《体育美国》杂志(Sports America )的一位印刷广告推销员，但在这家小媒体公司突然被Globecom公司并购后，他不得不向一位时髦花哨的年轻主管汇报工作。这部电影看上去好像是一段发生在托弗•格雷斯和斯嘉丽•约翰森之间的浪漫故事，但这种关系迅速终结，我们发现它其实讲述的是一个被行业整合大潮裹挟的老派商人试图维持经营的故事。那个欢闹的场景，也就是备受尊敬的“Teddy K!”（马尔科姆•麦克道威尔饰演）走进主管办公室，打算商量协作问题，原本应该比现在更广为人知。

    此外，威尔•史密斯2006年主演的《当幸福来敲门》(The Pursuit of Happyness)也是一部合格的商业电影。那部电影主人公也是一位股票经纪人，同样改编自一个真实故事——克里斯•加德纳在添惠公司(Dean Witter) 获得了一份宝贵的实习生工作，影片随即用几段很长的场景描述他竭尽全力向客户推销理财产品的过程：打电话，会面，奔赴旧金山49人橄榄球队比赛现场，加德纳采用了他能够采用的一切方式。就连P.T. 安德森在2007年执导的史诗巨制《血色将至》(There Will Be Blood)也比《华尔街之狼》更加关注构建一家企业的机理。丹尼尔•戴-刘易斯饰演的丹尼尔•普莱恩维尤在一个城镇构筑起自己的石油帝国，并为此付出了一切：影片结束时，独居在豪宅的主人公变成了一位悲惨的杀人凶手，他躺在自己保龄球馆的地板上，厉声呼喊自己的管家（他受到的惩罚似乎要比《华尔街之狼》中的贝尔福特可怕得多）。《悬而未决》(Up in the Air)则讲述了一位解雇专员的故事。这部影片用大量的放映时间逼真地描述了主人公在解雇员工时遭遇的艰辛世事，非常敏锐地直面了裁员这个社会问题。

    不管你如何评价《华尔街之狼》和它对奢靡生活的礼赞——走向电影院时，请不要期望可以观赏到一个讲述华尔街之贪婪和公司之恶行的故事。这部电影非常忠实于贝尔福特的原著，这本书同样更加侧重于享受财富的过程，而不是他获得这些财富的方式。所以，“低价股”一词在这本书中仅出现了8次，而“可卡因”和“安眠酮”各自出现了大约——50次，绝不是出于偶然。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒   

    In addition to the classics you know, like Barbarians at the Gate and Pirates of Silicon Valley,there are other modern movies that do give viewers a lot of actual business. In Good Company,from 2004, was about a good-guy salesman pushing print ads for Sports America who suddenly has to answer to a flashy young suit when the little media company gets bought out by Globecom. The movie looks like a romance between Topher Grace and Scarlett Johansson, but that relationship ends fast, and we see the real story is an old-school businessman trying to stay afloat through consolidation in a struggling industry. The hilarious scene in which much-revered "Teddy K!" (Malcolm McDowell) visits the office to discuss synergy ought to be more famous than it is.

    Will Smith's 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness, too, is a legitimate business flick, also about a stockbroker, also based on a true story: When Chris Gardner lands an internship at Dean Witter we get long scenes of Gardner busting his butt to sell to clients any way he can: by phone, in person, at a 49ers game. Even P.T. Anderson's 2007 epic There Will Be Blood is more concerned with the mechanics of building a business than Wolf is. Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview builds his oil empire one town at a time, and it costs him everything: At the end he is a miserable murderer alone in his giant house, lying on the floor of his bowling alley, screaming for his butler. (His punishment, it seems, is much more dire than Belfort's in Wolf.) Up in the Air,about a corporate downsizer, devotes large chunks of screen time to the gritty reality of its protagonist's work firing people and is sensitive to the human toll.

    Say what you will about The Wolf of Wall Street and its celebration of excess -- just don't head to the theatre looking for a story of Wall Street greed and corporate mischief. The movie stays pretty true to Belfort's book, which is also more focused on the wealth than on how he got it. It's no accident that the phrase "penny stock" appears in the book only eight times. "Coke" and "'ludes?" About 50 times each.