A Conversation with Jordan Belfort – HuffPost 9.26.14

Mike Ragogna: Jordan, given the fact that the movie had to be entertaining, how close did the movie The Wolf Of Wall Street come to the reality as presented in your book, and how well the Leo DiCaprio and the cast portrayed the players’ lives?

Jordan Belfort: In some respects, it was very accurate. In other respects, it was fictionalized. It’s hard to say a blanket statement because some things were wildly fictionalized and other things were dead-on balls-accurate. It’s a mixed bag, but over all, they really captured the feeling of what was going on really well. There’s some scenes like where I did the meeting and I’m going to leave the firm and then I say, “I’m staying, I’m not leaving, I’m staying,” that’s just pure fiction. I left. That’s an example of something that’s fictionalized, but it served the story and they want it to be exciting. I understand why it’s there. The first day on Wall Street I was a young kid, I wanted to make my clients money and the next scene I’m snorting coke in strip club. That’s stylized. It took like three years for me to go from being a good kid to the dark side. That sort of stuff. The scene in the boardroom, all the energy in there and the sales meetings, they were very accurate. They painted them up a little, there were things that we never did. I would never give the client the finger on the phone, no one’s ever snickering as we were calling, it’s not like that at all. And by the way, I’m not trying to make myself seem like a better guy, it’s just that you would never do that as a businessperson, as a motivator because it’s demotivating to tell people you’re robbing and cheating them. You would never do that. Some of the stuff like that that you’ll see in the movie is just meant to create an emotional response; it’s not really the way it was. But the stuff with the drugs and the parties, that was very accurate.