Over the Christmas holiday, I saw Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which tells the true story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the drug-addicted stockbroker who made millions defrauding investors, laundering money, and manipulating the market. I also saw the buzzy new production of Macbeth at the Lincoln Center Theater (reviewed in these pages by Kevin Williamson in January). While Macbeth is undone by his ambition, and loses everything in his pursuit of power, including his own life, Jordan Belfort’s story unfolded quite differently.
Belfort was born in 1962 and grew up in Bayside, Queens, the son of two Jewish accountants. His mother wanted nothing more than for Jordan to become a doctor. But on the day of his medical boards, Belfort overslept “because [he] had done too many drugs the night before.” So he found his way to dental school where he learned, on the first day of classes, that the “golden age of dentistry was over and not to expect to become rich.” With that, he abandoned the molars and incisors and, after some fits and starts, found his way to Wall Street. In the late Eighties, he founded Stratton Oakmont, the brokerage firm where he made millions in a pump-and-dump scheme.
Belfort would stand before his Strattonites, as he called his workers, and motivate them with speeches.
In those heady days, Belfort would stand before his Strattonites, as he called his workers, and motivate them with speeches. “Twice a day,
