Martin Scorsese delivers his favorite shot from The Wolf of Wall Street
On the occasion of the film’s 10th anniversary, a look back at its best anecdotes.
Released at Christmas 2013, The wolf of Wall Street made a lot of noise: biggest public success of the career of Martin Scorsesealmost unanimous critical acclaim, record holder for pronunciation of the word “fuck“ in a fiction film, 5 Oscar nominations and the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy for Leonardo DiCaprio…
In February 2014, the actor participated, alongside screenwriter Terence Winter and Scorsese’s faithful editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, in a retrospective of DiCaprio/Scorsese films at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.
The discussion, reported by the site Vulture, quickly moved to the famous quaaludes scene. One of the bravery pieces of the film.
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In this epic three-hour fresco which recounts the rise and fall of trader Jordan Belfort in the world of finance in the 80s, DiCaprio, constantly playing in the red, takes kilos of various drugs over the course of crazy orgies.
At one point, Belfort and his best friend Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) take quaaludes, a powerful sedative capable of knocking out a horse. What follows is a crazy ten-minute scene where DiCaprio –who was inspired by a video of a drunk guy– crawls to try to get home, his body literally out of control…
“We were talking about Freedfrom the sequence with Ray Liotta trying to get to the hospital”says Winter. And Leo said: ‘Guys, if we tried to extend this scene, that would be great.'” But that’s not all: the sequence also contains Scorsese’s favorite shot of the entire film.
“Marty felt that the last part of the quaaludes scene, when Leo drags himself into his car and gets stuck in the door, had to be shot in wide shotsays Schoonmaker. When I saw the rushes, I asked him: ‘Don’t you want to make a big picture of it?’and he answered me: ‘No no no, all the feeling (humor) is there in this wide shot. It’s my favorite shot in the film, I want to keep it.’ And he was right.”
So this is Scorsese’s favorite shot of the Wolf of Wall Street : DiCaprio drugged, his foot in the door of his white Lamborghini:
Other anecdotes about the crazy filming of Wolf of Wall Street are to read here.
Here is its trailer:
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