About Entertainment – Magazine – Greed is good

About Entertainment – Magazine –

Green, for want of a better word, is the monitor colour of choice

One of the 1980s’ most glorious villains, corporate raider Gordon Gekko, is coming back to the big screen in a Wall Street sequel. He’s one of a long line of baddies that Hollywood takes from the world of business.

Despite being a big money business in itself, Hollywood regularly takes a dim view of those from the world of business.

In countless movies, business leaders are portrayed as at best, dull and driven, and at worst, cruel, manipulative villains.

Stock characters like the evil property developer and the ruthless boss litter the silver screen.

With his slicked back hair, braces, and shark-like smile, Gordon Gekko was the film baddie of the 1980s. Audiences revelled in his pithily propounded ruthlessness.

Greed – for lack of a better word – is good Gordon Gekko Gekko crawls back to Wall Street

Named after a lizard, the corporate raider played by Michael Douglas was loosely based on Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and half a dozen other financial miscreants of the 1980s. He is a corporate raider intent on buying companies and selling off their assets, and he sees a protege in young Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen.

His piece-de-resistance as a film baddie comes in his "greed is good" speech to the shareholders of Teldar Paper, which he is hoping to take over.

"I am not a destroyer of companies, I am a liberator of them… Greed – for lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right, greed works.

"Greed clarifies cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit."

And he beautifully summed up the fundamentalist work ethic with his maxim: "Lunch is for wimps."

But the battle in the film is not between the capitalism of Gekko and the anti-capitalism of his opponents. The battle is between two forms of capitalism – a ruthless, super-ambitious version advocated by Gekko and the softer, slower, more traditional type practised by his victims.

Of course, as with so many charismatic film baddies, it’s hard not to love him at least a little bit. Wall Street screenwriter Stanley Weiser has remarked on the way young people who speak to him about the movie frequently see Gekko as a hero.

If Gekko has a spiritual father in the movies it is Mr Potter, the baddie in It’s A Wonderful Life.

George Bailey (middle) – the acceptable face of capitalism

In the "good" corner is George Bailey who runs his savings and loan company with the primary aim of helping the people of the town of Bedford Falls, rather than pure profit.

In the "bad" corner is Potter who wants to take over the savings and loan outfit and stop its frivolous lending. He represents greed untrammelled by feeling for the community. Eventually Potter goes as far as stealing $8,000 in an effort to destroy Bailey.

Again, the film is about the battle between a moderate, people-centred version of capitalism and a more brutal, unkind variety.

Noah Cross is a truly despicable creation, played by John Huston in Roman Polanski’s classic Chinatown.

Noah Cross (left): Nasty in business and no home-maker either

His financial evil-doing involves cutting off water supplies to agricultural land by sabotage, and then buying plots up cheap.

But this pales in comparison to what he has done to his own family, fathering a child by his daughter and then trying to malevolently control their lives.

Huston carries off the strident, bullying persona of Cross perfectly. Cross wins because of the apathy and greed of people less villainous than himself.

The James Bond movies contain many examples of legitimate businessmen who don’t know when to stop. They’re not satisfied by making billions. Instead, they start fitting out henchmen with matching jumpsuits and building an underground base.

Blond ambition: Max Zorin went too far in eliminating the competition

Hugo Drax (Moonraker) followed up a successful career in aerospace with an unsuccessful attempt to wipe out the population of the earth. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me) followed up a successful career in shipping with an unsuccessful attempt to wipe out the population of the earth.

By their standards, Max Zorin’s scheme to flood Silicon Valley by causing a massive earthquake – and thereby remove rivals to his microchip business – is rather modest. But there is something about Zorin, played by a bleached blond Christopher Walken, that propels him into the great business baddie pantheon.

His backstory as the product of a Nazi eugenics experiment, his dastardly antics on an airship, his racehorse doping and his all-female bodyguard unit all make him stand out.

The financial misbehaviour of these two ageing commodities brokers, played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, is unforgivable. Gordon Gekko’s overweening ambition might be explained at least in part by his relative youth.

But the Dukes scheme to make a killing on orange futures by getting insider information on the harvest is harder to forgive in two representatives of a more gentlemanly age of trading.

And of course, their destruction of the young Winthorpe – played by Dan Aykroyd – is just for fun.

Charles Foster Kane: more megalomaniacal than malicious

The protagonist of Citizen Kane is interested in power, more than money. And not just power over peers or of a political nature, but power in his personal relationships.

As far as villains go, he’s a fairly ambiguous sort. Kane causes unpleasantness for some of those in his life, but for the most part he isn’t driven by malice. But his publishing of stories that aren’t true to boost newspaper sales hardly paints him as a hero of business.

Ultimately the person who suffers most from his machinations is himself, as he dies unhappy despite all his wealth and success.

When a share price is reliant on a new invention being made to work so a big military contract can be fulfilled, it’s understandable that you might be willing to cut corners.

Those corners should obviously not extend to experimenting with a dangerous serum, killing the chief scientist and then wiping out the board of directors with grenades. That is well outside the Cadbury Rules .

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