Great Scenes: “Wall Street”

It’s one of the more infamous monologues in movie history: The “greed is good” speech from the 1987 movie Wall Street.

The setting: The annuals shareholder’s meeting for a corporation called Teldar. The speaker: Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) who has been allowed to take the floor to make his pitch to the shareholders against the current corporate leadership represented by Cromwell (Richard Dysart). This monologue, along with the rest of the script, was written by Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone. Here is the script version of the scene:

Here’s the movie version of the scene:

A powerful monologue and a tour de force performance by Michael Douglas.

For more articles in the Great Scene series, go here.