Jeffrey Epstein emails Peggy Siegal about a proposed "Wall Street 2" story

From: Jeffrey Epstein [[email protected]] Sent: 1/12/2010 12:28:25 AM To: Peggy Siegal Subject: Re: My Wall Street 2 Story terrific. i want to hear more about the trip On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Peggy Siegal wrote: Wrote this for the February issue of AVENUE Magazine. Thought it would amuse you. Tell me what you think of it. xoxo Peggy HD: Wall Street, Take Two DEK: In the upcoming sequel to Oliver Stone's groundbreaking film, Gordon Gekko gets out of jail and back to business. Peggy Siegal takes us behind the scenes where she got herself on camera along with a few of her famous friends. Nice work if you can get it. In 1987, right after director Oliver Stone won the Academy Award for "Platoon," he immediately turned to a domestic arena and began working on "Wall Street" in New York City where his father had been a stockbroker. Although the film was widely seen as a scathing critique of the culture of Wall Street, Stone has said that part of the film is a defense of capitalism, his father's vision of finance (as seen through the Hal Holbrook character) and an homage to his father. At the time Oliver was also fascinated with the connection between the psyche of Latino Miami drug dealers from his earlier "Scarface" script and the American-born 28- to 35-year-old, white collar stockbrokers. Both groups had an animalistic need to obtain big and fast money. They shared an obsession with corruption and greed. Oliver sent his actors to Bear Stearns for research, including then-newcomer Charlie Sheen, who played Bud Fox, a kid from nowhere. When he learns to cold call, and lands one big client, Gordon Gekko, Fox is thrust into the fast lane with a rock star financial mentor who teaches him corruption. Oliver needed an old-fashioned villain to create drama, and he cast Michael Douglas as Gekko against type. Michael was not known as a heavy at the time, but as a charming, handsome, sensitive leading man. Oliver also saw the anger, confidence, salesmanship and style that Michael brought to the role. Michael's Gekko looked a bit like Laker's coach Pat Riley with his slicked back hair and well-cut suits, and it became Michael's most important role, winning him the Academy Award for the villain no one could ever forget. HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032005When Gekko delivers his speech, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works," cinematic history was made. "Wall Street" was set in 1985, a time before ten financial news networks broadcasting 24/7 existed. The entire financial services industry was largely unknown and Oliver Stone nailed it. Four years ago, Wall Street's producer Ed Pressman decided it was time for a sequel and met with Fox Film Entertainment co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos. Michael Douglas was immediately on-board pending script approval. Steven Schiff wrote the first script before the global economic crash of 2008 rendered it obsolete. Alan Loeb was brought in for a rewrite. Pressman asked me to meet Loeb at the Carlyle Hotel to explain the social rhythms of New York's financial high society. Whereas Gekko's character was modeled after '70s junk bond kings (Michael Milken) and '80s mergers and acquisitions killers (Henry Kravis), Loeb bases the new villain on hedge fund billionaires like John Paulson and Mike Novogratz, geniuses who have created stratospheric wealth beyond Gordon Gekko's wildest dreams. When Oliver Stone agreed to direct, he rewrote a portion of the script to focus on bankers as well as hedge funders, taking no screen credit. This past September, Oliver yelled, "action" as Gordon Gekko, with long grey hair, comes back to life as he emerges from a lengthy prison stint shot outside of Sing Sing in Ossining, New York. Gekko is desperate to redefine himself in a different era. The New York Post runs a full-page photo of Gekko and New Yorkers immediately become obsessed with the filming of Wall Street 2. A week into shooting, a glorious fall day. Ed Pressman invites me on the set at the Central Park Zoo. Oliver designs an elaborate tracking shot around the seal pool where Gekko, fresh from jail, walks and talks to Jake Moore, a young idealistic investment banker played by Shia LaBoeuf. They discuss Gekko's daughter Winnie, Moore's fiancée, played by Carrie Mulligan, who is also having an off-screen romance with LaBoeuf. Oliver played Cupid. Moore invites Gekko to the Alzheimer's Ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gekko, who used to be a sponsor or honoree of such events, cannot even afford a ticket. The shot starts with a barking seal jumping for fish, then pans down to the actors. Extras weave in and out. In one take Michael makes a wrong turn and ends up at the monkey house. Everyone laughs. The atmosphere on the set is courteous but quick and tense. There is pressure when you are making a sequel to a hit. I watch the action on monitors while sitting on the producers' canvas chairs with Pressman, Eric Kopeloff ("Monsters Ball") and Celia Costas, who was a location manager on the first "Wall Street." They have asked me to be an extra in the Alzheimer's Ball scene and bring some friends to play rich Upper East Side socialites. Oliver wants over the top glam, go-to-the-vault jewels and couture gowns. "Give me the night before the Titanic goes down," were his exact words. Not a problem. I pay a quick visit to Michael in his trailer on Fifth Avenue where he is resting. We go way back. I was his personal publicist when he won the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actor for "Wall Street" and we have remained great friends. Gekko is just as challenging for him the second time because of endless pages of technical financial dialogue. We discuss Catherine Zeta-Jones' Broadway debut in a "Little Night Music." Michael has a stack of partially finished handwritten thank you notes next to him for gifts received for their shared birthday party on September 25th at the St. Regis. Her 40th and his 65th. HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032006I tell him I have been cast as an extra in two scenes and he laughs knowing I am desperate to hang around him and the production. 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 21st, another warm, stunning fall day. I report to the wardrobe trailer on 65th Street and Madison Avenue. I carry four elaborate cocktail dresses and bags of matching accessories. My hair is in rollers. Statuesque Julia Koch walks over from her Park Avenue apartment carrying her white Valentino and long diamond earrings. Her real-life financial titan husband David is unaware where she is this morning. Vanity Fair's keeper of the Best Dressed List, Amy Fine Collins, arrives totally organized in turquoise vintage Geoffrey Beene, and Vogue's fashion editor Hamish Bowles wears a riot of plaids, patterns and a large yellow fake flower on his lapel. Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick, who created Gordon Gekko's rich slick look in the first film, is ecstatic with the extras I invited. Oliver is shooting a scene with Josh Brolin (the star of Stone's "W"). His character Bretton (never Bret) James, a ruthless Wall Street kingpin, and his perfect wife Samantha (Noelle Beck) are hosting a benefit piano recital for a 13-year-old child prodigy in their huge, art-filled townhouse at 41 East 65th Street. The building actually belongs to Baby Jane Holzer, a wealthy art collector still famous for hanging with Andy Warhol in the '60s. The production designer had Jane's fabulous Warhols moved to storage and replaced with matching photographic copies. Very expensive contemporary art is again an important production element of Oliver's vision. At 10:30 a.m., all the extras are placed around the living room set. Oliver's French mother, Jacqueline Stone, and her friend Monique Van Vooren, both in their 80s, are seated in front of the fireplace chatting in French. Production assistants fuss over them. Debonair macho man Chuck Pfieffer, who appeared in the original film, and I immediately invent a back story—I am his corporate wife—and we position ourselves on a couch next to the director's mother. Julia gets the best spot close to the piano and Amy, Hamish and decorator Geoffrey Bradfield are right behind her. Josh is brought in and the kibitzing stops. Oliver appears on the set with eagle eyes and a sly grin and quickly re-positions everyone. He explains the scene, gives out lines to his favored extras, and on his way out to the monitors in the next room mentions that my earrings are too small. Wardrobe jumps. Josh rehearses and Oliver finally yells, "Action." The kid plays the piano, Josh explains why we are in his home, asks for money, the camera dollies as extras say their lines and Shia appears at the door uninvited for a confrontation with Josh. Three hours later a PA yells, "Lunch". In costume, Amy, Hamish and I run to The Monkey Bar. I am late to meet "The Harpies," including Liz Smith, Barbara Walters, Cynthia McFadden, Nora Ephron, Jennifer Isham, Maury Perl and Beth Kseniak. Graydon Carter is at the next table. I tell him Oliver Stone wants him in "Wall Street 2" as an extra. (I make this up.) Graydon jokes that he only works with lines. I say, "Not a problem." (This will be news to Oliver.) Back on the set I tell Oliver that Graydon is willing to be in the film with lines. Oliver finds that intriguing. Oliver shoots the piano recital scene over and over again from different angles all afternoon. Financial wizard Don Marron saunters on the set to visit and Oliver spontaneously puts him in a scene chatting with Josh. Carrie Mulligan hangs out watching boyfriend Shia work. At sundown Julia Koch has to race from reel to real life and explain to her husband where she has been all day. (He loves it.) HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032007Chuck Pfieffer plants a "Page Six" item and the next day socialites begin calling me to get into the film. Thursday, November 5, Shun Lee Restaurant, West 65th Street Oliver shoots a crowded tight interior scene with Michael, Carrie and Shia, who are having an intimate Chinese dinner. Spontaneously, Oliver decides this is the perfect scene for Graydon Carter. After a flurry of calls, Graydon arrives on set, and playing himself, sashays by the table. Gekko jumps up to say hello and Graydon brushes him off with a few dismissive lines. Monday, November 9, 25 Broadway One hundred swells show up at the former Canard Shipping building, a massive Italianate hall, at the crack of dawn for the Alzheimer's Ball, a grand charity event. Susan Hess and I are chauffeured downtown with our Vera Wang gowns and report to the VIP extra holding area where we join Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia in a bespoke dinner jacket, journalist Christopher Mason, songstress Yanna Avis, photographer Kelly Klein, art dealer Larry Gagosian's girl friend Shala Monroque in see-through Rodarte, beauty executive Olivia Chantecaille, producer Lawrence Robins, author Jackie Weld Drake, Vogue film critic Joan Juliet Buck, fashion consultant Jill Fairchild, CNN's Felicia Taylor and Italian newsman Mario Calvo-Platero. Ellen Mirojnick and her costume department have assembled racks of the most expensive elaborate designer gowns and work at break neck speed styling while we wildly strip to our undies in a makeshift dressing area. Ellen pours me into a black tulle Marchesa with a enormous wired silver bow. Twenty hairdressers and make- up artists systematically work on 250 extras. A mile of tables are alternately filled with steaming coffee, fattening breakfast foods, hair sprays, mirrors, shoes and jewelry. It's a madhouse of excitement. We are led to the part of the set used for the cocktail reception and placed around Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen stand-ins. Charlie has been flown in from LA for half a day's work to reprise his original character. He is now the highest paid television actor commanding two million dollars an episode of "Two and a Half Men." Oliver arrives on the set greeting, examining, tweaking the shot and always pulling the prettiest girls closest to the camera. Michael and Charlie arrive from their trailers and run their lines as socials drift into their sight lines challenging their concentration on pages of dialogue. Oliver yells, "Action" as the extras aggressively jockey for face time. Charlie is not having an easy day and they do take after take. My corporate husband Chuck Pfieffer has gotten his real girlfriend Lisa Crosby in the film and my marriage has become a threesome. Sensing our concern of not making it onto the silver screen Oliver tells his first assistant director to seat a dinner table with Susan Hess, Jill Fairchild, Prince Dimitri, Chuck Pfieffer, Grace Meigher and Mario Calvo- Platero. He directs us to chat with each other turning left and right as the camera closely pans past our faces. Elsewhere on the set are John Buffalo Mailer, as Shia's character's best friend, Austin Pendleton, 94-year-old Eli Wallach and Natalie Morales. Also in this film are: the magnificent Frank Langella, as Shia's boss, who throws himself in front of a train early in the film, Susan Sarandon as Shia's real-estate broker mother, Sylvia Miles, who reprises her hilarious cameo as another real-estate agent and Jean Pigozzi as an international banker. Lunch is called at 4 p.m. and Michael Douglas takes seven heavily made-up and bejeweled women including HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032008Susan, Jill and me to a restaurant around the corner. Gordon Gekko hosts a hen party talking about children, schools, country houses and vacations. Back on the set Oliver is shooting the actual dinner. Assistant directors ask for volunteers to dance to the live music. Prince Dimitri twirls and dips Jackie Weld. Kelly Klein, in her own Karl Lagerfeld sheer black organza, watches from a table with scattered champagne glasses half-filled with apple juice along with her 86-year-old father, Tulley Rector. Charlie Sheen leaves for LA and Shia is very annoyed he was not introduced to his hero. Carrie Mulligan, costumed like Audrey Hepburn, chats with us between takes. The final set up is a long tracking shot of Josh Brolin and his wife as they triumphantly enter the ball. It is close to 9 p.m. and Lord William Astor arrives to pick me up for Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann's dinner for artists uptown. Oliver is introduced to William and delights in calling him Lord as he immediately moves him into the top of the shot and instructs him to tell Eli Wallach, "We must do lunch". Ever the proper English gentleman, William advises Oliver that Lords do not use American slang and improvises his own lines. The tracking shot continues for numerous takes following Josh and NoeIle as every VIP extra gets another shot at instant stardom with one-line greetings. At last, "It's a wrap" is screamed after 10 p.m. Prince Dimitri tells The Wall Street Journal it was, "a day of electrifying glamour," and "the longest gala of my life. I was in black tie for thirteen hours." November 25, Tommy Gun Salon, Ludlow Street, last day of shooting Donald Trump is on set at 7 a.m. ready for his close up. He is trying to make a mid-day departure on his jet from Teterboro with wife Melania and son Baron for Thanksgiving weekend in Palm Beach. Back in September, Oliver had invited Donald Trump to dinner at "21" to meet his leading men Josh and Shia so they could observe New York's most charismatic powerbroker in his natural environment. The scene is London so the grey skies are perfect. Gekko has moved abroad to make his financial comeback. The scene opens on the back of his head in a barber's chair as he watches the financial news on TV. The camera pulls back and Gordon Gekko is finally revealed as the powerful bull he once was in an exquisite suit and signature slicked-back hair. Donald Trump walks into the shop for a cut and the banter begins about the money market. From his chair, Donald leans into Michael and suggests a "comb over" like his famous do. Gekko, with a slight grin, says, "No thanks Donald, I am a gel man." The crew is yucking it up and Donald feels great. Paparazzi shoot the whole scene with long lenses from across the street. The unit publicist is helpless to keep this under wraps. Donald emerges, poses and gives interviews. Michael comes out, and the press think they have a scoop on the ending. Gekko is back in all his lovable titan splendor. Full-page photos of Michael and Donald run the next day in the tabloids. Never underestimate Oliver Stone's surprise endings. Twentieth Century Fox releases "Wall Street 2: The Money Never Sleeps" on April 23rd and it's got hit written all over it. -- *********************************************************** The information contained in this communication is HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032009confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of Jeffrey Epstein Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to [email protected], and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. HOUSE OVERSIGHT 032010 From: Jeffrey Epstein [[email protected]] Sent: 1/12/2010 12:28:25 AM To: Peggy Siegal Subject: Re: My Wall Street 2 Story terrific. i want to hear more about the trip On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Peggy Sicgal x wrote: Wrote this for the February issue of AVENUE Magazine. Thought it would amuse you. Tell me what you think of it. xoxo Peggy HD: Wall Street, Take Two DEK: In the upcoming sequel to Oliver Stone’s groundbreaking film, Gordon Gekko gets out of jail and back to business. Peggy Siegal takes us behind the scenes where she got herself on camera along with a few of her famous friends. Nice work if you can get it. In 1987, right after director Oliver Stone won the Academy Award for "Platoon,” he immediately turned to a domestic arena and began working on "Wall Street" in New York City where his father had been a stockbroker. Although the film was widely seen as a scathing critique of the culture of Wall Street, Stone has said that part of the film is a defense of capitalism, his father's vision of finance (as seen through the Hal Holbrook character) and an homage to his father. At the time Oliver was also fascinated with the connection between the psyche of Latino Miami drug dealers from his earlier "Scarface" script and the American-born 28- to 35-year-old, white collar stockbrokers. Both groups had an animalistic need to obtain big and fast money. They shared an obsession with corruption and greed. Oliver sent his actors to Bear Stearns for research, including then-newcomer Charlie Sheen, who played Bud Fox, a kid from nowhere. When he learns to cold call, and lands one big client, Gordon Gekko, Fox is thrust into the fast lane with a rock star financial mentor who teaches him corruption. Oliver needed an old-fashioned villain to create drama, and he cast Michael Douglas as Gekko against type. Michael was not known as a heavy at the time, but as a charming, handsome, sensitive leading man. Oliver also saw the anger, confidence, salesmanship and style that Michael brought to the role. Michael's Gekko looked a bit like Laker's coach Pat Riley with his slicked back hair and well-cut suits, and it became Michael’s most important role, winning him the Academy Award for the villain no one could ever forget. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_032005