Before directing Wall Street, Oliver Stone directed Platoon in 1986, which earned Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Subsequently, Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser wanted to dramatize the fast paced and cutthroat world of Wall Street.
Early on, Stone had plans to connect his screenplay to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or The Great Gatsby, but co-writer Weiser suggested they devise their own story, and created the character Bud Fox. Stone was inspired by his own father's professional trajectory, as his father was an stockbroker during the Great Depression. In order to modernize the story to reflect the exceedingly greedy "yuppie" generation of the 1980s, the writers based the nefarious Gordon Gekko on three notable Wall Street heavy-hitters, including Carl Icahn, a corporate raider, Asher Edelman, an art dealer and financier, and Ivan Boesky.
With the help of cinematographer Bob Richardson, Stone sought to create a unique camera perspective that would reflect the cutthroat world of the characters. They wanted the camera itself to become a “predator,” says Richardson, so they would shoot scenes with a kinetic, fast-moving camera, to reflect the aggression of the respective scenarios. By contrast, scenes between Bud and his father Carl were shot stationary in order to represent the solidity of Carl's character and their relationship. In this way, Stone helped tell a psychological story using the camera, to contrast Bud's stable familial relationship with his chaotic professional one.
Additionally, Stone created a crash-course program with Wall Street trader Kenneth Lipper in order to get Charlie Sheen neck deep in the daily culture of young traders, to understand the lifestyle from the inside. Stone’s demand for depth of characterization also drove Douglas to dig deeper and push himself in the role, and the demand earned Douglas an Academy Award for Best Actor.
