Last night we went to see The Wolf of Wall Street. I had a conference call at 10pm our time so was trying to work out what time the film would end. In the rest of the world it is three hours long. Here it is two hours and twenty minutes.
“Why such a difference?” I asked Rupert as we pulled into the car park.
Yep, you guessed it. Censors. Sadly we realised too late.
And while the length was good for my business commitment, it was not good for the film. It was a mess. Several scenes made no sense. Several sentences were mangled as the censors tried to block out every single f*** (547 of them apparently). We felt robbed. And I knew there was more to it than what we had just seen. Partly because I’ve seen the trailer, but also because I know one of the Wall Street types the film portrays.
Brad, as I will call him, was at Durham University with me. He is American and immediately acquired a certain reputation as “loud”. Loud is an understatement. This boy could (and often did) wake up the entire city of Durham, roaming the streets in the early hours singing (and I use that term loosely) ‘you’ve got to FIGHT for your RIGHT to PAAARRRTTYYYYY’. He was my best boyfriend. And I mean boy friend. We share a birthday and, back then, we both had an overwhelming desire to party. Hard to believe I know, but I was wild in those days. Although not as wild as Brad. One of his most famous party tricks was to put his BMW on cruise control, tell me to steer, open the sunroof, climb out and then climb back in again through the window. All on the motorway, going at 90 miles an hour, in the freezing North-Eastern winter. He was also the only student I ever met who thought nothing of showing up at a party with a crate of champagne. My kind of guy. Where did he get the money to buy champagne? He convinced his parents back in the US that Thresher’s was the student book shop.
Sadly after just one fun-filled year he was thrown out of university. I missed him terribly, as did Thresher’s. He went to Wall Street and became even wilder. I remember visiting him, well actually I don’t remember that much of the visit, but there were stretch limos involved and I did feel like I was in a film. On another visit I was rather surprised to stumble over his pet alligator on the landing.
Brad never stopped fighting for his right to party. He also made a lot of money. But once Jordan Belfort gave the FBI and the SEC access to his little black book, the party was over.
Brad is fine, after a few rather harrowing years fighting for his right to stay out of jail. But one thing is certain, even now his life has a lot more spice than the version of the film I saw last night. I just hope he gets his passport back one day so his goddaughter Bea can finally meet him. Although she might quite like a trip to the US…