The Wolf of Wall Street On Christmas Day: The Wolf, Sheep & Goats: Matt 25:31-46

• Rev. Jeff Grant 1 week ago
  We have the first ministries in the US to support the families of persons accused or convicted of white-collar and other nonviolent crimes. As see it, the biggest tragedy of all about white-collar and nonviolent crime is not how big the matter is, or sensationalized the headlines – it is in our failure to see it as a human story, with real people, real brokenness, and real families left behind. I went to prison for a white-collar crime myself, so I am especially concerned that this movie does nothing to help.

  Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div
  Director, Progressive Prison Project/ Innocent Spouse & Children Project
  Christ Church Greenwich
  254 East Putnam Avenue
  Greenwich, Connecticut 06830 USA

  Assoc. Minister /
  Director of Prison Ministries
  First Baptist Church of Bridgeport
  126 Washington Avenue, 1st Fl.
  Bridgeport, Connecticut 06604
  progressiveprisonproject.org

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  Mark Hughes, Contributor 1 week ago
  I think the film actually does an excellent job of balancing the need to make clear the personal responsibility of the people involved and how widespread such behavior is — and our need to definitely stop it and hold those guilty responsible — with the need to show the human side of the equation in terms of the lives left shattered by those responsible for these crimes and the human side of the lives of the criminals themselves.

  There’s no point in trying to pretend they didn’t do terrible, selfish, cruel things that caused a great deal of damage to so many other people’s lives, while also causing trauma and suffering in their own families. The film doesn’t shy away from that at all, while also clearly showing that these folks committing these crimes were not some sort of pure Bond-villain evil incarnations lacking any potential for redemption and feelings of guilt and pain over what they did.

  That many of them chose to give up on redemption, or attempted to “earn” redemption without fully accepting responsibility for the damage they caused, is their choice of course and very unfortunate. It’s pretty important to remember that the people involved in these crimes suffered relatively short sentences at comfortable facilities and in some cases have paid very little of the money back — they made hundreds of millions of dollars, lived very elite, privileged lives for a long time at the great expense of other people, and then when caught and punished for years of broken laws they got off pretty easy while our prisons are stuffed to the gills with nonviolent drug offenders suffering terrible conditions, abuse, and years in prison for crimes that didn’t really harm anyone else the way these white collar criminals exploited and robbed so many people. When considering the broken lives and families left behind in these particular cases, let’s not forget that the vast majority of lives damaged by these events were the large numbers of people robbed of their life savings or of large portions of their income by the guilty parties in this story.

  It’s possible to demonstrate the ugly truth of what happened, the larger message about what it reflects about our society and our priorities, the shocking problem of lack of true accountability in such situations, and the human stories about all of the people harmed and exploited by these criminals, but also present the criminals themselves as human beings who did often experience a wide array of emotions and pain during the course of the pain they caused others. It’s a very complex story, and this film absolutely represents that complexity in remarkable fashion. A very strong indication of how well it presents the humanity of the story and even of the most guilty parties is the fact that many people have made the mistake of interpreting it as “glorifying” or “justifying” their actions, claims that are not remotely accurate but stem from misunderstanding about the film’s excellent portrayals and strong balance of the human stories involved.

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• Rev. Jeff Grant 1 week ago
  Mr. Hughes, sincere thanks for your sincere and thoughtful words – truly the kind of message we try to impart in our ministries. Ours is exactly the kind of conversation that is important if we are ever going to be real thought leaders, and on-the-ground change agents, in what you rightly point out as a complex problem. But it in this complexity, perhaps the first steps are always about commitment to, as the late Michael Jackson said, “take a look at yourself and then make a change.” He wasn’t the first to note this:

  “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” Matt. 25:41-43
  Let’s take a brief look at what the The Wolf of Wall Street has shown us thus far:

  On Christmas Day. On Christmas Day…. Coming to a theater near you, On Christmas Day.

  We’ve seen these commercials on television and on the Internet for months. Leonardo Dicaprio – arms flung wide open in full Christ the Savior flagrenti delicto – announcing to the World that The Wolf of Wall Street is Coming to a theater near you on Christmas Day.

  Doesn’t this disturb you somehow? It sickens me.

  And millions of people will line up to see the spectacle. But there is no crown of thorns in Mr. Scorsese’s Christmas message, no rapture, no risen Christ and message of hope. Just a lot of greedy second rate hustlers who stole a lot of people’s money, and Hollywooders who will make even more off of it – without returning one nickel to the victims.
  On Christmas Day.

  Well here’s another Hollywood message Mr. Scorsese – in the words of Howard Beal: We’re Mad as Hell, and We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore!
  Well, you know that’s not exactly true – we’re going to take it plenty. We’re going to line up and watch this sordid and exagerated tale, take schadenfreude in the downfall of your caricatures, and read sycophant reviews about brilliance and humanitarianism as you all collect your golden statuettes.

  It is not our job to judge you (although judged we all shall be). But we do have a suggestion for everybody who is able…
  Instead of going to a movie and checking out on Christmas Day, why not go into your own heart and open it, start really speaking to your partner, friend or a family member about the things you feel and need to say, knock on your child’s door and get down on the floor and play with him, read the real Christ story out loud with your family and share the reasons that Jesus brings the message of hope and renewal into our lives, find a family whose father, mother, son or daughter is in prison and invite them into your home, implore your church or faith institution to start an “in-reach” program for people in your own neighborhood who are suffering in silence, and start recognizing that we are all the same.

  We live, we make mistakes and God gives us the opportunity to live second, more faithful lives- whether fallen “Wall Street” hedge funders or South Central gang bangers. We are all fragile people bonded by our brokenness.

  On Christmas Day.

  Blessings,
  Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div
  Director, Progressive Prison Project/ Innocent Spouse & Children Project
  Christ Church Greenwich
  254 East Putnam Avenue
  Greenwich, Connecticut 06830 USA
  Assoc. Minister /
  Director of Prison Ministries
  First Baptist Church of Bridgeport
  126 Washington Avenue, 1st Fl.
  Bridgeport, Connecticut 06604 USA
  our website:
  progressiveprisonproject.org

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• Cinders 5 days ago
  Bologna. It’s the worst movie (or one of the worst) I have ever seen. The more he (Scorsese) uses sex and drugs, the more I know he doesn’t have a well-constructed story. He needs to have a lot of therapy, THEN make another movie.
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  Mark Hughes, Contributor 3 days ago
  Then I’d just say you need to do more assessing of what constitutes a well-constructed story. If sex an drugs in a film depicting literal true events offends you, that’s different from whether or not the story itself is well-made. Scorsese’s films are realistic depictions of the worlds about which he tells stories, many of them (most, in fact, for the last many years) based on actual events. These are great films, and that doesn’t change just because some viewers are too offended by the reality of the events depicted. That so many people wrongheadedly also seem to think the films are endorsing the behavior further demonstrates how far from accurate are those viewer’s perceptions of what constitutes a well-constructed story.
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• Stacy Wilde 4 days ago
  I don’t know who the “we” is in your article “We almost seem to admire it, and the film is subtly telling us this is why the excess exists, and why it is punished so modestly — not merely because those with the power are addicted to it and abuse it, but because the vast majority of the rest of us allow it to go on and on some level imagine that perhaps we’ll be invited to the party, too.”I have to wonder about the writer of this article who feels that the vast majority of us want to be invited to that kind of party. The vast majority of people I know could never live with themselves for a minute if they did what these people did in real life. There are many articles on line by people who were directly affected by this gang of thieves, one mans daughter who’s family was completely destroyed, investors who lost everything, agents who spend years of their lives trying to nail these guys. All I know is any time I’ve ever been sent over even as little as a drink at a bar in downtown NY by a group of these kind of hustlers I refuse the drinks, as my girlfriends do too because we find these kinds of men disgusting. We’ll make our own way and our own money in this world with hard work and integrity and a with good decent man beside us with a strong moral compass. What’s Marty’s point in that scene towards the end of the film with the agent on the subway who busted Jordan now reflecting on his ride home , he’s taken down all these crooks but he’s still “sweating his balls off riding the subway” one of Jordan’s lines to him when they first meet. He’s the only appealing character in the film, he’s the hero. He’s who I admire in the film. I’d be the one sending him a drink at a bar, hoping he’d accept.
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  Mark Hughes, Contributor 3 days ago
  The “we” is the broad public in general who too often seem to admire precisely this sort of behavior, even while they often also pretend not to. It includes the rather large number of people who DO engage in precisely that sort of partying, the large number who excuse that kind of behavior, and the large number who don’t do it or openly excuse it but who on some level are jealous of it. If you don’t think those people exist, then you’re mistaken.
  To interpret this as an endorsement of the events is to entirely miss the point of what I actually said, and of what the film actually says. These things happened, and they kept happening and continue to happen in different ways while our government and courts and society allow it to happen and express little outrage unless/until it directly personally affects them in a directly personally negative way. When we go about our lives letting this happen so often and doing little or nothing to stand up against it or demand it stop, then it’s going to keep happening and we will have our own measure of guilt and blame for it. That doesn’t remotely erase the guilt and blame of those who are directly responsible for it, but shaking our heads and pretending it only happens because of immoral hustlers — rather than because the system allows it and the public largely does nothing to indicate we care — is willful blindness to the reality of what happened and why.
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• Rev. Jeff Grant 3 days ago
  Mr. Hughes, I’ve been following The Wolf of Wall Street online comments & replies closely, and I have a couple of things to add that might be helpful.

  You end your article by stating that this movie “is a film that speaks to our times.” In my experience, this is simply not the case. We have supplied spiritual support to many people accused or convicted of white-collar crimes and/or their families – the events portrayed in this movie have nothing to do with current themes that these families have experienced and are going through. However, this all did cause me to retrace some of my own personal experiences in the 1970′s that led up to own imprisonment for a white-collar crime. I have posted an excerpt on my blog at progressiveprisonproject.org, “Last Stop Babylon: What It Was Really Like Growing Up On Long Island.” Feel free to let me know what you think.

  Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div
  Director I Progressive Prison Project I Innocent Spouse & Children Project
  Christ Church Greenwich, 254 East Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT 06830 USA
  Assoc. Minister I Director of Prison Ministries I First Baptist Church of Bridgeport
  progressiveprisonproject.org

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  Mark Hughes, Contributor 2 days ago
  When I talk of the film’s themes speaking to our times, it’s important to remember that in any story there are different perspectives and different themes being presented. Some films about these issues will specifically focus on the experiences of the criminals themselves, others will focus on the experiences of the people being victimized by crime, still others will focus on the suffering of families and loved ones of either/both the criminals and victims, and at other times the story will focus on how the events speak to a larger theme in our society. “The Wolf Of Wall Street” touches on all of these things, but the recurring theme and major point of the film is about the failures of our economic, political, and social systems as they’ve created an environment in which the criminality shown in the film is so common and in fact encouraged, and where the violations of law and morality are largely overlooked as long as financial success can be had.

  It’s a culture of excess and pervasive exploitation, and the film draws our attention to the fact that the excesses we see in the film are frankly minor compared to widespread, bigger corruption that engulfs financial and political institutions in our nation in the last several years. Our reaction as a nation, as citizens, has largely been to complain and act angry, but to ultimately do little about it in any significant regard. Compare the film’s examples of financial corruption with what happened in the recent financial collapse, for example. In the end, the punishments for the film’s main character were minor and he was treated to overall safe, comfortable conditions, then he was released and now is able to engage in a new career that largely mirrors his past career, too.

  While we consider the human stories involved — which definitely get attention in the film — we cannot lose sight of the basic blunt truths that these actions harmed people, and those actions were taken willingly by the people involved, and they all felt our society and economic systems made it okay and even encouraged it to some extent. A lot of people suffer when this kind of large, widespread corruption takes place, and the film is showing us that there are important lessons here that reflect major problems in our society as a whole and that threaten the safety and fabric of our financial institutions, and we ignore those warnings at our peril.

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• Bill Franklin 3 days ago
  Sex, drugs, avarice, unbridled greed? Did not bother me at all. Sheer monotony of story line is what bored me to death, not to mention almost three hours in the pew seat. Goodfellas? One of the best movies ever. Stylistically this Wolf was a lousy knockoff of Henery’s cocaine induced stupor in Goodfellas. Mr. S, your done draw the curtain and retire, please.
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Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div
Director, Progressive Prison Project/
Innocent Spouse & Children Project