Writer-director Oliver Stone is the son of Louis Stone, a well-known stockbroker who worked on Wall Street for 50 years. "The main motivation to make Wall Street was my father," Stone revealed. "He took me to the movies, and he would bemoan the lack of a good business movie... He always said there were no good business movies, because the businessman was always the villain."

"My dad was a very strong believer in Republican principles," said Stone. "He hated Roosevelt all his life. He really raised me with the hatred of Communists, so I very much saw the Vietnam War in that context, that it was us against the Commies."

"My father believed that America's business brought peace to the world and built industry through science and research, and that capital is needed for that. But this idea seems to have been perverted to a large degree. The Wall Street that my father worked in, the one I grew up around, is wholly different from that of today. There were no computers, they didn't trade in such volume, and there were no fixed commissions."

"I would never have cut the mustard on Wall Street," admitted the director. "I did poorly in economics - I got a C, and my mathematics were suspect. I lost on every stock I ever invested in... I began to resent money as the criterion by which to judge all things, and there grew to be a raging battle between my father and me about it. I found ways to throw away everything I had, which pissed my father off. 'Going into movies is crazy,' he would say. 'You aren't going to make a dime.'"

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When Charlie Sheen took the role of 'Bud Fox' in Wall Street, the 22-year-old actor knew little about shares, futures and commodities. "I didn't really care about the stock market. I didn't think it had any effect on my life," said Sheen. To prepare the actor for his role, director Oliver Stone asked Wall Street consultant Ken Lipper to design a six-week ''course'' that would expose Sheen to a cross section of the young traders who worked in the business.

"I had a few weeks to go on this crash course," Sheen said, "and I had to learn what these guys did in four years of business school." Realizing the impossibility of that assignment, Sheen said he shot for a general working knowledge of the financial world, "so when I spewed numbers or threw facts around, at least I could lessen my insecurity."

Charlie Sheen even wound up doing some costly "method investing" -- he sank $20,000 into the market. "It was a pretty good hunk of cash," he said. "I figured if I had something on the line, it would intensify my curiosity."

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