Back in December 2012, I was hired to play one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s office workers in the film "The Wolf of Wall Street". I was one of 200 guys who worked 15 hour days for a week under direction of Martin Scorsese. This was great for me as needed the income to make my SAG health insurance that year. It was also a great experience to be right there and get to observe Marty directing.
In one of the film's big scenes, Leonardo gives an intense speech about how we should all get on our phones and sell Steve Madden stock. We, the office workers, were all directed to cheer, applaud, and go mad over what he says and at the end of his speech we all get on the phones and start selling like crazy. This went on for a full day — same speech over and over again. At one point, in order for Leonardo to rest his voice when the cameras were shooting him from behind, he just mimed along to his own recording. The rest if us still cheered on like maniacs.
A year later I went to a pre-release screening of the film attended by Leonardo who told the audience that he had felt so energized doing those speeches because he got this amazing response from 200 guys who were screaming back at him and egging him on. He felt bad though he said, because everyone had to act excited even though they had to listen to him do this over and over again. Of course I can’t speak for everyone there, but shooting those scenes was exciting EVERY time. Leo’s performance was electrifying, and though I'm not a sales guy (at all!) — at the end of Leo's big speech, all I wanted to do was to get on that phone and start selling — EVERY time! He was that good.
While watching Leo perform this one speech over and over again for an entire day I started memorizing it. Last year I brought it in to my acting class to work on. Inspired by Leo, I too get pretty worked up at the end of it. Please check out the video and let me know what you think! Also, note that this is the whole speech (as far as I recall). In the finished movie some parts of it were edited out. Oh, and if you haven’t seen "The Wolf of Wall Street" make sure to check it out — DiCaprio definitely deserved that Oscar nomination.
