DICAPRIO AND HILL SHADOW BANKERS FOR WOLF OF WALL ST
NY DAILY NEWS – GATECRASHER – Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill won’t have to bank on their acting skills alone for their upcoming flick “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
An inside source at Bank of America Merrill Lynch tells us the actors received some real-life experience for their roles in the Martin Scorsese -directed film by shadowing employees at the One Bryant Park location Tuesday morning.
We hear that DiCaprio, who plays New York stock broker Jordan Belfort in the movie based on Belfort’s 2007 memoir, trailed an employee on the fifth floor of the corporate and investment bank, which is the stock-trading floor.
Hill, who plays the best friend and business partner of DiCaprio’s Belfort, shadowed “a lower-level, yet successful derivative sales associate.” Both actors left before lunchtime, but a second source close to the film, in which DiCaprio’s character refuses to cooperate in a fraud case involving Wall Street corruption and mob infiltration, tells us they have plans to return Wednesday.
While it’s unclear whether they will actually film within the confines of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch location in midtown, the source close to the flick says the movie, which is set to be released next year, is gearing up to begin production in New York City this weekend.
DiCaprio and Hill, along with cast members Jon Bernthal and Kyle Chandler will be filming in the streets of the city in the upcoming days, in scenes that “will involve cars from the 1980s.”
That’s not the only throw-back to the decade Scorsese is re-creating for the flick, which also stars Matthew McConaughey as an early boss and mentor to DiCaprio’s character.
“There will be a lot of nudity and cocaine in the film,” the set source says, adding that studio execs have “been casting female models to play high-end prostitutes and strippers who must be okay with nudity.”
If lines of white powder and naked models aren’t titillating enough, the source adds that “older men will appear nude in various same-sex situations.”
The set source says the film currently plans to shoot “all through next week (and be) off on Labor Day weekend and back in New York after” that.
No wonder Hill has been fighting the flab so profusely of late. An in-shape source tells us the 28-year-old actor, who shed a reported 40 pounds after appearing in the 2011 film “Moneyball” before gaining the majority of the weight back, was spotted at a 7:30 p.m. SoulCycle class in a Tribeca studio Monday. He was also there for an early morning ride on Friday.
A spokesman for DiCaprio had no comment. A spokeswoman for Hill did not return a request for comment by deadline.