Stanley Weiser

Stanley Weiser is an American screenwriter. He was born in New York City. He is a graduate of the NYU Film School. His screen credits include Wall Street and W., both directed by Oliver Stone. He also wrote the 20th Century Fox animal rights film, Project X. He is credited for creating certain characters in the sequel to Wall Street: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. In addition, he served as script consultant on Oliver Stone's Nixon and Any Given Sunday.

Weiser's passion projects were two civil rights dramas, developed as feature films, but made for television. Murder in Mississippi, a chronicle of the 1964 Freedom Summer movement and the lives and deaths of Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman, the three young civil rights workers who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan, which aired on NBC in 1990. It was nominated for four Emmys and won the Directors Guild of America Award for best TV movie. Freedom Song, a semi-fictional account of the early SNCC movement in Mississippi, was co-written with Phil Alden Robinson, who also directed. They shared a Writers Guild of America Award and Humanitas nomination for the 2000 TNT film.

Wall Street

Wall Street is a 0.7-mile-long (1.1 km) street running eight blocks, roughly northwest to southeast, from Broadway to South Street on the East River in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial sector (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or signifying New York-based financial interests.

Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, and the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange.

History

Early years

There are varying accounts about how the Dutch-named "de Waal Straat" got its name. A generally accepted version is that the name of the street was derived from an earthen wall on the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement, perhaps to protect against English colonial encroachment or incursions by Native Americans. A conflicting explanation is that Wall Street was named after Walloons— the Dutch name for a Walloon is Waal. Among the first settlers that embarked on the ship "Nieu Nederlandt" in 1624 were 30 Walloon families. The Dutch word "wal" can be translated as "rampart". However, even some English maps show the name as Waal Straat, and not as Wal Straat.

Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Stone came to public prominence between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s for writing and directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an infantry soldier. Many of Stone's films primarily focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such that they were considered dangerous at the times of their releases.

Stone's films often combine different camera and film formats within a single scene as evidenced in JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon. Stone has received three Academy Awards for his work on the films Midnight Express, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July. He was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2007 Austin Film Festival.

Early life

Charlie Sheen

Carlos Irwin Estévez (born September 3, 1965), best known by his stage name Charlie Sheen, is an American actor. Sheen rose to fame after a series of successful films such as Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Young Guns (1988), Eight Men Out (1988), Major League (1989), Hot Shots! (1991), and The Three Musketeers (1993).

In the 2000s, Sheen became best known for his television roles. He replaced Michael J. Fox in Spin City and his performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy and then starred in Two and a Half Men which earned him several Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations. He most recently starred in the FX comedy series Anger Management, which concluded its 100-episode run in 2014. In 2010, Sheen was the highest paid actor on television and earned US$1.8 million per episode of Two and a Half Men.

Sheen's personal life has made headlines, including reports of alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems, as well as allegations of domestic violence. His contract for Two and a Half Men was terminated by CBS and Warner Bros. in March 2011. Sheen subsequently went on tour. On November 17, 2015, Sheen publicly revealed that he was HIV positive, having been diagnosed about four years earlier.

Michael Douglas

Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer. His career includes a diverse range of films in both independent and blockbuster genres, for which he has received a number of accolades both competitive and honorary; these include the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for "outstanding contribution to the world of entertainment" and the AFI Life Achievement Award which "honor[s] an individual whose career in motion pictures or television has greatly contributed to the enrichment of American culture".