The other day my friend Carbo and I were catching pastries down at Tartine's, and talking about the difference between Wolf and Hustle, and whether Scorcesse had gone over the top with his portrait of Wall Street.
Well, it's partly metaphorical, I said.  They didn't actually do all those things. Right?
"Oh yes they did," said Carbo. "Absolutely they did. I did. I was there."
I hadn't known that.
"I was an insurance broker down on Water Street and there was all the fucking and coke you could handle. And doing lines on the girl's ass? Sure. The breasts. The candles. It all happened. That wasn't exaggeration."
He had to stop to take in his almond butter croissant with sugar on top. And perhaps out of habit he began sniffing the white sugar off the top of the croissant.
"You really need a hundred dollar bill to do this right," he said. "But here's the thing, all those people, you know what?  Actually, you didn't want want to spend any more time with them than you had to.  That's the problem with the movie; he made those people a lot more interesting than they really were."