Leonardo DiCaprio Defends The Wolf Of Wall Street In New Interview

Posted on Thu Jan 2nd, 2014 11:30am PDT       By X17 Staff

We were shocked with what we saw when we caught a screening of The Wolf Of Wall Street last month, but we still enjoyed the film and had quite a few laughs thanks to the characters that Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill brought to life. Still, there are plenty of critics and moviegoers who don't share our sentiments about the flick, mostly because of its excessive nudity and depiction of rampant drug use.

DiCaprio has finally spoken out about the controversial film and its reception, and we have to agree with most of what he told HitFix the other day. So what was his response to "those who see it as more of an irresponsible glorification than a satirical takedown"?

"I think anyone who thinks that missed the boat entirely ... To hear that there were any type of reactions that weren't — I'm not saying people should particularly praise this film for that reason, but I think it takes a while to permeate into the culture a little bit. It's exciting to be a part of a film, in a way, that is kind of bold and is taking a chance like that, and I think that anyone that thinks this is a celebration of Wall Street and this sort of hedonism — yes, the unique thing about [Martin Scorcese] is that he doesn't judge his characters. And that was something that you don't quite understand while you're making the movie, but he allows the freedom of this almost hypnotic, drug-infused, wild ride that these characters go on. And he allows you, as an audience — guilty or not — to enjoy in that ride without judging who these people are. Because ultimately, he keeps saying this: "Who am I to judge anybody?" I mean ultimately I think if anyone watches this movie, at the end of [The] Wolf of Wall Street, they're going to see that we're not at all condoning this behavior. In fact we're saying that this is something that is in our very culture and it needs to be looked at and it needs to be talked about. Because, to me, this attitude of what these characters represent in this film are ultimately everything that's wrong with the world we live in."

Says the guy who flies private! Sorry Leo, we love you but we had to throw that in there. Click thru to see what he said when asked if he still feels as though this film is his "best work"...

"I think that at least the attempt going into it was to try to do something really outside of the box and I think [Martin Scorcese] had the same approach. Every time we wanted to make a choice to go into a sort of traditional story structure or make choices for the characters that were things that we've seen in films before, we tried to do something a little different. In that regard I feel very proud of this performance. I think we took a lot of chances, and no matter what people think of the movie, we swung for the fences on this one. That's what I'm really excited about and happy that we just had the opportunity to do, to tell you the truth, because I've been in this business for a long period of time and certainly when you're doing an epic of this scale, you don't get an opportunity to do that very often. That was in large part due to the people that were financing this, who said, "We want to take this chance. We think there's a marketplace for something like this." I keep referencing "Caligula" but you think about "Scarface," films like that, I don't know how people are going to react to it right off the bat, but I think as the years roll by people will appreciate what we were trying to do here."

Poll

Do you agree with Leo's remarks about The Wolf Of Wall Street?

	Yes, and I absolutely loved the movie!
	Yes, but the sex and drug scenes still made me a bit uncomfortable.
	No, I think Leo is just trying to cover up for the fact that the movie sucked.

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