"You see that framed poster that says 'Gordon', kid? Talked him down to half price. That's why I'm the king."

You might imagine a film with a subtitle as cheesily nonsensical as “money never sleeps” to be pretty crappy, and you’d be right.  Oh how right you would be, if you had indeed imagined such a thing.  The only saving grace of the film was that between the financial jargon awkwardly crowbarred into “stock Hollywood drama scene part 7b”, there was some of the finest unintentional comedy on which money could be wasted.  The best part of it was that during every awful moment, you could almost see a coked-up screenwriter pumping his fist, saying to himself, “YES! THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER COME UP WITH!”

So here they are, the 10 most awesomely terrible lines of dialog that I could remember.

10. “He can’t just take his ball and go home. …He has to piss on the whole game first.”[If he would've just said 'balls', this visual would be changed FOREVER. Game changer.]

9.  “Arguing with your father is like arguing with small pox.” [So... one-sided? Beset by dead Indians?]

8. “Mr. Gekko?  I was hoping you could answer a question I had.  What is a ‘moral hazard?’” [hmm, instead of Gordon Gekko's book, might I suggest a dictionary containing the words 'moral' and 'hazard?']

7. “He had an ego the size of Antarctica… and so did I.” [Gravelly!  Gravitas!  ...Gravellytas!]

6. “California?  California is over.  California has made more mistakes than Yogi Berra reciting Shakespeare.” [Oooohhh snap!  Suck it, Berra!]

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Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opens today, and all-around Hollywood awesome dude Josh Brolin plays the film’s villain, Evil Motorcycle Guy.  Brolin was also the subject of this month’s Playboy interview, in which he offered this possibly telling quote:

“The movie is more formulaic than anything Oliver’s ever attempted before [dramatic pause inserted here by the editor before Brolin tries to put a positive spin on what he just said] but in the most beautiful, Oliver-esque way.

Oliver Stone has made some great movies and some crappy ones — what makes this quote possibly telling is that Wall Street 2 was co-written by Allan Loeb, who previously wrote the puke-inducingly formulaic 21 and The Switch.  He also has like 10 projects in development, most of which sound like awesom-o pitches, including:

• Just Go With It: An Adam Sandler vehicle for Grown Ups director Dennis Dugan in which a guy rents a family to impress the girl of his dreams.

• Untitled project in which Kevin James saves the rec center with MMA.

• The Dilemma, in which Vince Vaughn catches his best friend Kevin James’ wife cheating on him with Channing Tatum, probably because he’s fat. He needs to get his groove back. You could totally combine this with Hitch.

• An untitled Ryan Reynolds project about “an injured baseball player on the mend with echoes of The Rookie.”

• A remake of the 2006 French film The Valet, “about a parking valet who is enlisted to impersonate the lover of a famous fashion model in order to deflect attention from her relationship with a married businessman.”  Aka Pretty Man.

• A Little Game Without Consequence, “based on a French play of the same title which concerns a seemingly perfect couple who realize that their friends never liked them as couple to begin with after they pretend to break up.”

I can’t tell if the guy actually thinks like a Hollywood script-generating software machine or if he’s  a genius who figured out how to turn studios into his personal ATM machine.  Meanwhile, Brolin’s quote reminds me of Adam Carolla’s interview shorthand for when celebrities get asked about people they don’t like.  If a celebrity doesn’t like someone but can’t say it, the exchange will go something like, “What’s Jeremy Piven like? …Oh, you know. Jeremy’s Jeremy.”

“Did I say Wall Street 2 was formulaic?  What I meant was that it’s Oliver-esque.  Just wonderfully, beautifully Olivery.”

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STONE: "No, no, your mistake, both drinks are for me, actually." LABEOUF: (*awkward attempt to smile*)

Today in Shocking News You’ll Never Believe, Shia Labeouf shared an Oliver Stone anecdote at the Money Never Sleeps premiere which seemed to suggest that the director can be, get this: foul-mouthed, egomaniacal, and difficult to work for.  It’s uncharacteristic behavior for a man famously rumored to have told a black screenwriter, “I bet you like Scarface. All n*ggers love Scarface.”  What a delight.

“We’re in the Adirondacks, and Josh Brolin and I are shooting this bike scene. And at one point I say to Josh a line — ‘You should look at yourself in the mirror first and see yourself. It might scare you,’” remembered LaBeouf. “I looked at the line for a couple of months and thought I’d go to Oliver and say, ‘You look at the mirror and look at yourself. It’s sort of repetitive. Why don’t we just cut one of those? Why don’t I say, Look at yourself. It might scare you.’ This is Oliver verbatim. He looks at me and goes, ‘I like mirror. I wrote Scarface. Go f*ck yourself.’” [Vulture]

I like to imagine Oliver Stone talking this way in all of his daily interactions.  “Hey buddy, I said ‘no mayo’.  I wrote Scarface.  Go f*ck yourself.”  “You call this a latte?  I wrote Scarface.”  “I wrote Scarface.  Your t*ts look stupid.  I’m just saying.”

Fox just released the international trailer for Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, from Oliver Stone, starring Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas.  The domestic version didn’t reveal much about the plot, probably because we Americans don’t care about plot, only snuggies and giant sodas.  But for the foreigners they provide a longer cut.  We find out that Gordon Gekko is out of jail and becomes some sort of celebrity.  Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf is busy trying to four-finger blast Gekko’s estranged daughter because she has boy hair. Josh Brolin is a bad guy, which you can tell because he takes Shia on a scary motorcycle ride like Jacob did with Bella.  In fact that whole time through the forest I kept expecting him to turn into a giant wolf.  That would’ve been so awesome, I’d totally be cleaning the jizz off my Taylor Lautner sex pillow right now.  Well, more jizz anyway.

(“Greed is good, kid. You know what else is good?  Bein’ regular.  Now pass me that Activia.”)

Finally we have the long-threatened teaser trailer (click on the picture to play) for Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.  It doesn’t give us a ton of footage, but it’s definitely going to probably suck.  And I’m judging solely on the basis of the Fox logo here.

Emerging from a lengthy prison stint, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) finds himself on the outside of a world he once dominated. Looking to repair his damaged relationship with his daughter, Gekko forms an alliance with her fiancé Jacob (Shia LaBeouf), and Jacob begins to see him as a father figure. But Jacob learns the hard way that Gekko – still a master manipulator and player – is after something very different from redemption. [IMDB]

Is it money?  Ooh, I bet it’s money, Gekko, you rogue.  This trailer is basically finance-guy porn, and regardless of what political message Oliver Stone tries to hammer home, I expect this movie to be for pushy, New York A-holes what Entourage is for shiftless, L.A. douchebags.  You know, pretty much like the first one. Except this time, LaBeouffed to a fine Sheen.  …What?  Screw you, you just don’t understand clever wordplay.