The iconic movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” — starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the crooked, debauched stockbroker Jordan Belfort, and Margot Robbie as his wife — got a lot of details wrong, insiders say in a new docuseries.
Howie Gelfand, who partly inspired Jonah Hill’s character in the Martin Scorsese film, exclusively told Page Six, “They just made up things.”
He added, “There was never a midget thrown. There were still plenty of crazy things done. Truth is stranger than fiction.”
In the three-episode Paramount+ docuseries, “The Real Wolf of Wall Street,” Belfort’s former friends and colleagues share their experiences.
Gelfand told Page Six that when he saw the Oscar-nominated movie in 2013 and heard audience dismiss it as “Hollywood” exaggeration, his brother said, “If only they knew that was the mild version!’”
He praised DiCaprio and Robbie’s performances, but said the film “distorted” the story, and made it into a “fairy tale, for Hollywood.”
Gelfand and Ross Portenoy were both childhood friends with Belfort, now 64.
Belfort lived like a rock star — drugs, yachts, sex workers, lavish parties — before he served 22 months in prison for securities fraud, in one of Wall Street’s most notorious scandals. He was released in 2006.
Gelfand and Portenoy both worked at his brokerage house, Stratton Oakmont, which was founded in 1989 and shuttered in 1996, after several execs were arrested.
Neither of them served time in prison, but Gelfand struggled with drug addiction for years, and crashed 17 cars while driving under the influence, he said.
Some of his former colleagues were “bad guys” who weren’t bothered by defrauding people, Gelfand told Page Six.
But there were also, “a lot of good guys that got involved with a bad thing. I consider myself one.”
He noted, “I had to stay anesthetized [on drugs], to do what I was doing.”
The Scorsese film depicted Belfort’s rise and fall, including his frat-boy office culture — where his inner circle did outrageous stunts for money and attention.
No one threw a dwarf like the characters in the movie, Gelfand noted, but two employees connected their bodies to a car battery, in exchange for $10,000.
They didn’t end up getting the cash, because they bet they could last 10 seconds, and they had to stop at eight.
When Hill’s character ate a live goldfish in front of a crowd, “I am guilty as charged,” Gelfand told Page Six, adding that it was “not one of my proudest moments.”
Notably, the movie didn’t include one of their “biggest vices — gambling,” he said.
However, the Scorsese flick did get one detail right. In a famous raunchy scene, DiCaprio and Robbie’s characters have sex on a pile of money.
“Well, I wasn’t there watching Jordan and [his then-wife, Nadine Macaluso] have sex,” Portenoy told Page Six, adding that Robbie “nailed” her performance and played Belfort’s wife “to a T.”
But, he recalled an incident when Belfort was carrying a “paper shopping bag” filled with “a million dollars in cash” and “boasted” that he’d just had sex on top of “three million dollars.”
Gelfand, who has been sober for 14 years and now works in the travel industry, said that he thinks Scorsese’s assistant called him when they were making the movie.
“Sadly, I was stoned for about 15 years of my life … I was too stoned to partake in anything.”
Meanwhile, Portenoy was “shocked” that the “Goodfellas” director never reached out to him, because he took frequent home videos of Belfort and his antics. His clips are featured in the doc.
“I think they could have used the videos,” he told Page Six. “I think Marty [Scorsese] would have jumped all over it, if he knew about it.”
When he saw the film in theaters, he “cried” watching the scene where DiCaprio sank a yacht, because he was there for the real event.
“It was a living hell,” he told us.
Both of Belfort’s former friends said that the flick romanticized him too much. But, they don’t have ill will towards anyone involved.
“I’m a big fan of Martin Scorsese’s,” said Gelfand. “I thought he made a great movie.”
But, he noted, “The price to pay for people who were truly involved in it … was never touched upon.”
Many people involved in the real events “never recovered,” he said. “Thank God I didn’t die.”
“The Real Wolf of Wall Street” is now streaming on Paramount+.
