New Yorkers got a sneak peek at movie making aboard a megayacht docked in Dennis Conner’s North Cove marina this week. That’s where the 147-foot (44.8-meter) Lady M had a starring role alongside actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays the lead in the upcoming film Wolf of Wall Street. While you can’t make any famous faces out in the photo here, it gives you a good idea of what the set-up on the docks and on Lady M’s decks was like.
We haven’t seen a script, but we feel pretty confident that Lady M plays the role of a yacht owned by DiCaprio’s character, a real-life former stock broker named Jordan Belfort. Belfort ran Stratton Oakmont, an infamous New York-based boiler room that sold initial public offerings that were worthless, causing regulators to shut down the firm in 1996. Belfort was also the owner of Nadine, a 167-footer that he had purchased in the 1990s. Since Nadine was previously known as Big Eagle and originally christened Coco Chanel in 1961, she had a storied history by the time Belfort bought her. Unfortunately, by Belfort’s own admission, his poor judgment caused her to sink, in 1996. That summer while the yacht was in Italy, he was high on quaaludes and instructed his captain to depart for Sardinia, despite the weather being somewhat snotty. Partly into the journey, gale conditions developed, and a huge wave broke through a forward hatch. Nadine began taking on water and eventually sank, after everyone was rescued.
If the megayacht sinking will be featured in the film, it will clearly be done on a sound stage or via special effects. As for Lady M, filming aboard took place all day this past Monday and was expected to also continue Tuesday. Unlike diva film stars, however, Lady M was in town well ahead of her scheduled shoot. She arrived at North Cove on Friday, and the crew was seen cleaning and prepping her over the weekend for her close-ups.
For a little more insight into Wolf of Wall Street, note that the title is a nickname Belfort earned during his business days. It’s also the title of a memoir he penned in 2008, which is the basis for the film, being directed by Martin Scorcese. When the book was released in 2008, its publisher described it this way:
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called…The Wolf of Wall Street.
Deborah Turnbull
The yacht Nadine was sold to Bernie (“Big Eagle”) in the 90’s. We “Edgewater” bought it from Merrill Stevens where the owner of the Jan Pamela stepped out for personal reasons. Coco Channel’s room stayed in tact, but we completely refurbished the interior. Four tons of marble went in to make a solid marble bar, we put in gold sinks, solid sheets of marble for the bathrooms, and created three master state rooms. The top floor was called “Senator Kerry’s Suite” as Senator John Kerry stayed with us so often, we named the room after him. The boat was featured on a “Woman Named Jackie” which won the miniseries of the year-(which I actually got a speaking part in). Long shots were taken and used on every commercial promoting the series. Our former stewardess informed us the day it sank off the coast of Italy in 1996.