I'm Not Fxxxing Leaving!

We had already undertaken two different homages to Martin
Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and on both occasions worked
with the real wolf, Jordan Belfort. Pleasingly, they have been
hugely popular pieces. In 2022, we returned to a dealing room to
photograph the challenging “I am Not Fxxxing Leaving” scene. The
concept was clear but I was wrestling with the execution as, in a still
image, it is impossible to have both the speaker and crowd facing
the camera. The crowd was an energy-charged orgy of 1994 brokers
celebrating the defiance of their leader. I wanted explicit references
to the era’s excesses, and this demanded a testosterone-jammed
dealing floor hosting flying dollars, ticker tape, rubber dolls, call
girls and marching bands. I always think that it is counter-intuitive
to downplay parody. The trick with Jordan was to have him on a
big TV screen facing the same way as everyone else, this way the
full story could be told without valuable inches being occupied by
the back of his head. I want to thank Josh and Matt Altman and the
team from The Altman Brothers for their roles as extras. Everyone
had to play their part to perfection, otherwise the vibe was lost.