When Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese come together to make a movie we can definitely expect it to be mind-blowing. The Wolf of Wall Street is their sixth movie together and tells the story of a corrupt stockbroker whose only purpose is to earn a lot of money. Scorsese directs the rise and fall of Jordan Belfort in a fabulously comic way, which means there are many behind-the-scenes stories that are sure to be funny and interesting. Thanks to IMDB and other sources we have listed some facts about The Wolf of Wall Street down below that we are sure you would enjoy reading.

1 While serving time in jail, it was Tommy Chong who convinced Jordan Belfort to write a memoir about his stock brokering time in Wall Street. That memoir is The Wolf of Wall Street. 

Belfort served 22 months of his four year sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution, California, where he shared his cell with Tommy Chong, the Canadian-American actor, writer and activist who encouraged him to write his memoirs. Belfort and Chong remained friends after they were released from prison. Belfort credits Chong for his change of career and becoming a motivational speaker and writer.(source)

2 In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio/Warner Bros. won a bidding war against Brad Pitt/Paramount Pictures for the rights to Jordan Belfort’s memoir. 

After getting the rights, Martin Scorsese, with whom DiCaprio has worked before on Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island, was considered to direct the movie. Scorsese actually worked on the script for the movie before working on Shutter Island and said that he “wasted five months of [his] life” without getting a green light on production dates by Warner Bros. studio. The studio, in 2010, offered Ridley Scott to direct the movie with DiCaprio in the lead role and the idea was eventually dumped. Again in 2012, an independent film company called Red Granite Pictures gave the green light with no restrictions on the content, which brought Scorsese back on board.(source)

3 Jonah Hill who played Donnie Azoff agreed to take only $60,000 for 7 months of shooting because he wanted that specific role in the movie. 

Though Hill’s character Azoff earns millions of dollars in the movie and was the epitome of decadence and debauchery, he himself took a much lesser paycheck home. He was quite committed to the role and even went on to demand an audition for the part even though Martin Scorsese already requested a meeting with him. That was his first audition in six years. But, of course, he profited in other ways such as receiving much acclaim and a second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.(source)

4 The chest bump humming that Matthew McConaughey does in the movie was Leonardo DiCaprio’s idea. He saw McConaughey beating his chest to relax himself before shooting and proposed to include it in the movie. 

During an interview in The Graham Norton Show, McConaughey revealed that the caveman like chest beating was something DiCaprio spotted him doing off-camera. It is something he does before doing the scenes as a way to relax himself and get his voice to drop. He also stated that sometimes he also hums, though without beating his chest, to find a rhythm.(source)

5 The word “fu*k”, or its variations, were used 569 times in the movie. Considering the running time of the movie, 180 minutes, it’s 3.16 fu*ks per minute. 

The word “fu*king” was uttered 359 times while the word “fu*k” 169 times. In total, all variations of the word “fu*K”, including “motherfu*ker”, “fu*ked”, “fu*ksville” and so on, were said 569 times. Other curse words include “sh*t” (79 times), names of private parts (31 times) and variations of “b*tch” (8 times). The highest number of curse words were uttered by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jordan (332) and Jonah Hill’s Donnie was the second (107).(source)

6 Every time you see the actors snorting drugs, they were actually using crushed B vitamins. Jonah Hill said that inhaling so much of it made him sick with bronchitis in the end and he had to be hospitalized.