Money Train Off the Rails

Wesley Snipes has been starring in a remake of his 1995 movie, "Money Train," but this time the cameras haven't been rolling. A Florida judge sentenced him to three years for tax evasion, even as he was trying to hand over $5 million in checks to prove his repentance.

"I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance," Snipes said in court, claiming that his sudden wealth and celebrity attracted "wolves and jackals like flies are attracted to meat." He called himself "well-intentioned, but miseducated."

An actor of intense but cool charm, Snipes is a 21st century exemplar of those Bronx boys who came out of poverty in the old Hollywood days and had trouble coping with being rich.

Half a century ago, I had lunch with a high-school classmate, a novelist who had become a big-time writer of movie and TV scripts.

"I was overcommitted," he said, "so I had to return a large advance. It took a week before I could get myself to write the check. Then I stared at it for days before I finally mailed it. The Bronx kid in me just couldn't believe more money would ever be coming in."

In "Money Train," Snipes looted an armored car carrying tons of small change from subway booths. In real life, he stopped paying taxes on his earnings, following the loopy advice of "tax protesters," who are also facing prison sentences.

In our society, getting rich too suddenly can be a bigger problem than never making it at all. When in doubt, remember Elvis.

"The Queen of Mean"

Oliver Stone summed up the 1980s in his movie “Wall Street” with a speech by his corporate-raider protagonist Gordon Gekko (subtly named after a lizard) proclaiming “Greed is good.”

The real-life examplar of the decade died today, Leona Helmsley, who enticed a shy, hidebound real-estate tycoon from his 33-year marriage, became his wife and rapacious business partner, terrorized their employees, draped herself in jewels, posed for their luxury hotel ads, served 18 months in federal prison for cheating on taxes and spent the last years of her life giving money away so that her paid publicist could say as he did today, “She was extremely generous as a philanthropist and she gave tens of millions of dollars to charity right up until the last months of her life.”

For more than 30 years, I worked in an office edifice that straddled Park Avenue and was known as the New York Central Building. Soon after her marriage, Leona had workmen on scaffolds chipping away the inscribed name and changing it to the Helmsley Building as she cut back on services to increase profits.

Dubbed “The Queen of Mean,” she will be remembered for her own classic expression of the culture of greed: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

Gordon Gekko couldn’t have said it better.