In a scene from Wolf of Wall Street that critics either seem to regard as a comedic tour de force or an agonizing waste of time, a Quaalude-impaired Leonardo DiCaprio slowly crawls across a parking lot for what feels like 10 minute in a desperate attempt to get to his car, which is only five feet away.
In order to make the scene as realistic as possible, director Martin Scorsese had a Quaalude expert on set to supervise DiCaprio’s crawling. But as Scorsese recently revealed on Conan, having an expert on set probably wasn’t necessary—Scorsese has had enough first-hand experience with the drug that he qualifies as something of an expert too.
“At that time [35 years ago], they were legal,”; Scorsese says. “And I was prescribed Quaaludes for fear of flying. When you took this pill—it was like a five hour flight—you took that pill, you didn’t care where you were. You didn’t care. Finally it wound down by the time you landed. Thankfully. Because you wanted to hug everybody and that sort of thing.”;
Click on the video below for the full exchange.
