Car buying scene-Oceans 11

Cafe Society
1

I found the car buying scene in Oceans 11 totally bizarre; I saw some good humor in it, but, I couldn’t quite get the point of Billy Ten Denim’s actions.

  1. He was always looking away, and seemed like he didn’t care about his customer in front of him. Was that for a reason that I didn’t pick up on?

  2. The handshake thing-was Bernie Mac trying to give him a too rough grip to show his toughness, and to intimidate the salesman? If so, I don’t see how it could have worked; the salesman didn’t even seem interested, let alone intimidated.

  3. He seemed to cave in on the price a bit too quickly for one as bored as him.

Something was totally off with that scene, IMHO. Am I totally missing something with the scene? Perhaps got a bad DVD which accidentally skipped something in that scene??

Thanks,
hh

2

It’s the opposite, he is being too close to the salesman… too much eye contact… too long a handshakes, followed by a comment about skin products (if I remember correctly). The idea is that this is making the car salesman uncomfortable in some sort of homophobic way.

3

Denim kept looking to the side because the Malloy brothers were jumping up and down on one of the vans, “testing” the suspension. And I think Bernie was squeezing his hand really hard too - when he finally lets go after getting the $16k price, you can see Denim’s hand was red and twisted, and he pulled it back like he was in pain. So between the Malloy’s trashing his vans, Bernie’s conversation about skin cream and social agenda while crushing his hand, I think the salesman just wanted to get him out of there, and gave him his rock bottom price. It didn’t make a ton of sense though, I think it was mostly there to give Bernie some more lines.

4

Thanks for all the input, guys.

5

Scene

Don’t get it either. Seems as if BM strongarmed the salesman into a better deal, but that’s bizarrely out of character for a salesperson. Sure, there are lots of reasons he would negotiate, but intimidation by a too-strong handshake? I understand the OP’s confusion about the scene.

6

Re-watching the scene is as I remember it, he’s squeezing his hand to intimidate him (hence, “17” <squeezes harder> “16!”). The moisturizer talk is to show how cah-razy he is, like you wouldn’t want to cross this guy, because if he’ll crush your hand while talking about moisturizer, what else will he do!?!

It’s a bit ham-fisted (heh) and ridiculous, but that’s part of the Oceans 1x charm.

7

Sorry for resurrecting this thread - but I recently found out some information that throws a whole new light on this scene. The car salesman who has his hand crushed by Bernie Mac, Billy Tim Denham, was played by actor Joe La Due. Six years earlier, La Due played the “cheaters justice” guy in Casino, another (much darker) Las Vegas movie, where he had the same hand broken with a hammer. So the entire scene, or at least the handshake part, may have just been a deep Easter Egg.