The scene when Shelley is berating Williamson about f’ing up Roma’s play with Lingk is a masterwork. One of the things I love about it is throughout the scene, Shelley is eating peanuts, or sunflower seeds, or something. But I think he’s pantomiming the whole thing- you never actually see anything going into his mouth. He even picks his teeth at one point, as if one of them is stuck in his molars.
But I think the single most chilling moment that sucks the air out of the room is after Williamson misspeaks and Lingk starts freaking out, causing Roma to tapdance doublespeed; Roma finally ushers him out the door, and turns around and gives Williamson: The. Look.
Pacino just fixes a dead bead on Spacey which precedes a couple minutes of the finest insult work Mamet has ever written, but that monologue is almost overshadowed by the way Pacino looks at Spacey.
It’s a great skit, one of the best ever, but it’s a little cringe-worthy to watch because it sounds like most of the audience aren’t getting the reference.
Yes. Specifically, Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of the character (over actors have done it differently).
Lemmon himself did a variation on his Shelley Levine when he guested on “The Simpsons” as the salesman who gets Marge to purchase the pretzel franchise.
I read this comment the other day at work, and I just wanted to say that, yeah, that’s part of the allure of this film: it’s tense. REALLY tense. It makes Alien look like a by-the-numbers exploitative horror flick it’s so freaking inTENSE.
Mamet is great at that kind of thing, and this film may be the best actual execution of the concept in film history. Virtually nothing happens in the entire movie, yet you feel like you’ve spent 100 minutes being levitated over shards of broken glass and radioactive carpet tacks with a piece of concrete from Hoover Dam about to fall on you while the bars of a cage slowly contract, making escape impossible. It’s slowly, quietly tortuous, and the payoff isn’t even a release of that tension; it ends with just a slow pinhole deflation that isn’t even loud enough to whisper, let alone sigh.
I love this movie, but I totally understand where you’re coming from, Mild Ellen.
My first exposure to ***Glengarry ***was the movie, which I absolutely loved.
But a few years back, I saw the Broadway revival, with Alan Alda as Shelley Levene, Liev Schreiber as Ricky Roma, Jeffrey (Hank on The Larry Sanders Show) Tambor as George Aaronow, and Gordon (the redheaded detective on NYPD Blue) Clapp as Moss. (I forget who played Williamson- he was a very good actor, but he wasn’t famous.)
I still loved the play, but the approach taken was completely different. The movie was a heavy drama with a lot of darkly funny moments. The Broadway revival played like a Neil Simon farce that ended in tragedy.
Mamet’s language was exactly the same in both productions… but whereas the movie cast played everything straight, the play I saw was a laugh riot!
The best performance of the bunch came from Gordon Clapp. When Clapp’s Dave Moss is trying to persuade George to stage a burglary, I swear, he was channeling Bud Abbott- the entire conversation came across as a “Who’s On First” routine.
SImilarly, the opening act, which dwells on Shelley’s attempts to wheedle some good leads from Williamson, was HILARIOUS.
It goes to show, there’s a LOT you can do with a great script. ***Glengarry ***actually works as a bleak drama OR as a gut-busting comedy.
Yes, he was! I forgot about him. He was surprisingly effective as a meek, middle aged loser (I guess I still thought of him as Luke Duke!)
In Act 2, he has a fair number of lines. In Act 1, he just listens quietly to Ricky’s pitch… but sitting quietly and listening takes good acting. Wopat had to convey just with his face how spellbinding and attractive Roma was to him.
One was “mountain view”- not sure if that’s G’garry or G’ross. It was a big deal that Shelley sold mountain view lots at the end (until the reveal of course).
I was just rewatching part of this film due to this thread and Glen Ross Farms was a previous, better, package (as Lemur866 said) with which Moss laments that “they killed the golden goose” by selling the lots too fast and presumably for too little money in order to unload them.
To add to the above: I think Shelley was still trying to sell Glen Ross. He lies to the prospect about representing ‘Rio Rancho’ which isn’t the kind of name you’d associate with Florida property.
Larry, one of the unsuccessful calls Shelley makes, says “My wife filled in a form and we have been plagued for the last year…” So the lead was a year old.
(I endured a timeshare presentation the other day, to get about $100 worth of supermarket vouchers. The initial approach was me filling in a form at a stall near a tourist attraction.)
On a quasi-related note, we had a salesperson from ADT here this morning and “Always Be Closing” kept running through my head as he talked about this package and that and how he’d have to “talk to his manager” to find out about a discount, etc. Had he been on the phone, I’m sure he would have paused to ask Grace how many systems he’d be installing that week but he’s sure he can squeeze us in.
There is one scene that I believe is the moral heart of the story. (Who am I kidding, that story has no heart! It’s the moral spleen.) It’s when Levene is describing the sale to Roma. He says “It was great. It was so fucking great. It was like they wilted all at once.”
That’s when you realize that the man is a fucking vampire. Up until this point, you convinced yourself, despite the evidence, that he did this job because he was desperate. His daughter is in the hospital! He has to make money, and this is the way he knows how.
But no. He’s desperate for his fix, and he’s the worst, the most immoral of the bunch. Roma, he’s a tactician, and he likes outwitting the other guy. Baldwin’s character, he likes the power and sense of domination he gets from fucking over the little guy. They’re slimy, they’re scum, but Levene is worse. His kick isn’t from winning or even from defeating someone, it’s from the other guy losing, and suffering for it. The glee in his voice as he describes the life seeping out from the poor couple he thinks he sold. “They both kind of imperceptibly slumped.”
He’s fucking evil and you feel like shit for ever rooting for him, even a little. It’s a horrible, slimy feeling, but it’s absolutely amazing and beautiful the way Mamet and Lemon have conspired to create that feeling.
A super minor thing I’ve always wondered about (haven’t lost sleep, just kind of wondered):
Early in the movie there’s a scene where Levene is making his calls and tells a pigeon (maybe the guy he went to visit) that he’s in town briefly from his ranch. He mentions where his ranch is- someplace specific like Las Cruces, New Mexico (wasn’t there, but somewhere real and specific) as I recall, and of course the character is an on-his-ass two-steps-above-sidewalk grifter working out of an office.
I’m curious: is there anything illegal about flat out lying like that in a sales pitch if it’s not related directly to what the person is selling? I’m pretty sure nobody would ever go to jail for it, but I wonder if it’s enough to void a contract after a cooling down period or if there’s any other possible repercussion other than being called a lying sack of dog shit (or much worse if Mamet is writing it).