Movie Scene Request ... sort of.

Cafe Society
#1

I’m trying to become a here at work.

A cow-orker is putting together a presentation and she asked me if I could think of a scene from a movie in which bad investment advice was given, preferably in a humorous manner. The first thing that popped into my head was the scene from Defending Your Life where Albert Brooks’ friend wants him to invest in Casio and he goes on to predict the stock tanking, ending with this …

Lena Foster: What did you finally invest in, Mr. Miller, do you remember?
Daniel Miller: [under his breath] Um, uh… cattle.
Lena Foster: And what happened to the cattle?
Daniel Miller: I don’t know; I never got a straight answer. All I know is that their teeth fell out.
Now my questions are … anyone got anything better? … and is there a nice legal way of ripping a short scene like this off a DVD or something, for inclusion in a Power Point presentation.
My career isn’t hinging on this, but it would be cool if I could help out my cow-orker like this.

#2

Brewsters Millions? He’s given loads of bad investment ideas. Thing is, he wants to lose money, but they end up making him money.

#3

I can’t think of advice without Buck Henry’s “Plastics” popping in my head from Graduate. However, that advice probably wasn’t bad enough to fit your bill.

Maybe something from Trading Places?

#4

The Jerk - he invents the Opti-Grab, makes millions, and when everyone goes cross-eyed, he gets sued.

#5

From Lisa the Simpson, involving a subplot where Jasper has stationed himself in the Kwik-E-Mart freezer in hopes of entering suspending animation.

Rich Texan: [to Apu] Son, I represent a group of oil tycoons who make foolish purchases. We already bought us a stained glass bathrobe, and the world’s fattest racehorse! And now, we need your ice man.

#6

Now I kinda want a stained-glass bathrobe.

How about the scene from Boiler Room where Giovani Ribisi hard-sells a naive investor into buying a bunch of shares of scammy penny stock.

#7

In Gremlins 2, the gremlins infest an office building, and one of them takes on the personality of a slick, Wall Street, investment broker.[sup]*[/sup] As things go to hell toward the end of the movie, he is overheard saying “I’m advising my clients to put all their money into canned food and shotguns.”

I may not have all the details exactly right; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.

#8

Wall Street when Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox meets Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gecko for the first time, he pitches some crappy investment options to him (“dog’s with different fleas”) all of which promptly tank a few scenes later.

The Man Who Wasn’t There features a scene where Billy Bob Thornton is presented with the idea of a new service called “dry” cleaning. Though this might have been a plausibly good investment, it was obviously under the guise of a huckster trying to pull a fast one.

#9

There’s the scene in The Bank Dick where someone tries to sell W.C. Fields stock in the Beefsteak Mines. Later, Fields tries to repeat the sales pitch:

Egbert Sousé: Ten cents a share. Telephone sold for five cents a share. How would you like something better for ten cents a share? If five gets ya ten, ten’ll get ya twenty. A beautiful home in the country, upstairs and down. Beer flowing through the estate over your grandmother’s paisley shawl.
Og Oggilby: Beer?
Egbert Sousé: Beer! Fishing in the stream that runs under the aboreal dell. A man comes up from the bar, dumps $3,500 in your lap for every nickel invested. Says to you, “Sign here on the dotted line.” And then disappears in the waving fields of alfalfa.

Of course, this turns out to be a very good investment, after all.

#10

Was that a pass?

#11

I’m not sure it’s an investment, but the father in *Moonstruck *(1987?) has a funny scene selling copper pipes to a young couple. It’s the couple’s reactions that are funny, so that may be offbase of what your coworker is looking for.

#12

There’s a Seinfeld episode where they invest in a stock. Jerry watches the financial pages nervously as the stock goes down, then speaks to the broker (or maybe Kramer), who remarks “Yeah…well, the market fluctuates”.

Jerry ripostes with something like “I just got fluctuated out of two thousand dollars…”

#13

I just watched about half of a terrible movie, Superhero Movie. In a flashback, the protagonist’s father tells him, “Dump all the stock of a little company called Google, it’s worthless. Invest everything in Enron.” I mildly funny moment in an otherwise tedious movie.

#14

Ooh. All good ones … I’m on the case.

Not having much luck with streaming video at work (YouTube is blocked) but that’s my problem.