VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
Directed by James Foley
Written by David Mamet
​Starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed  Harris, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin
Picture
The addition of the Blake character to the script of the original play by David Mamet substantially alters the thrust of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Audiences enjoy the Alec Baldwin role of Blake, as the guy sent by Mitch and Murray to come in and shake things up a bit in the sales room of the hokey real estate office. The character intensifies the motivation of desperate Shelley "The Machine" Levene (Jack Lemmon) and compounds the frustration of conniving Moss and confused Aaronow (Ed Harris and Alan Arkin). His impact on the coldly pragmatic and petty Williamson (Kevin Spacey), the office manager, is negligible, as it is on Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), the top producer and favored son in the shop. However, Blake changed forever the way the script would be experienced by audiences because the original Mamet script would never have been used as a training tool for salespeople in the way the movie has been. That such a brilliant appeal to the sensitivities of a system rigged against not only the customers but against the employees as well should turn out to be embraced by those employees says more about the sorry condition of the American workplace than it does about this movie, which is patently brilliant from start to finish.
    I have attended championship boxing matches and viewed televised UFC competitions that were less masculine than the tenor of this film. Indeed, Tyson biting off part of Holyfield's ear rings rather soft compared to the penis-thumping and simultaneous emasculations that make up the day-to-day lives of these salesmen. "You think this is abuse?" screams Blake into the back of the head of Aaronow. "You cocksucker! If you think this is abuse, how are you going to handle abuse on a sit?" Later he points out that "It takes [brass balls] to sell real estate." 
    Audiences laugh at what they perceive to be the over-the-top outrage of the bully Blake, just as audiences chuckle nervously at the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Marines in the crowds at the latter film knew better than to laugh. They'd experienced precisely the "abuse" the drilling instructor was dishing out, just as anyone who has survived his time selling time shares, alarm systems, home-based businesses or light bulbs has endured the emotional raping these men get as a send-off on their work day evenings. 
    The system is rigged, as Levene points out. How is a man supposed to rise above a certain level if he never gets the premium leads, the Glengarry leads? Ah, but those leads are only for closers. To give the good leads to a poor performer would be to waste them. The only way to rise above and get up to where the oxygen is kept, of course, is to cheat. And cheat they do. There are blocks of ten to fifteen minute segments in this film where absolutely nothing anyone says bears any resemblance to the truth. This carries on so adeptly that after a while we find ourselves actually pulling for these men--who after all, maintain the moral center of the film--and even hurt for the fate of the man who commits a crime that may, for a few seconds, imperil the entire office. 
    Glengarry Glen Ross is a school for actors. Each "star" plays many roles within roles throughout this motion picture and anyone of a certain age or older will be able to recognize someone he loves and hates.
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links