Before I start with these two gems, I’ll dismiss all the other sales movies that people mention when discussing the great sales movies.
Boiler Room:
Boiler Room is dismissed because the Ben Affleck scene is a blatant rip off of the Alec Baldwin scene in Glengarry Glen Ross (GGGR) and Baldwin’s watch is worth more than Affleck’s car. In GGGR you caught yourself thinking. “Baldwin would be an awesome salesman” then you remembered Baldwin makes 10 million a film and has more money than God and the last thing he needed to do was go on a sit. In Boiler Room, you caught yourself thinking, “why Affleck?”
Wall Street:
By the end of Wall Street, during the Gordon Gekko, Charlie Sheen bitch slap scene, you wanted to jump in and administer some De Niro type kicks to Sheen’s gut.
The Pursuit of Happyness:
Although it’s a great movie, something tells me that Chris Gardner wasn’t the perfect angel he portrayed himself to be.
A Death of a Salesman (Dustin Hoffman version):
No sales person should ever watch this movie. For the same reason that no white male should ever watch Eddie Murphy’s white people dancing routine. I’ve never danced since and after watching Death, I have a panic attack every time I can’t locate my keys.
No other sales movie is even worth mentioning.
Now the contenders:
Glengarry Glen Ross (GGGR):
For:
Possibly the greatest cast in movie (any movie) history. The cast makes the Dream Team look like an intramural team. Kevin Spacey is an afterthought in the movie and he’s won two Oscars. The cast is six hall of famers deep and the seventh guy, Jonathan Pryce, might be runner up for the movie’s MVP.
The opening scene in GGGR is right up there with the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, and that’s without exploding bombs, warships, machine guns and fighter planes.
What’s a worse travesty, Hoop Dreams not getting an Oscar nomination for best documentary or Baldwin not getting one for best supporting actor? I stopped watching the Grammy’s in 1989 when Jethro Tull beat Metallica for best hard rock/heavy metal performance. I didn’t know it at the time, when Hoop Dreams was robbed, but still stopped watching the award show when I found out. The Hoop Dreams’ robbery was worse but you could make an argument for Baldwin.
I watched GGGR two times in a row, when I first saw it, and that was on video tape, so I had to rewind the damn thing. I’ve never did that for any movie before or since.
GGGR makes non sales people squeamish. It makes salespeople look like bad asses. If the movie wasn’t such a cult classic, people might get caught saying things like, “Watch out, that guy’s wearing a suit!”
Against:
You got three guys that obviously had some sales chops, so why would they put up with what appears to be the worst sales position in sales history…and for zero salary no less?
The Harris – Arkin dialog has more words in it than in a public library. There’s no way that Arkin wouldn’t have jumped out of the car into an oncoming semi, if it was real.
No company would hold back its best leads. What would be the purpose? So they would get old and stale and some guy across the street would pay another guy to break into their office and steal them?
The firm gives Shelley Levene one night to close, close! a sale and make him work a lead that later is revealed to be submitted by a crazy couple. He closes the sale and then Spacey’s character tells him he’ll be surprised if their check doesn’t bounce. So, the firm wanted him gone and this movie enters A Death of a Salesman territory. It’s depressing to see a guy as polished as Levene being thrown out with the garbage and that’s why every young sales rep sort of feels sorry for the old rep that shows up new to a networking group. The older sales rep is like the oldest guy in the bar. If you’re an older guy and you’re still selling, everybody wonders what went wrong.
Tin Men:
For:
Hands down, the funniest sales movie ever. Danny Devito has been in arguably the best sales movie ever and the worst sales movie ever.(1) Devito’s the best player on a championship team. His character, Tilley’s, dialog about overhead, “Why do ya need a back yard?” Picnics, “I don’t understand a picnic. We go someplace, put a thing on the ground and eat.” Taxes, “I figured they could wait a few years… it’s not like they need my money to build a bomber. You think they’re waiting for my money before they dig a new road? Are they all sitting there saying, ‘Well, it’s time we went to see that guy on Pimlico Road… can’t run this government without his four thousand dollars.’” Then there’s this scene where he discusses buying a new Cadillac:
Babowsky
“Yeah… they’re changing the body. I hear it’s a beaut.
Tilley
“Maybe I should put in my order now.”
Babowsky
“What’re you talking about? You ain’t got a pot to piss in.”
Tilley
“Give me the pot… I’ll fill it.”
The scene with Dreyfuss and the car salesman is the best illustration of how bad buyers, salespeople can be. I’ve been selling for over twenty years but have made some of the worst car deals ever.(2)
The best thing about this movie is what bothers me about GGGR. These guys are not only losing their jobs, they’re losing their industry. They sell aluminum siding; all of a sudden the Home Improvement Commission comes in, starts snooping around and takes away their licenses. Does that bring them down? No. They see a VW Bug and spot opportunity. Meanwhile, the boys in GGGR are clinging onto shit jobs like they are their beating hearts.
Against:
There’s not too much wrong with this movie. Is it too unbelievable that Barbara Hershey’s character is married to Danny Devito’s? Maybe. Do we wish that Richard Dreyfuss’s character didn’t get all soft on us? Yes.
Conclusion:
I checked both movies on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie critic website and GGGR scored a 98%. That means that 98% of the 41 critics that reviewed it, liked it. Tin Men scored a 79%.
David Mamet wrote the script for GGGR.(3) When I watched it, I imagined it was some sales lifer that broke free from the endless grind of sales and wrote one of the greatest scripts of all time, then stuck to the bastards in management. But Mamet never sold anything besides a script.
Barry Levinson wrote and directed Tin Men. His works include Diner, Rain Man and The Natural. He directed Wag the Dog, which Mamet wrote the script for.
As good as Tin Men is, it’s like the weather in San Diego. Never bad enough to complain about, but never so great that it makes you want to quit your job and live on the beach.
GGGR plays out like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.(4) There are four amazing scenes that tie the movie together: the opening scene with Baldwin, the bar scene with Pacino and Pryce, the contract scene with Pryce, Pacino and Lemon and later with Spacey, Pacino and Lemon. Those scenes are so powerful that they propel the movie to heights that Tin Men can’t hope to reach. Tin Men might be a better movie to watch when it’s the 25th of the month and you haven’t posted a single sale but GGGR is a better movie. You could make an argument that GGGR is one of the greatest movies ever made but you couldn’t make that claim about Tin Men.
Winner:
Glengarry Glen Ross.
(1) The Big Kahuna is one of the worst movies ever filmed. The whole film is shot in one room; this movie will make you more claustrophobic than a casket. The writers have no understanding of selling, which was made clear when in a pivotal scene a prospect is given the sales team’s contact info and instructed to call them. Doesn’t happen. We all know we have to initiate every conversation until our service is installed, and then the customer calls us every day to bitch us out. Kevin Spacey was also in this movie.
(2) My problem is I want to trust people. Trusting car salesmen is like trusting a coyote to cat sit for you.
(3) He also wrote The Verdict. Imagine having those two on your resume’?
(4) Dark Side has four main tracks that pill the album together: Breathe, Time, Money and Brain Damage.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment