Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet – winner of The Pulitzer Prize in 1984 http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/glengary-glen-ross-by-david-mamet.html - 10 out of 10

 

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet – winner of The Pulitzer Prize in 1984 http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/glengary-glen-ross-by-david-mamet.html

10 out of 10

 

 

Glengarry Glen ross is one of the greatest plays one can choose, albeit we can wonder about the reception it would get in this age, when you have extremists on both sides of the political spectrum, Republicans might regret the fact that there are no guns in the narrative, the characters are not macho enough, lacking testosterone and who knows what else – one of the monsters responsible for the rise of Trump, the invasion of the Capitol, a sycophant for the likes of Putin (which gives us an idea of how atrocious the creature is) has just been fired from Fox (which has the news in its name, albeit it is just a machine for making money and promoting conspiracy theories, vile theories, abjection) and Jimmy Kimmel was showing on his comedy show some of the lamentable scenes from the Mother Tucker show, and it was disgusting – while on the other extreme, there would be other criticism…

 

As it is, David Mamet expressed his support for…Trump on the Bill Maher program (and surely elsewhere, it is just that I only saw the HBO program) unless I have just imagined that, it does seem so absurd that a gifted, clever, creative author could make such an awful, dumb choice…and he is the one that gave audiences some fantastic gems, like The Untouchables http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-untouchables-written-by-david-mamet.html directed by Brian De Palma.

They have had on Cinemax a documentary on the director, called De Palma, and it is more than worth watching, it is a delight, for the artist tells many wonderful stories, a passage is dedicated to The Untouchables, for which Kevin Costner was recommended by Martin Scorsese (if I am not mistaken) Sean Connery wanted to make a break with the James Bond roles, Connery gets shot with a machine gun – Sydney Lumet talks about so many aspects of filming in his brilliant Making Movies http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-untouchables-written-by-david-mamet.html one of them is about the carnage of putting the very tall Sean Connery and someone like Al Pacino in the same frame…

 

We are moving away from the subject (hence there is a need for an alert here, not spoiler, since I am talking not about the ‘end’ of Glengarry, but apparently moving further away from it) and I am still on the De Palma documentary, in which he regales the public with an interesting irony, where Sydney Lumet has ‘stolen’ the Prince of the City project from the former, who had spent a long time working, developing the idea, while later, Sydney Lumet would adapt Scarface, with a Miami setting http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/note-on-scarface.html where there have been so many problems that Brian De Palma would eventually have to move the filming to California, where he took the production

Glengarry Glen ross has some glorious lines, fabulous characters and adapted for the big screen with Jack Lemmon as Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levine, al Pacino as Richard Roma, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, the now disgraced Kevin Spacey and the outstanding Alec Baldwin as Blake…the latter has some lines, an appearance that has entered the history of cinema (just like the rest of the film for that matter) that summarize the ruthlessness of capitalism, maybe – mind you, I have lived under communism for about twenty five years (not counting up to the present, a period which has seen a transformation, but an advanced economy is still some decades away) and I have taken part in the Revolution that took down Ceausescu http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html as this link to a page from an article in Newsweek, the copy covering the 1989 rebellion demonstrates, my pride and joy

 

Salesmen try hard to sell real estate, but the leads they have are really bad, however, Blake comes from downtown and has a cruel presentation, something to the effects of ‘you see this watch, it costs more than your car, ABC, always be selling, the one who is in third place is fired, so either you close, or you walk’- under this pressure, Dave Moss has this plan to steal the new leads, the Glengarry Glen Ross list, which he will sell to a competitor, and he enlists the poor George Aaronow, the latter has to commit the actual felony, and all for a smaller fee, and because he would be blackmailed if he does not…

Meanwhile, Shelley The Machine has problems with his finances (as most normal folks have) and is trying to get their boss to give him the new leads (some of them) because he used to be a great sales representative (hence the Machine nickname) but not recently, and he offers to pay Williamson (basically, this is a bribe) only the latter wants much more, fifty for each name and ten percent or more from the future sale, and the money upfront…the one that rides high is Richard Roma, who sells to James Lingk

 

Kevin Spacey is Williamson, the evil, stupid boss, who refuses The Machine and then ruins everything for Roma – the most successful employee is all over the reckless manager, telling him that the ‘first rule in this business is to never open your mouth, if you do not know what the game is’ and there is tirade, with expletives and fury, for Roma had worked really hard, he was going to get the first prize, the Cadillac, but Williamson says the wrong thing, and instead of having the deal sealed, it is all off now…

The real estate office is robbed, and we do not know who it is, albeit we suspect that it must be George aka Alan Arkin, it needs to be emphasized again that this is crème de la crème, nec plus ultra, you cannot get a better team of actors no matter how hard you find, and what is more, they are at their zenith, in top form (if you take Pacino and maybe some of the others and look at more recent work, well, then there is not much to enjoy there) who was blackmailed by Dave Moss and maybe pushed to commit the crime…

 

There could obviously be a surprise there – Aristotle explains in his analyses of drama, tragedy that two ingredients are needed, one is reversal and the other revelation, and they could be mixed together, as in Oedipus Rex http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/03/oedipus-rex-by-sophocles-and-adapted-by.html wherein the king finds from a messenger that he has killed his father and married his mother, all at the same time…other possibly interesting links would be http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world and maybe

http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html