Glengarry Glen Ross (film)

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Glengarry Glen Ross
Theatrical poster
Directed by	James Foley
Produced by	Jerry Tokofsky Stanley R. Zupnik
Written by	David Mamet
Starring	Jack Lemmon Al Pacino Ed Harris Alan Arkin Kevin Spacey with Alec Baldwin and Jonathan Pryce
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	Juan Ruiz Anchía
Editing by	Howard E. Smith
Distributed by	New Line Cinema (theatrical) LIVE Entertainment (VHS)
Release date(s)	September 30, 1992
Running time	100 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12,500,000
Gross revenue	$10,725,228
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 independent film, adapted by David Mamet from his acclaimed 1984 Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning play of the same name. The film depicts two days in the lives of four real estate agents and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a representative to "motivate" them by announcing that, in one week, all except the top two salesmen will be fired.

The film, like the play, is notorious for its use of profanity, leading the cast to jokingly refer to the film as "Death of a Fucking Salesman."^[1] Because of the film’s modest budget, many of the actors took significant pay cuts to be in it. Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Joe Mantegna and Richard Gere all expressed interest in acting in the film. During filming, members of the cast who were not required to be on the set certain days would show up anyway to watch the other actors' performances.

Glengarry Glen Ross had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival where Jack Lemmon won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. The film was not a commercial success, only making $10.7 million in North America, just below its $12.5 million budget. It was a critically well-received with highly positive reviews by most of the major critics. Al Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the film.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast and characters 3 Production 4 Reception 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Plot

The film shows parts of two days in the lives of four real estate agents. They become desperate when the corporate office ("downtown") sends Blake (Alec Baldwin), to "motivate" them by announcing, in a torrent of verbal abuse, that in one week all except the top two salesmen will be fired.

Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon) has not made a sale in some time. He is desperate for money, mainly because his daughter is very ill and the medical charges are enormous, and knows that he will lose his job soon if he cannot turn things around. He tries to convince office manager John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) to give him some of "the Glengarry leads" – names and phone numbers of promising potential clients for expensive properties the firm will be selling in the near future. Williamson refuses. Levene tries first to charm Williamson, then to threaten him, and finally to bribe him. Williamson is willing to sell some of the prime leads, but demands cash in advance. Levene cannot come up with the cash and must leave without any good leads to work with.

Dave Moss (Ed Harris) and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) are complaining about Mitch and Murray, the big bosses. Moss tells Aaronow that they need to strike back at Mitch and Murray by stealing all the Glengarry leads and selling them to another real estate agency. Moss's plan would require Aaronow to break into the office, stage a burglary, and steal all the prime leads. Aaronow wants no part of the plan, but Moss intimidates him, saying that Aaronow is already an accomplice, legally, simply because he listened to the idea.

Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), the office's top "closer," delivers a long, disjointed but compelling monologue to a meek, middle-aged man named James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). Roma does not bring up the real estate he wants to sell to Lingk until the very end. Instead, Roma preys upon Lingk's insecurities, and his sense that he has never done anything adventurous with his life. Lingk sees in Roma all the virtues he lacks: virility, confidence, a sense of adventure.

The next day, the salesmen come into work to find that their offices have been burgled and the Glengarry leads have been stolen as well. Williamson and the police question each of the salesmen in private. Lingk comes into to tell Roma that he and his wife want their money back. Williamson, unaware that Roma is trying to confuse Lingk about the sale, lies that they already took his money to the bank. Upset, Lingk rushes out of the office and Roma berates Williamson for what he has done. Roma enters Williamson's office to take his turn being interrogated by the police and Levene, proud of a sale he made the night before, takes the opportunity to mock Williamson in private. In his zeal to emasculate Williamson as Williamson has done to him, he inadvertently reveals that he knows Williamson actually left Lingk's check on his desk; something only the man who broke into the office after Williamson had left for the night would know. He eventually breaks down, and admits that he and Moss conspired to steal the leads to give to a competitor. Williamson pretends to consider a bribe from Levene in return for keeping quiet to the police, but eventually reveals to Levene that the people to whom he made the sale are crazy and have no money, and that he has no interest in helping Levene, for the simple reason that Williamson dislikes him. The film ends as Levene walks, defeated, into Williamson's office where the police are waiting--Roma walks out of the office for lunch, and Aaronow continues his sales as usual.

[edit] Cast and characters

• Jack Lemmon as Shelley "The Machine" Levene: He is an older man, a once-successful and respected salesman who has recently fallen on hard times, and has not closed a big deal in a long time. Lemmon said of his character, "Shelly's actions question where the morals and ethics are in America and how they have eroded in the quest for success".^[2]
• Al Pacino as Ricky Roma: He is the most successful salesman in the office. He is ruthless, dishonest and immoral, but succeeds because he has a talent for figuring out a client's weaknesses and crafting a pitch that will exploit those weaknesses. He's quite full of himself.
• Ed Harris as Dave Moss: He is a big-mouthed salesman with big dreams and schemes. Harris describes his character as "the kind of guy who, when anything's wrong, it's not him. Blames everybody else".^[2]
• Alan Arkin as George Aaronow: He is an aging and nervous salesman with low self-esteem who lacks confidence and hope. Despite this, he means well.
• Kevin Spacey as John Williamson: He is the office manager. The salesmen despise Williamson, but need him desperately because he is the one who hands out the sales leads. Spacey saw his character as "the catalyst for events, since people are either struggling for or against him".^[2]
• Alec Baldwin as Blake: He is brought in by Mitch and Murray to motivate the salesmen in a ruthless manner.
• Jonathan Pryce as James Lingk: He is a timid, middle-aged man who becomes Roma's latest client. Lingk is easily manipulated.

[edit] Production

David Mamet's play was first performed in 1983 at the National Theatre of London and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. That same year, the play made its American debut in Chicago before moving to Broadway. Producer Jerry Tokofsky read David Mamet’s play on a trip to New York City in 1985 at the suggestion of director Irvin Kershner who wanted to make it into a movie.^[3] Tokofsky saw the play on Broadway and contacted Mamet. Stanley R. Zupnik was a Washington D.C.-based producer of B-movies that was looking for a more profitable project. Tokofsky had co-produced two previous Zupnik films. In 1986, he told Zupnik about Mamet’s play and he saw it on Broadway but found the plot confusing. Mamet wanted $500,000 for the movie rights and another $500,000 to write the screenplay. Zupnik agreed to pay Mamet’s $1 million asking price, figuring that they could cut a deal with a cable company to bankroll the movie. Because of the uncompromising subject matter and abrasive language, no major studio wanted to finance it, even with movie stars attached. Financing came from cable and video companies, a German television station, an Australian movie theater chain, several banks, and New Line Cinema over the course of four years.^[3]

Al Pacino originally wanted to do the play on Broadway but was doing another Mamet production, American Buffalo, in London at the time. He expressed interest in appearing in the film adaptation. In 1989, Tokofsky asked Jack Lemmon to act in the movie.^[2] During this time, Kershner dropped out to make another movie as did Pacino. Alec Baldwin, who also attached, left the project over a contract disagreement. James Foley’s agent sent the film director Mamet’s screenplay in early 1991 but he was hesitant to direct because he “wanted great actors, people with movie charisma, to give it watchability, especially since the locations were so restricted”.^[4] Foley took the screenplay to Pacino with whom he had been trying to work on a film for years.^[5] Foley was hired to direct only to leave the production as well. By March 1991, Tokofsky contacted Baldwin and begged him to reconsider doing the film. The producer remembers, “Alec said: ‘I’ve read 25 scripts and nothing is as good as this. O.K. If you make it, I’ll do it”.^[3] The two men arranged an informal reading with Lemmon in Los Angeles. Subsequently, the three men organized readings with several other actors as Lemmon remembers, "Some of the best damn actors you're ever going to see came in and read and I'm talking about names".^[5] Tokofsky’s lawyer, Jake Bloom, called a meeting at the Creative Artists Agency who represented many of the actors involved and asked for their help. CAA showed little interest, but two of their clients – Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey – soon joined the cast.

Because of the film’s modest budget, many of the actors took significant pay cuts. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million, Lemmon was paid $1 million, Baldwin received $250,000, and so on.^[3] This did not stop other actors, like Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis,^[3] Joe Mantegna and Richard Gere^[2] from expressing interest in the film. Once the cast was assembled, they spent three weeks in rehearsals. With a budget set at $12.5 million, filming began in August 1991 at the Kaufman Astoria Soundstage in Queens, New York and on location in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn over 39 days. Harris remembers, "There were five and six-page scenes we would shoot all at once. It was more like doing a play at times [when] you'd get the continuity going".^[5] Alan Arkin said of the script, "What made it [challenging] was the language and the rhythms, which are enormously difficult to absorb".^[5] During filming, members of the cast who were not required to be on the set certain days would show up anyway to watch the other actors' performances.^[6]

The film's director of photography, Juan Ruiz Anchía relied on low lighting and shadows with a blues, greens and reds color scheme for the first part of the film. For the second half, he adhered to a monochromatic blue-grey color scheme. During the production, Tokofsky and Zupnik had a falling out over money and credit for the film. Tokofsky sued to strip Zupnik of his producer’s credit and share of the producer’s fee.^[7] Zupnik claimed that he personally put up $2 million of the film’s budget and countersued, claiming that Tokofsky was fired for embezzlement.^[7]

[edit] Reception

Glengarry Glen Ross had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival where Jack Lemmon won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.^[8] In addition, it was supposed to be shown at the Montreal Film Festival but was forced to show it out of competition because it was competing at the Venice Film Festival at the same time. Instead, it was given its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.^[9]

The film opened in regular release on October 2, 1992 in 416 theaters, grossing $2.1 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $10.7 million in North America, just below its $12.5 million budget.^[10]

Reviews were highly positive. The film currently has a rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Owen Gleiberman gave the film an "A" rating in his review for Entertainment Weekly magazine, praising Lemmon's performance as "a revelation", and describing his character as "the weaselly soul of Glengarry Glen Ross-Willy Loman turned into a one-liner".^[11] Peter Travers gave the film his highest rating in Rolling Stone magazine and wrote, "The pleasure of this unique film comes in watching superb actors dine on Mamet's pungent language like the feast it is".^[12] Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Mamet's dialogue has a kind of logic, a cadence, that allows people to arrive in triumph at the ends of sentences we could not possibly have imagined. There is great energy in it. You can see the joy with which these actors get their teeth into these great lines, after living through movies in which flat dialogue serves only to advance the story".^[13] Vincent Canby praised "the utterly demonic skill with which these foulmouthed characters carve one another up in futile attempts to stave off disaster. It's also because of the breathtaking wizardry with which Mr. Mamet and Mr. Foley have made a vivid, living film that preserves the claustrophobic nature of the original stage work", in his review for the New York Times.^[14] Desson Howe's review in the Washington Post criticized Foley's direction, writing that it "doesn't add much more than the street between. If his intention is to create a sense of claustrophobia, he also creates the (presumably) unwanted effect of a soundstage. There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie".^[15]

Jack Lemmon was voted Best Actor by the National Board of Review.^[15] Al Pacino was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor but did not win.^[16] He was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role but failed to win; the same year he was nominated and won the Best Actor Oscar for Scent of a Woman.^[17]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Glengarry Glen Ross at the Internet Movie Database
• Glengarry Glen Ross at Allmovie
• Glengarry Glen Ross at Rotten Tomatoes

v • d • e James Foley 1980s Reckless · At Close Range · Who's That Girl 1990s After Dark, My Sweet · Glengarry Glen Ross · Two Bits · Fear · The Chamber · The Corruptor 2000s Confidence · Perfect Stranger · Man and Wife Television "Twin Peaks" (1990–1991) · Gun (1997) · Hollywood Division (2004)