Can someone please explain it to me? I watched the whole movie... I liked it, but I don't really "get" it. What's it supposed to mean?
Can someone please explain it to me? I watched the whole movie... I liked it, but I don't really "get" it. What's it supposed to mean?




This is what the playwright had to say about it:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.c...ms.php?id=4940
(It's in the last two paragraphs)
I love it and have a special edition of it. Definately a great movie to watch if you're in sales.
What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name!
"Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?" - GB
"And do the cats give a shit? No, they do not. Why? Because they're cats."-from The Onion
Originally Posted by Mia M




Yeah, it's a must if you're in sales. My old landlord was a former car-salesman and when he found out I became a stripper, aka hustler, he told me to check it out. I found it anti-climactic... but I really identified though. A related sales movie, Boiler Room, is also a good one.
We used to watch boiler room at the same time as we called "leads" when I first started, haha.
Lucky...I so want to watch GGR with you now!
"Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?" - GB
"And do the cats give a shit? No, they do not. Why? Because they're cats."-from The Onion
Originally Posted by Mia M
"Coffee is for closers."




it's a frickin' sleeper classic! one of the best movies made imho.
definitely one of the best cast ever assembled. lemmon is one of my favorite all-time actors.
baldwin was highlarious in that. like kat, i looooved his rant! definitely should've gotten an oscar for his rant. in short, it's "Death of a Fucking Salesman." (ed harris)priceless!



To me, Lucky, it was about a group of men who to various degrees built their identities around what they had to sell--those who were good at the selling were able to almost divorce themselves entirely from the spin and rely entirely on theatrics...Pacino is this way until he begins to have trouble. The others live in a kind of twilight zone: they are not quite ruthless enough to make it all work, but they are desperate, and so they try and sort of half-believe in the product and themselves. To me it is a portrait of the hidden lives of American males--trying to live up to the glitz they profess and make a living at, stumbling, trying to hide their failure.
There is a great story by the mythologist Joseph Campbell. It is something he saw. A man, his boy, and his wife were having dinner out one night in the Bronx. The man said to the boy, "Drink your tomato juice." The boy said, "I don't wanna." The man said, more forcefully, "Drink your tomato juice!" The woman said, "Don't make him do something he doesn't want to do!" The father said, "He can't go through life doing what he wants to do! Look at me. I've never done a SINGLE THING I WANTED TO DO IN ALL MY LIFE."
Campbell says that a guy like this might have success, but what kind of success is it if it is something you never wanted to do in the first place?
I think you see this often in American society, and probably in others as well. People like the guys in the movie slugging it through, living lives they do not want to--convinced that they can't really do anything else. The sadness to it is that the waters of talent are always there waiting to be tapped, if we dare to do so.
I don't know if this makes any sense. I just saw the movie too, and am curious about what others think! Hope you are doing well, Lucky!
JK Jim
Watching Jack Lemmon curse like a sailor is fucking amazing!
Third place is you're fired!
"Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?" - GB
"And do the cats give a shit? No, they do not. Why? Because they're cats."-from The Onion
Originally Posted by Mia M
Thanks so much everyone!!! That sheds a lot of light on the message for me. I haven't had a chance to check that link yet, but i can't wait to read it.
Jhuka, that is spot-on. And I remember reading that in Joseph Campbell too!
"We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."
Mamet is also a master of very distinctive dialogue, used to great effect in Glengarry Glen Ross. I love how he riffs on "ABC" as a sort of leitmotif throughout.
"Before I conceived you, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. Before you were here an hour, I would die for you. This is the miracle of life." -- Maureen Hawkins
"I just can't get over how much babies cry. I really had no idea what I was getting into. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be more like getting a cat." -- Anne Lamott
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