The Rewatchables - ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ With Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey have got brass balls to rewatch the 1992 American drama film adapted by David Mamet, ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, and Alec Baldwin. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Have you made your decision for Christ? It's Glenn Gary Glenn Ross. This was no ordinary contest. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Third prize is you fired. So they did what they had to do. Somebody to do something to them. To win.

Oh, you need a little boot. I'll go out and rob everybody blind and go to Argentina. So be it. You rob the office. Oh, sure. I robbed the office. Oh, sure. How can you talk to me that way?

Are you talking to me? From the Pulitzer Prize winner, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. This is how we keep score. Reddit R. Coming soon to a theater near you. This is a special one. While bronchitis bill is away, Sean Fennacy and I will play. I'm Chris Ryan.

We're doing the rewatchables, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. A movie where, Sean, you know how there's that meme going around where it's like men will literally name random sports, random athletes to avoid therapy. I feel like that's us, but it's lines from this movie. Rather than actually communicate our emotions or anything about our interiority, we just say lines from Glenn Garry, Glenn Ross for 30 years. I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way. You know, the hottest take is born of that. You know, the purest intentions of the ringer is born of that.

We're here to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of Glenn Garry Glenn Ross, which came out last week in 1992, so October 1992. It's directed by James Foley, who was coming off of a, you know, probably forgotten to time noir movie called After Dark My Sweet. Al Pacino is a big fan of James Foley's at close range, which is, I think, a pretty memorable movie, Sean Penn movie. Incredible. Yeah. And James Foley and Al Pacino wanted to make a movie. version of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize winning real estate drama, Glenn Garry Glenn Ross. And they wound up putting together what Pacino's co-star Jack Lemmon would call the greatest ensemble he has ever been a

part of. And I thought we could start there. I thought we could talk about ensemble movies and I thought we could talk about murderers row of actors because this is in the first paragraph. If you're, if you're talking about the greatest ensembles put together, Sean, you have to have Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross in there. You do. But here's the thing. It's not. It's not. not just that it's one of the greatest ensembles ever put together. It's that it's one of the greatest ensembles ever put together performing at their highest level. Yes. Because this does happen more frequently than you think. I'll give you an example. There's a movie that came out last weekend called Amsterdam. It's got a home cast. Christian Bell, Marco Robbie, Robert De Niro,

number of other actors. Taylor Swift, she's in the film. And she's at the peak of her powers. As a performer, certainly. As a performer, yeah. Star-studied cast. Movie doesn't work for a variety of reasons. It's not really the cast fault, but I wouldn't say it's the cast that they're best. This is a case where you've got particularly one generation of actor, maybe one and a half generations of actor, that you can see they're sort of sniffing around each other and saying, like, how can I get to the level of this other guy? There's a competition among all these guys in a way. And the play breeds that, right? The script breeds that. And it's just a feast for all these really, really skilled and largely experienced dudes.

Is it the greatest? I don't know. How do you measure that? I don't know. I mean, you could say like Godfather is. You know what you mean? I think that sometimes I just get chills when Alec Baldwin's character, Blake, is giving his famous speech in Glengarry Glen Ross, and you're looking out on that office.

And even though Pacino's not in that scene, you have Ed Harris, you have Alan Ark, and you have Kevin Spacey, you have Baldwin, and you have Jack fucking Lemon getting absolutely decapitated by Baldwin in that scene and just the sheer amount of acting talent at that moment present in a single shot or in a single moment on a stage is just it's just astonishing. What was your story with this movie? So like what, did you see it?

Like I guess you probably would have been about like, what, like 11, 10 years old when it first came out in 92. I was 15. Do you remember when you first came across this? I do. I was, I didn't see it in the theater. I was too young. but this film actually came up when we talked about Boogie Nights, which is House of Games, which is one of my dad's favorite movies of all time.

And so when I was probably about 10, 11 years old, my dad showed me House of Games because he absolutely loved it. And I think it was having a run on cable at the time, starring Joe Montaena, who originated the role of Ricky Roma. And I just got hooked on that world that Mammick created.

And so even as a teenager, probably 12 or 13 is when I first saw Glengarry, I started hunting out his name. and trying to find his scripts and trying to figure out what he had authored because even as a kid, he had, he has this rhythmic, syncopated, slightly awkward but intoxicating writing and speech style that if you like it, you love it and you get so deep inside of it and so excited by it that I was kind of in from there on in. This might have even been the second, maybe the third or fourth Mammott movie that I saw because he's really, really busy, not as a playwright, but as a,

as a filmmaker and as a screenwriter at this time. Yeah, I mean, he wrote a lot of scripts. He directed a bunch of movies in that window between like 87 and 95. And so it was kind of an awesome time to be coming up and getting excited about him because, you know, he's making the Spanish prisoner. He's making Oliana. He's making like these really complex, fascinating movies, all kind of different, but all undeniably, Mimishin. I don't know. What about you? When did you, when did this movie come to you? So I remember in 91, my dad really loving homicide and telling me about it. So homicide is a movie that he wrote and directed with Joe Mantanae, Bill Macy, and William H. Macy, and Rebecca Pigeon, who I believe he went on to marry at a certain point.

And it's about a homicide detective working one case in Chicago and who gets pulled off of it to work on a particularly sensitive case to the Jewish community because, he is a Jewish detective and him kind of coming to terms with his identity, which in a lot of ways many of Mamets works, aside from Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, are about like you're wrestling with your own identity. As soon as you hear a David Mamet movie or play, but in our case, movies, because we were kids that we weren't going to Broadway or to Stepan Wolf or anything, you know you're in the presence of something unmistakable and unique, even if you can't put, even if you can't articulate why. And I think that, you know, so Homicide came out, and I think around them was when I sort of casually started looking at premiere and Entertainment Weekly or whatever. And so I was aware

that this cast was assembling. And we were kind of on the upswing of this Pacino Renaissance. Jack Lemon obviously wasn't doing a ton of very serious work at the time. Like, you know, obviously, he's one of the great American stage actors and one of the great American screen actors, but was certainly in the twilight of his career and was really only doing work that he wanted to be doing at that point. It seemed like, So just the idea that those two were going to be in it. And I remember the trailer, gosh, I can't remember whether it was on. It must have, maybe it was on the homicide VHS or something, but there was a trailer for

Glengarian. I was like, that's interesting. Why do those guys talk like that? You know, like, why do these guys talk like that? And that's the thing about this movie is it's not almost, I mean, it's, it's obviously a rewatchable, but it's also a re-listenable. And people always used to tell me, like, Mamet writes dialogue the way people talk. And the older I get, and maybe this is more of a consequence of the fact that, like, you and I communicate largely by being like, damn, Mets, Paine, LMAO, see you later?

Like, that's basically how we were talking now. But to me, people don't talk like Mammot characters. The Mammot's characters talk like Mammot characters, like the rhythms and the staccato nature of the way they talk, the repetition, the uses of cliches and tropes from other lines of work being brought in. you know, imitating some guy's voice for a line. It's just, it's so him. There's not really anybody else like him, and it doesn't actually sound like the way people talk. No, I don't think that I,

I think I probably thought that it was how adults talked when I was a kid when I saw it and aspired to the kind of sharp, intelligent, obviously, deeply masculine, kind of slightly angry, but very intelligent way of speaking. The truth is, is that pretty much all of his characters, Talk like David Mamet. They don't talk like mammoth characters.

If you've ever heard him speak, he is extremely clear-minded in the way that he communicates. And he's a very, very intelligent guy, very considered person. He's someone who has clearly thought very deeply about what it is he's doing and trying to communicate in his work.

And it's the same way. A lot, you know, most of his characters are skilled in the art of something. You know what I mean? They are, they're often guns for hire and they're often out for themselves and sort of like making them, most out of their circumstances. And they're mostly not trustworthy people, but they are very, very

good at what they do. And so I think it's a very impressionable kind of movie. It really makes an impression on you because you're like, these guys who, you know, with a lot more life experience when I look back on this movie are really like the losers of the losers, like the scum, the scum of the scum, you know, people who are straight up criminals selling worthless property to dottering old people. I mean, that is... who are filling out like cards and magazines being like, I would like more information on this imaginary Florida retirement community or this imaginary Arizona retirement community.

Yeah, taking advantage of these people. And obviously what they do is a kind of stock and trade. And the film itself and the play itself is obviously like a spiritual sequel to another play about a salesman. And, you know, he's almost like responding to the lineage of stories about these kinds of guys and making it even more bleak and even more ground level. And it's pretty,

it's pretty remarkable, like, how much it imprinted on me at the time. And what I found myself thinking about when I was watching it this time around is, what I have liked this movie if I saw it at 40 for the first time? That's a great question. I don't know. Because, like, I had this movement watching it, getting ready for the pod. And I don't know why I'd never noticed this before. But when the second half of the film starts,

and one of the great things that we'll talk about about this movie is the structure, which is essentially it's two scenes. It's night and day. but when Ricky pulls up to the office in the morning, which the jazz music starts, the movie changes, the color scheme changes, everything about it changes,

and then it becomes largely an Al Pacino movie for the second half. But he pulls up, and I'm like, Premiere Properties is a fucking dump. Oh, yeah. It is a storefront wedged in between, like whatever,

like a hardware store and a nail salon across the street from a Chinese restaurant. It's just one of those places in your life that you would walk by 100,000 times and not think twice, about what it is, especially in New York or Chicago or these big cities where you're walking down the street and you're just like, oh yeah,

vape store, this store, that store, this store, you never go in and then you just wonder, like, whose lives are in there. And even Ricky, who is in the world of this movie, such a fucking hot shot and such a badass. It's probably a gunslinger, and if he was

really this good, he probably wouldn't be working at premier properties, right? Absolutely. And he sounds like, he's been there for a little while. You know, like all of these guys more or less have been, like, stuck in neutral in their lives, addicted to being on this board and working off of their whatever it is, 10, 20% commissions from these sales.

So, yeah, if you see it at 40, you almost look at it and say, oh, these guys are all going through a perpetual midlife crisis. But when you see when you're 15, you're like, I have an entirely new way of speaking. Yeah. And I think that when you're 15 and you don't know how to speak to anyone with confidence, except maybe your mom, you think that that's something that you should aspire to. And then when you're 40 and you see these people talking to each other this way and you're just like, this is inhumane. But the thing is, it's really, really funny. I mean, the reason it's so quotable is because

Mamet has this like incredible sense of dark humor and he might be the most gifted person with profanity that we've ever had writing screenplays in Hollywood. So you put all that stuff together. It's obviously, it made a huge impression on me. It's a movie that I've seen many. many, many times that I think is very, very funny, very, very fun. I think its underlying message is extremely exceedingly dark about the nature of man, but I kind of get a kick out of those movies. So for me, it's easy. Like, it is, it is in that very, very short list of movies that I'm sure you and I clicked on it, like within the first year that we knew each other. Well, yeah. I mean, this became one of those movies. I'd be curious to see whether or not, I'm sure there are people

who are listening to this podcast who are looking forward to the day that we'd did this movie. I don't know how much it's sort of like continued to graduate down to like do hedge fund guys and crypto guys like watch Glendary and get a kick out of it the way the boiler room generation did. I will say, I'm not resetting it in the crypto world. This is a genius idea. That might be the Netflix 10 episode series. Ted, call us. But yeah, like this movie became pretty much in high school when I was in high school, but especially in college. And then And seriously, when I moved to New York and met you, met a bunch of people, this was like, you could be at a bar and you could just say, always be closing, or you could say,

why don't you buy me a pack of gum, I'll show you how to chew it or whatever, like, all these lines from this movie. And sometimes I would even say lines from this movie just for my own entertainment. Like sometimes, like, we would be in a bar and somebody would be like, where's Sean? And I'd be like, well, I'm not a leash, so I don't know. It's true. It's true. I don't know what that is. This is how we used to entertain ourselves before YouTube. Just saying these lines over and over here.

Well, that's a good way of framing it, too, because, you know, when you saw the movie in the 90s, you couldn't revisit it that easily without rewatching the whole thing. You know, maybe you could catch it on TV. But now, and especially the Always Be closing speech, and I'm sure we'll talk about that quite a bit, the Alec Baldwin scene, which was not originally in the play, that's something that is got to be in that. top 10, top 20 most viewed single YouTube movie scenes of all time, right? And it has been parody on SNL. It's something that is constantly referred to, I'm sure, from boardrooms to bar rooms across the country. But it felt like a rare coin in the 90s. It felt like a special thing when the movie cropped up somewhere. And you could see that moment and have that moment. And so, I don't know, we talk about that all the time in the show, like how slightly more special

something like this felt in the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s. But it dawns on me as I watch the movie again. The scenes I like the most are obviously not that one. The scenes I like the most are just as kind of full-breath and speechifying, but they're Ricky across the table from Jonathan Price, you know, or they're Ricky and Ed Harris screaming at each other at the end of the movie. Those are the scenes that really resonate from me now. The Alec Baldwin speech, his character's name is,

Blake, which I don't think is made clear in the actual movie, but is who he's attributed to, has now entered the heat bank robbery zone for me, where it's like, it's obviously one of my favorite scenes of all time, but when I watch the movie, it's like, I don't actually need to see this scene. And it's funny because Baldwin says the same thing. He's like, I still love this thing, but like for me, it's not about that scene. It's about everything else that's happening in it. I think that the older I get too, scarcely enough, characters like Moss and Levine are making way more sense to me than they did when I was 15 when I was basically like, oh, it's just all about Baldwin and Pacino in this movie.

Yeah, it's a smart thing to do in the movie too, which is putting a master of the universe in a room full of guys who think they're master of the universe or at least have to try to pretend to be, to be good at their jobs. And it's kind of amazing to think that this wasn't a part of the original, hugely celebrated play. It really does shift and transform the movie. And it also, it gives us some staccato break the same way that the dialogue does. Because the play takes place entirely inside of the Chinese restaurant in the first act

and entirely inside of premier properties in the second act. What that one scene does is in the first act, it drags us back to the office. And it shows us that there's like, it just makes the movie more cinematic. It's not just because of the way that it's shot that we can talk about how James Foley made a play feel like a great film. But it gives you a deeper sense of place. And even though that place is New York and should be Chicago, that's another thing that I find very confusing about this movie. It's like one of the most Chicago plays ever written. And the dialogue and the way that the guys talked to each other is so Chicago. But if Al Pacino is going to lead your movie, you kind of

have to change it to New York. It feels like that's what happened here. Yeah. I mean, well, so they shot the movie largely in New York, I think, almost entirely. In Brooklyn, I think a lot of the exteriors are there. There's New York pay phones. There's New York subways. I was going to talk about this a little bit later on, but I do think it's worth noting that Al Pacino is in a New York movie and Ed Harris is a Chicago movie. And it's one of the things that really jumps out. I don't even know if it's age the worst. It was sort of a nit picking knit, but it's like Ed Harris talking about working on Western. And I assume that's like basically a car, like an auto mall on Western in Chicago. And saying he's going to Wisconsin at the end of

the movie when he storms out of the office, which would make sense for a guy in Chicago who is probably not doing that great. He's probably got a car. He can drive to Wisconsin if he wants to. But then all the other vibes of this movie, it feels like Ricky Roma is a real like, I don't know, I don't know where he would live. Maybe Long Island. I'm not sure if there's like who's the most Long Island guy in this movie. You'd have to answer that for me. It's a good question. It's probably more likely that he has like a one bedroom on 82nd street or like in hell's kitchen but i mean he is a lifelong bachelor right he kind of like the movie even insinuates like after closing his big sale the night before he went out and and met a young lady and yeah calls her at the end of the i just wanted to tell her how much i enjoyed

yeah i know what um did you find that your favorite characters shift over time in this movie like because obviously blake and the big speech is a huge thing and i don't know if you would say like that's my favorite character. He's, it kind of just brings Satan into the movie for eight minutes, but it's hard to not want to quote that nonstop when you're 16 years old. Do you find yourself like getting excited about Moss or is it always Roma or how does it work? So this is top four Puccino for me, I think. So this is a very, very highly rated Puccino performance for me. But this time, the last like three times I've seen it probably more and more blown away by Ed Harris.

Yeah, he's pretty sick. Not only his performance, which is great, but just the character of Moss and what he does over the course of the movie and how he's clearly engaged both Aeronau and Levine to do this robbery and has pulled the same bullshit with both of them,

which we're going to talk about at a certain point because I think, you know, one of the things I love about Quentin Tarantino's writing is he understands like the dynamics of power that happen within conversations and how things can turn on a dime. And if somebody says one wrong word, all of a sudden the other guy is flipped and become the aggressor and this other person is now on defense.

And I think Mamet does that better than almost anyone. And the conversations that happen in this movie, often ones with Moss, feel like they are actually happening. Like it feels like when Roma says to Moss, fuck do you care. Like you can hear a pin drop because it's just like, oh shit, now Moss is going to lose his temper. you know what I mean? Or when Moss turns it on Aaron Ow and is like, you listened. You know, like, you're going to do the robbery. I'm going to get a bigger payout. And if you don't do this, you're an accomplice. And it's like, well, why are you doing this to me? It's like, because you've listened. You know, like the way that those things change. And Moss is often at the center of those dynamics.

Yeah, he also is the engine of the plot. I mean, the movie and the play do not exist without his character engineering the robbery of premier properties. It was, I was looking back at the original Chicago cast. It's a Mantania, J.T. Walsh, right? It's Montana, J.T. Walsh. In the Levine role is the Great Robert Prosky, who we talked about quite a bit in Thief. And Moss is played by James Tolkien.

Do you know what James Tolkien is? I know the name, but why can't I see the face in my head? He is one of the supporting figures in the Back to the Future franchise and in Top Gun. He's the bald-headed motherfucker from Top Gun. Oh, yeah. And Tolkien and Ed Harris are such specific archetypes of American acting,

which is the slightly rageful, bald, angry man. And it requires a very specific type. Now, Ed Harris is a more accomplished actor than James Tolcan. But it's interesting to see Mammett, like, set that archetype and say, this has to be this kind of guy. This is a guy who takes no shit, but also feels like he's been fucked over and will fuck anybody else over to get what he needs. And that's largely representative of, I think, what he's trying to say with the play, which is like, this world that we created is a killer be killed world because of the way that we made it. And it makes men like this.

It makes guys do these terrible things to each other just for, what, $7,500? I mean, for nothing. For no money. I mean, that's one of the things that's amazing is even adjusted for inflation. Like, these guys are just like scratching out a living. Yeah, it's just imagine the credit card bills and like, you know, because, I remember, you know, in the 80s and 90s, like, growing up. And sometimes I would go downstairs and I would just see my mom, like, paying bills. And it would just be balancing her checkbook and, like,

well, we should pay this here and we should pay that there. And I'm going to pay off the trip to Florida next year and stuff like that. And like, you can just imagine, like, Shelley does it all movie, but you can even see Dave going home and just being like, fuck, you know, like, I have to pay my gas bill. And I only got $2,200. And that's why these guys fucking, will basically commit a crime for Jerry Graf. Because $10,000 will change their lives. It's life's margins. A lot of mammoth's work is about that too.

A lot of mammoth's work is like, did you say the exact wrong thing at the wrong moment that leads to what could have been a manageable situation becoming a crisis? Yeah. And he's so smart about that. In this case, it's very easy to read into say

what's going out with Moss, right? Maybe Moss has a gambling debt, or maybe he's over leveraged on his mortgage, Or maybe it's even as small as what you're saying. Maybe it's just like he went to Honolulu two years ago and he still just hasn't been able to pay down the debt of the vacation. I mean, I just think it's like also Moss is just second best. Yes, for sure.

And it's like he has real like, I'm just never going to get the respect I deserve when I'm working with Ricky here. It's such a fascinating piece of work too because you don't often see guys who are at the top of their craft be willing to take the less glamorous part. And Moss is a less glamorous part than Ron. Alan Arkin's part, while it is a almost prototype Alan Arkin role, is very small, has very little dialogue, really has only one showcase scene. But if it's not him, it's a much weaker movie. And Arkin was like the slowest to sign on to do it. And by all accounts, it'd just been kind of

like, this Aronale part is just getting skull fucked for like two hours. Like, am I really sure I want to do this movie? And he might have been the second most accomplished actor in that troop behind Jack Lemon. He was an Academy Award winner. He's a guy had been working for 35 years to that point. And I guess he was not an Academy Award winner at that time, but he would go on and become an Academy Award. He was Academy Award nominee. The other thing, too, really quickly, 29 Academy Award nominations now among the cast of this movie. So that's pretty fucking good. Although it's got shockingly few for this movie. That's true. It is interesting, though, how they just got the right person at the right time. And the same goes for Kevin Spacey. I mean, Kevin Spacey was not a big movie star. This is well before American Beauty. And he's cast in the role of Williamson, who, frankly, is the exact Kevin Spacey energy. Yeah. The, what is needed for that part is what he brings to the movie. He is Mr. Will you go to lunch to me?

Yes. To this day, he's still, like, Kaiser Soz-L.A. Confidential, I will just never forget, like, go to lunch. Go to lunch. Will you go to lunch? Like, that's, it's kind of burn it. I know that, um, so that's, you mentioned, you know, the accomplishments of, of Arkin on stage. Kevin Spacey was basically recruited out of doing Long Day's Journey in Tonight with Jack Lemon, had been on stage. I think Pacino went and took James Foley to go see him in a place like in London. This was very much like a stage two film adaptation. We don't have to belabor it because I don't

know how fascinating. Like what do you think of the challenges of adapting plays to screen art? But I will say that I think that this is like a kind of miraculous cinematic movie given what the material suggests it is. David Mamet writes wonderful screenplays. The verdict untouchables, like you could go on and on. But, you know, this is a play that he added two scenes to. It took them 10 years to get, almost 10 years to get this from stage to screen. Several, several iterations of this cast.

A producer who is essentially just dedicated to spending eight, nine years doing what it needed to be done to make this movie. And I think that one of the reasons why it's remained in the consciousness is that it does not feel like a filmed play. And I know some people have had that criticism, but it is a really cinematic movie. It has visceral cinematic energy. There's a couple things going in its favor. One, I think it is very clearly on the short list of like 12 angry men and a streetcar named Desire and who's afraid of Virginia Woolf in terms of the best filmed plays, right? Like, it's very, very hard to do this well. There's a case to be made that the more contained it is, the better. Before we started recording, producer Craig was saying

you know rope is an interesting example of this too because that's an example where Hitchcock brings to a play a very cinematic trick that works well in telling the story in terms of the long takes and the sense of that you're watching one continuous shot. This doesn't have a trick like that but what it has

is atmosphere and an atmosphere that you could never get in a play which is that this is a smoky, jazzy noir movie. That is the style of film that James Foley brings to it. And if you've seen at close range or after Dark My Sweet, you know that that is a style of storytelling that Foley excels at. Like, he's really, really good at, you know, the fog and steam rising up off of the manhole cover

in the sewer, you know, the elevator train and the noise and the sound design of this movie is very good. Listen to the rain falling and the train rolling while Alec Baldwin is giving that speech. It helps build atmosphere in this movie. It's unmistakable. The other thing, too, is camera movement is good. You know, it's like 12 Angry Men is the same thing. look at where they put the camera and look at how the camera moves. Look at how the camera follows characters. Look at how it does a one shot. Look at how when he sets up a two shot. Who is in power in the frame? Who is not in power? Who's off screen and why? All of those decisions, they seem small. Think about how a person makes a movie. Think about all the decisions they have to make,

even with a deeply contained script like this, it all has to work. This is, Mamet has said, even though he didn't direct this movie, this is one of his favorite adaptations of his work. You can tell because it's all the right people at the right time working hard to make this all click. And it's pretty cool and it feels effortless. You know, you don't feel like, the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, this is clearly a play. You know, like, that's just, it doesn't, it doesn't feel rejiggered that way. I only knew it was considered like one of the great American plays that had been produced recently. And I think I'd started getting really into him. So I was aware of American Buffalo and stuff like that. But yeah, it doesn't feel like,

not to take a shot at August Osage County, but when you see August O'Sage County on screen, it's like a lot of it is basically set in this house and they've just like kind of stretched it out so that there's like a drone shot of a car coming over the hill or whatever and it feels a little bit more outdoorsy than it really is. And this movie instead uses the interior or like the interiors of the movie as a strength rather than as a as a weakness or something that's holding the movie back. Did you ever see this on stage? I never have. I never have. It was revived. I want to say in 2000. Yeah, so my dad took me to this. Was this the John Leguizama one? Did you see that?

No, it was Leif Schreiber and Alan Alda played Levine. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so Leavreiber played Roma and Alan Alder played Levine. And it was really good. Here's the thing that's funny is that I think that this movie has now become, or because of the play's longevity and its sort of long lasting popularity has been done many times. Al Pacino even did a version where he plays Levine. I sent you that clip.

I think that was in 2013. when people would come out and do their sort of big speeches or their famous lines, like the entire audience would clap. Yeah. And it was like cracking up at every line. And the performances were very big. Obviously, in a theater, you're going to have to go a little bit higher than you wouldn't screen. You can get away with a lot of quiet moments.

But you don't get the intimate seduction of Roma and Link on stage that you do on screen, you know? the interesting thing about that the play is I think what you put your finger on which is that it has become like a broad comedy there was a there was a revival I think after the one that you're describing starring John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer and now I think actually both of those guys are very underrated as dramatic actors but that's not stunt casting I think it's an indication of where the audience went with this show which is that it became a series of you know laugh lines

and applause lines as opposed to what it started out as, which is part of this long lineage of deeply sad portraits of failing men in America. You know, like, that's really what it's a story of. And as you track the way that it's cast over the years, it's just, it's a different piece of art. And I think that there's like a variety of ways to interpret this movie. And people can frankly enjoy it as any way that they want. If they want to enjoy it as a comedy, by all means, it's hilarious.

But you can't get around the fact that Mammitt's intent is to reveal, I think really kind of like the dying, middle-aged American masculine aesthetic and kind of like what our professional systems have built up and forced us into and the way that we're all kind of rats in a cage for long stretches of our lives. He's got a really good handle on that. And it's notable too, I think, that this is written in not in that burst of first famous. for him, not in that burst of sexual perversity in Chicago and the duck variations. It's the second step. It's when he's getting into his 30s. It's when he's getting a little older. He's been around the block a little bit. And he's like, what is my life going to be about? What did the guys I saw who came before me? What were their lives about? It's just, it's a more much, it's at least a work about maturity. And so it's really funny that it's become like just a broad comedy at this point. you're right but it's also like it's it's amazing how timeless it is too right because it was written in the 80s during the stock market boom it comes out in the early 90s kind of on the the precipice of clintonism

and then it's played different ways to different generations for all the years since yeah it's it's a i guess we could do like the sort of what's aged the worst stuff is like would this business work in this what like does this business exist now in this way? way? The sort of like false real estate... Does house flipping feel that much more like stable than magazine subscription card leads? Does people like speculate? I mean, real estate speculation is essentially driving our economy in a lot of ways. Well, there's one thing, and this is really trampling on what's age the worst, but something that is remarkable to me. And there's an amazing scene where Levine goes out on a sit and he enters the home of a man, possibly the most heartbreaking scene.

the movie. But that's something that from, at least from my experience in my life, is gone from our culture. I welcome cold callers. I love a guy coming by my house unannounced. And then I'm just like, come on in, man. Let's watch some hockey. You know what I mean? When did that change? Because there would be, you know, I'd come home from, I don't know, like baseball practice one day. And there'd just be like a stranger sitting on the couch across from my mother having a conversation about something. Trying to sell her aluminum siding or whatever. I mean, yes. And that's what it would be. It would be a salesperson or it would be someone trying to pedal their religion or it would be a stranger. Now, this didn't happen every day, but it's not completely out of the ordinary for a completely unknown person to be sitting on your couch.

I would never let that happen in 2022. Never. I would never let a strange person sit in my house. And I think you can draw a direct line between the way that we are more cloistered and more deep. deeply inhabit our living spaces, the more distance we have from strangers, the disconnect from humanity that we have. I think that maybe I'm overreading this, or maybe this is like my coastal bias or something, but I really just don't think the culture of allowing people in your home being kind of neighborly, being open-minded about being sold to. Yeah, letting this old guy in from the rain, you know what I mean? Who's pretending to be in from Florida for 24 hours? That being said, isn't this just like an early version of fishing scams? You know, like...

For sure. You accidentally fucking clicked on this link in your email and now all of a sudden you get bombarded with this. You know what I mean? Like how crazy is it that if I'm thinking of a pair of Adidas, I get 19 emails from Adidas like 10 minutes later. Like that's what it is. Shelly Levine showing up in my house unannounced. It is. It speaks to the fact that human impulse hasn't changed, which is if people feel like they've been presented with an unbelievable opportunity, they might get tricked into pursuing it. But the way that they pursue that opportunity is so radically different

because now if it's anything more than having to click a link in an email, I'm like, I'm all good, I'm good, I don't have time for this, I don't want this, I don't have to have this conversation, I'm not interested. And that is a fascinating marker of the time.

You know, that alone, I think, makes the film a relic of a sort. Who do you think would be better at cold calling you or me? I mean, you're just way friendlier guy. You know, I don't think I would have it nailed down. Like, I think I would be like, Glenn Ross Farms, and that is definitely in Arizona, except it's in Florida.

My back. I'm good with keeping of the script. I know how to stick to the script, for sure. I mean, the truth is that I have Moss Energy. And Moss Energy, it's hard to win with Moss Energy. You know, it's like if you've got a little bit of grit in your teeth, that doesn't make you a good salesman. It might make you a smart person, but doesn't make you a good salesman. I wouldn't say you are Roma-esque, but maybe you're closer to in his prime. I'm Levine. You know, you've got a very gentle touch. Yeah, yeah. You're, you're, you've got a great sense of humor. You have a touch of humanity. You know, you know how to appeal to people at their base impulse. You know, you, you know how to, I, you inspired me. You inspired me 15 years later.

Here we are on a podcast talking about a movie that we used to talk about in bars. So, I don't know. I think, I think, I think, I think you'd be better than me. We litigated the Oscars for this movie. it to some extent, unsentive a woman. Because this is the year that Al Pacino wins Best Actor for Scentivocal Woman beating Denzel Washington controversially, because I think a lot of people have gone on to sort of, even the moment,

we're like, come on, Denzel and Malcolm X is the best. I thought he should have won for this. I think you could make the argument that Roma is the lead actor of this movie, for the most part. And I think it's criminal that neither Jack Lemon nor Ed Harris were nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Yeah, I recently watched an interview with Foley in which he talked about how much Lemon wanted this. How much he wanted an Academy Award nomination. He had already won an Oscar at this point in his career, I believe from missing, but he, no, excuse me, for Save the Tiger, but he, um, it might be the best he's ever been. And it's a legacy part two because it feels like, the machine feels like a continuation of the character that he perfected in the 60s. The kind of like nebishy, fast talking, sad, sack, smart guy in a bad situation. And if you watch the apartment,

the character in the apartment is not so far removed from Shelley Levine. And so it would have been like a beautiful kind of capstone. His career goes to like an amazing point after this though, you know? Because in this short window of time, he does JFK,

Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, and shortcuts. Yeah. He works with Oliver Stone. He does Mamet. Then he works with Altman. And then right after... Because he's in the player, too, right? He's in the player, very briefly in the player. Yeah. And then right after that, he does the grumpy old man franchise. And he's like a movie star. He's a box office star again. I mean, those movies were hits with Walter Mathau. So he, obviously he is one of the, I don't know, probably 20 significant screen legends of the 20th century. And it's really weird to think that they wouldn't crown him. I'm sure some of it is campaigning and also it colliding so profoundly with Pacino and sent to a million bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I wonder, you know, not being there.

at the time, and I wonder how this movie got mismanaged because it was a hit play. I mean, it is a hit play to this day. It is like, you could stage this today and it would sell out with one name actor because it is so transportive. But

the fact that they couldn't get it to work, even with all of these elements, is kind of, it's pretty confusing. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a pretty niche product. Like, you know, Mamet. Yeah, I mean, I... I don't know. White guys like this movie, man. That's a big audience.

And yeah, we certainly are an over-served demographic in the history of popular culture. I do think that there is a real lack of exposition in this movie that makes it somewhat hard to parse if you're not absolutely enamored with people calling one another cunts for two hours. That's true. And that's just like you and I probably are like in the 99th percentile of people who enjoy watching other people call one another cunts. But here's the thing. like fast forward 30 years later check out House of the Dragon. I mean, this is like, sure.

This is what people want now. 20 years ago it was in Snatch. But in House of the Dragon, they're constantly being like, oh, my uncle, you have arrived here from this other place that must have taken you three days and blah, blah, blah.

Mammot's whole thing is stripping out all exposition. We do not know what's wrong with Shelley's daughter. We do not know why Moss is mad. We don't know if Ricky's married or not. Like, he hates more than anything the guy who walks in is like,

ever since my cancer diagnosed, I have been afraid to commit to other human relationships, but this challenge will make me do so. No, you're very right. And he has an Aristotelian pursuit of very focused goals in his, in his plays and his scripts. You know, he's got like, this is this character's objective. This is all they care about. If you look at how people speak in life, they do not explain their lives, clearly. Although I wonder how he would do with writing the life of a podcaster. That would be interesting. I would love to see him write the life of a Targaryen. Well, that would certainly improve some of the Targaryen product are getting these days. I think you're right, but even still, I mean,

this is, we're talking about Hollywood too. So they usually find a way to kind of translate some of these things to audiences, even if they don't totally get all the contours. How did this movie get successful? Like, how did it, since it was not a box office successful. Home video and dweeps like us being like, we have to watch it again. And, and probably actors over and over and over again. In what's age of the best I was going to mention the Baldwin monologue showing up in Barry and how hilarious it is that Hater does, and he does a very sweet, nice version of the monologue where he's just like, put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers. And the thing is that they're probably still doing this monologue in acting classes in the Valley this week. You know what I mean?

There's Bonnie Timerman, the casting director said that recently that like she sees people bringing this in all the time to read that in kids trying out for acting school. This is what they bring read, which is crazy. I mean, I don't, I, the idea of trying to do that speech while not being a person that looks like Blake is, is a test for sure. Can you imagine me doing that? You have to be a master of the universe. That's what I was saying before. There's only a handful of actors that could have done that part. We'll get to the categories in just a second. Roger Ebert, unsurprisingly, three and a half stars. I watched the Ciskel and Ebert. Siskel

took a little off his fastball with this one. He was just like, it is stagey at points. This is Chicago guys. I wonder if they had it like, kind of like you have to go very far to impress me, but Ebert loved it. So he gave it three and a half stars. We'll take a break and we will jump into the categories

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No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust. Like your offer? Accept it. Schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. So in some ways, Sean, as we get into most rewashedable scene here, we could do the categories for Glenn Gary. There are two scenes in this movie. And in another ways, there's like 20. So I feel like we can break it down in any way you want. But the most rewatchable scenes, the first one I have, obviously, is Blake's speech. I have now, I think against

my better judgment, completely memorized this thing. Or at least when I watch it, I always know what line is coming next. But I am always just get chills at the littlest, littlest moments in this. Like him getting revved up and he's like, is this all of them? And Williamson's Like now, all but one. And he goes, I'm going anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if what's the longest scene that we've asked Craig to play on a podcast?

I think we could do ABC. I think that we could just like let him play it. Are you mad enough to take it? Bitching about that sale your shot. Some son of a bitch don't want to buy land. Somebody don't want what you're selling some broad and trying to screw, so forth. Let's talk about something important. Are they all here?

All but one. Well, I'm going anyway. Let's talk about something important. Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only. You think I'm fucking with you. I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown.

I'm here from Mitch and Murray. And I'm here on a mission of mercy. Your name's Levine. You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch. I don't got to listen to this shit. You certainly don't, pal. Because the good news is you're fired. The bad news is you've got all you've got just one week to regain your job, starting with tonight.

Starting with tonight's sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. Because 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 a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

You get the picture? Are you laughing now? You've got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given. You can't close shit. You are shit.

Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it because you are going out. The leads are weak. The leads are weak. The fucking leads are weak. You are weak. I've been in this business 15 years. What's your name? Fuck you.

That's my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name. And your name is your wanting. And you can't play in the man's game. You can't close them.

Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me, you fucking faggots? A, B, C. A, always B. B, C. closing. Always be closing. Always be closing. A.I.D.A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention. Do I have your attention?

Interest. Are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision. Have you made your decision for Christ? And action. IDA, get out there. You got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you going to take it?

IDA! I think I probably have said this on other episodes of this show, but Baldwin is a Long Island guy. I mean, he is the apex, the epitome of, I know better than you, Long Island asshole. Blake is the Phil Mickelson of real estate. He really is. He is wearing a gold Rolex. He drives an $80,000 BMW. He speaks in a stentorian tone. He is overwhelmingly overconfident to the point of distaste.

That is like a flavor of humanity that I am very familiar with, whether listening to callers on WFAN, going to the driving range with my father as he kid or even just walking into a deli and hearing a guy order a sandwich. There is a quality of communication that Baldwin has. And it's been interesting. I mean, he's become like a really outsized, oversized, oversized figure in the popular culture in the last 30 years, and especially in the last five years because of Donald Trump and all the controversies that he's been in Sconson over the last couple of years. But he has that, it felt like the first time that a guy that I knew growing up became a movie star because he's such a beautiful guy and he's such a gifted actor. And so it's such an unusual thing to place someone who has all of those qualities into,

it's not even the closer role. Like if you were going to use the baseball metaphor, I don't even know what it is. It's like if you let a guy pinch hit in the third inning. I mean, this speech comes so early in the movie. I mean, we don't have to spoil it, but like you can rename Diod Waiters for this character and for this performance. It is the most heat check off the bench, never to be seen again. This guy was out of his mind for 16 minutes and then just left the arena. It's, it's, it is the reason that this category exists is this part. Yeah.

And the wild thing is that he is coming off of Hunt for October, which should have made him and essentially did for about a year and a half before he decides not to do further Jack Ryan movies. or they decide not to have him back, is he's Harrison Ford. Like, he is the biggest star in this movie in some ways. So one of the thing that Bonnie Timberman said when they were casting the part, and kind of the origin of this character is interesting. And Mamet agreeing to kind of, like, expand the story

and write this scene is interesting. But Bonnie Timmerman was like, don't think about the hunt for it October. Think about Miami Blues, which is a movie he made in, what, I guess, 89 or 90, which is this really nasty noir in which he plays, is he a dirty cop? Is that ultimately?

what his part is. Yeah, he's, he has a dirty cop, yeah. And that's really the energy that he brings to it. Oh, no, he's just a, he's just a criminal and Fred Ward is Hulk Mosley and he's chasing it, that's right. Got it, got it. But he could do this. Like, he could go to that place where he didn't have to be

the strong-chinned Gregory Peck leading man. He could be a piece of shit. I mean, he's a real, Blake is an asshole. And he's an incredibly intelligent, successful guy who has been tasked with this really like sad job of going to, I mean, what time of day is that scene happening? Is it like 6.30 p.m? I'm so glad you brought this up because it, I think it's seven,

about 637. Now, that being said, I was just in Chicago this weekend and I arrived at 4.30 and it was dark. So it could have been any time like around 4, 5 o'clock on. But I'm obsessed with like, they're all like, we're going out tonight. We're going out. tonight and it just makes the cold calling, like the idea of one of these fucking wackos, showing up at my house reeking of like Marlboro lights and cuddy, like being like, I have a great property, an investment opportunity for you. It's like, get the fuck off my porch. None of those guys look like Alec Baldwin, though. That's the thing. I mean, even if you're a successful version of that guy, are you still selling bad properties to sad old people?

So what do you think he does? Do you think that he is? essentially like one of the biggest salesman in the country or in the region and Mitch and Murray, who we can get into, have asked him, like as he says, on a mission of mercy, that he is supposed to be doing like a motivational speech here? I think so. I mean, I think it's sort of setting the table, doing something that Williamson is probably not capable of because he doesn't have credibility with salesmen and inspiring these guys and striking fear in their hearts. And also setting the table for what the future holes, which is when the Glenn Gary leads hit that they need the killers in there to sell them.

But it's a very weird part. It's probably something that has never happened in the history of this business. It's just like it's a great dramatic device that has been invented. There's probably a reason why it's not in the play. Yeah. It doesn't feel true to the experience of these kinds of guys. But man, it is just, it is a diamond piece of writing. It is a diamond piece of acting. It is a diamond piece of acting. And it's probably the reason why we're doing this pot. I mean, I think without this scene, this is not a movie that we're talking about. Yeah, I think that there's, there's like a sustained level of brilliance in this movie, but this is the one that gets YouTube's and this is the one that they probably still joke around about on trading floors all over the world.

And people say always be closing in almost every walk of life in some capacity or other. And it's kind of gone in and out of style. But there's a vanity fair article that Sean and I have been referencing a couple of times. It's by Donald Stevenson. It came out last week. It's on their site. And it's an oral history, essentially, of the movie. And I'm going to grab something from there right now, which is James Foley on Alec Baldwin's performance. He said, in terms of rehearsal with Alec, I had one day with him. He had the whole scene memorized. I said, why don't we just read this and see what happens? And he got up in this room with me as the audience. And he did this scene, and I'm not exaggerating. I was never more positive in my life. I said, stop it. It's over. Rehearsal over. See you.

you on set because what he did was exactly what he did in the movie. There was nothing to say because it came out that organically. You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch. I mean, he's, this is special stuff. Whether this wins, like most rewatchable is interesting because we've got two guys who've probably seen this movie too many times and are going to overthink this category. I know. We're like on the precipice of Zag. I can feel it with this where it's just like, ah. So honestly, what was my... my favorite scene this time around were the scenes of Moss and Aaron Ow in the car and then back in the restaurant. So there's basically a scene between the two of them of their night together

after he, after Moss takes George out of the office and he's like, you're coming out with me tonight. We don't see their sit. They obviously are like the door slammed in their face. They go get donuts and then they go back to China Bowl to hang out and talk about whether or not they're going to rob from your properties and go over to Jerry Graf. You want me to break into the office tonight and steal the leads? Yes. Oh, yes, George. What does that mean?

Listen to this. I have an alibi. I'm going to the Como Inn. Why? Why? The place gets robbed. They're going to come looking for me. Why?

Because I probably did it. Now let me ask you this. Are you going to turn me in? What if you don't get caught? They come to you. You're going to turn me in? Why would they come to me? They're going to everybody.

Why would I do it? You wouldn't, George. That's why I'm talking. talking to you now. They come to you. You're going to turn me in? No. You sure? Yeah, I'm sure. Uh-huh. George, when they come to me, if I have to go in there and if I get caught, they come to me. You don't have to go in.

I have to go in, see, that's something I have to do. Why? Why? You're going to give me $7,500? 75? I thought we're splitting five grand. I lied, all right? Your rent's 25. My ends, my own concern. Now, stick with me here, George. They come to me. I'm caught. They're going to ask. Ask me who are accomplices? Me?

Absolutely. It's ridiculous. Well, to the lawyer and accessory before the fact. I didn't ask to be. Well, it's tough luck, George, because you are. Why? Because you just told me about it? That's right.

Why are you doing this to me, Dave? Why are you talking this way to me? I don't understand. Why are you doing this at all? It's none of your fucking business, pal. Just in a route. You tell me. You're out.

You take the consequences. I do? That's right. And why is that? Because you listened. I think that these scenes combined, is a fucking miracle. These are so, so good.

Aaron Harris in this movie, in these scenes, is amazing. It's really brilliant stuff. And it doesn't work without Arkin being able to bounce off of him and being sort of like befuddled and on the back foot.

He only has one word answers the entire time. Who? Yes. Yes. Yes. They should do something. The leads.

It's funny because the movie is best remembered for its big speeches and its explosive dialogue, but it probably excels the most at showing what Mamet is very good at, which is very similar to like Harold Pinter, Edward Albee,

these guys who could write great speeches, but that who had the sense of cadence between people talking to each other that made for a kind of dynamic energy in communication, and these two characters, like, you understand everything about them. You understand why, like,

one guy is a loser and another guy is a loser, and they're losers in completely different ways. and it's all in that one exchange, especially the exchange in the Chinese restaurant. Yeah, that's the scene to me where it's like, okay, so they're both screwed no matter what happens here. Like, no matter what happens, the movie has been fully set up. We know exactly what's going to happen. If you don't see a burglary coming a mile away, then you don't understand movies or storytelling. But how they both get screwed is going to be kind of fascinating.

And whether like every character is screwed at the end of this movie is an interesting question that I want to talk to you about too. I really like these scenes. This isn't the one for me, though, that took my breath away on the second view. Okay. So the one I wonder if it is is the train compartment monologue from Roma and his seduction of James Link. That is the one. Things. Things. You know, it's just you try to stave off insecurity. No. No. That's what I'm telling you. Stocks, bonds, objects of art, real estate. What are they? And I'm opportunity. To what? To make money? Perhaps. To lose money. Perhaps. To indulge and to learn about ourselves. Perhaps. So fucking what? What isn't? They're an opportunity. That's all they are. They're an event. A guy comes to you. You make a call. You send in a card. I have these properties. I would like for you to see. What does this mean? What do you want it to mean? You see what I'm saying. That is the one where

That is something that is outside of the realm of playwriting. That is like tapping into a stream of consciousness of a very particular kind of American con artist. And also person who probably has deluded himself into believing his own bullshit, that is remarkable. And also just meeting Pacino at the perfect moment in terms of his, like where he is as an actor, which is he is like fully blending the two insane Pacino. the Michael Corleone I am

everything I say is right and I will do anything at any cost to win with the madman that emerges in the 90s who could say anything and you believe it in a movie. The two halves of the movies are exactly, of the movie is exactly what you're saying.

This scene is quiet, it's self-effacing, it's vulnerable, but it's also incredibly manipulative. He picks out Link from the second Link says, where'd you read, who says that about drinking alcohol on hot days? They say, they say, you should not drink alcohol. And he's like, who says that?

And then he's got him. And he just keeps feeding him drinks. And I guess we're led to believe that they go home and he has a dinner with Link and his wife. And he sells him $82,000 or however many $1,000 of property in Florida. And it's, the whole thing has been basically a con. And he's conning this guy. but the tenderness with which he's speaking to him.

And the thing is, is I believe him. I believe that he is actually telling the truth, but he's telling the truth for a means. It's a means to an end. That speech is a perfect example of something that you find in most mammoth movies, at least, and in some, I guess, his plays as well, which is elocution over-feeling.

It's more important to say, what are they an opportunity to what to make money perhaps to lose money perhaps like there is an over embellishment of every syllable that Pacino does that is so perfect for Mamet and you know he had he had done Mamet plays before this like he knows the deal he knows how to read these words and he knows how Mamet wants them to sound and he's just the perfect guy at the perfect time for this part like the way that he says what so the line is like my favorite line of that whole thing is like, you know, you think you're queers? I'm going to tell you something. We're all queer. You think you're a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle class morality.

Shut it out. Get shut of it. You know? It's just like the way that he talks is like Roma is him. It's not, he's not reading lines. He's like they are originating from this character. It's just lovely stuff. So that that's incredible. Also, Chris, watch that scene back to back with the speech at the end of Devil's Advocate because it's basically like a pre. It's a prequel to that scene. He literally says, hell exists on earth. Yes. I won't live in it.

That's me. Did you ever take a dump made you feel like you just slept for 12 hours? I mean, that grotesque beauty is in every mammoth thing. And Pacino knows how to do it. So then there's the last scene, quote unquote, which is essentially a 50-minute scene inside of Premier Properties, from the moment Roma walks into the moment where Williamson takes Levine out.

And there's a bunch of different interactions in that. There's Roma's entrance. There's Roma and George. there's, you know, criminals. They come and they steal the phones. There's Roma versus Williamson round one. Then Shelly, get the chalk. Then there's Dave coming out.

What did they beat you with a rubber bat? Then there's the whole Dave Roma Levine triangle of like him being like, I think, being confused about who's talking to who at various points in that conversation until Dave leaves. This goes on and on. Link comes back. There's an incredible moment with.

Lemon pretending to be somebody else. I don't know if you had, like, within these, like, a micro scene from the last 50 minutes that you wanted to shout out. It doesn't seem fair on our rewatchables to be like, this last hour of the movie is the most rewatchable scene, but it's pretty fucking close. Well, I will say just the one thing that we're skipping over a little bit, which I've mentioned before, is Levine's sit with, is Bruce Altman? Is that his name?

The actor, the character actor? Yes. That scene in and of itself. His name of the character, yeah. that scene is a diamond. Like, it is brilliant, and it perfectly exemplifies, like, the sadness and, like, what that work is,

it's the only time that you see another person, a person, like, truly hating the experience. You know, it's the opposite of linked becoming kind of, like, intoxicated by Roma. In terms of at Premier Properties, my favorite sequence by far is the Roma and Moss showdown with Levine

playing, you know, referee, basically. That, to me, is both of those guys at the top of their game of doing a thing that I think you and I just like, which is just like guys yelling at each other at movies. That what I did, Dave, I humiliated you. You know you got a big mouth. You make a close.

This whole place stinks with your farts for a week. How much you just ingested. Is that what I did, Dave? I humiliated you. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Sitting on top of the world. Sitting on top of the world.

Everything's fucking peach fuss. And I don't get a moment to spare for some bust out humanitarian down on his luck lately. Oh, fuck. Fuck you, Dave. You know you've got a big mouth. You make a close. This whole place stinks with your farts for a week.

How much you just ingested. Oh, what a big man you are. Hey, let me buy a peck of gum. I'll show you how to chew it. Ooh. Your pal closes. All it comes out of your mouth is bile. Ooh.

How fucked up you are. Who's my pal, Vicky? Hmm? How fucked up you are! That's just really, that scene in particular is great. And Moss goes to a place of like rage and despair and anger. And but also there's an interesting question of is he just performing that? Because in fact, he's just committed this crime.

Yes. Right. Do I just get to go to Wisconsin now because I was so offended by the police and by Roma? Right. And whatever is happening in that, like I don't know what that one police officer investigating this crime is. But everybody who walks out of that room seems to have had their like, their, their personhood questions. It seemed pretty distraught by it.

Well, it's a really cool comment about the frailty of the male psyche. You know, it's just like, even if you did do the crime, I hate being accused of it. Yeah, you have to act like you've been aggrieved because you've been accused of it. You know, I would never do something like that, even if you did it, which is just such smart psychology. There's so much smart psychology in the movie. The other thing, too, is I think that that closing sequence with Levine and Williamson,

when Williamson sniffs out that Levine did the robbery, which then leads to that like heartbreaking exchange because I don't like you, you know, is look at Lemon's eyes in that scene. Yeah. It's crushing. I always wondered whether or not Roma also sort of started to sniff out that it was Levine too,

because he mentions that he had closed the Nyborg's in the morning. And he's like, you did that this morning? And for a second, I just am like, does he now know that Shelley does not have an alibi for last night? It's very possible. It's very possible. Do you think he cares, ultimately? I don't, I'm not sure.

Like, I think that he's just curious because, like he said, always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember. That's what he says to Aaron Ow. And I just think that he's like, wow, Shelley walked in here. He's got sold eight, you know, it's Mountain View. He's rolling. And he seems to really be into him. He's like, I've always been meaning to talk to you.

We got to go start working together and stuff like that. But there is a brief moment where he's just like, you close that this morning? Yeah, I always loved that. And I always loved Jack Lemon playing D. Ray Morton and pretending to be the American Express Senior Vice President of European Sales. Dot, dot, dot, because he can't think of the rest of his job title. Oh, the magazine.

Yes, yes. Well, that's not until the February issue. There's so many great little tidbits in there. I do like also when Roma is complimenting Levine after that. about how well they did together on that stunt. It's really, I mean, it's Jack Lemmon and El Pacino together. I mean, come on. More subcategories of this long scene.

Obviously, Roma trying to close again, pretending like he doesn't care about the deal. The deal is dead. This is Ricky. And then Roma versus Williamson with, oh, I'm going to have your job, shithead. I'm going downtown. I'm going to Mitch and Murray.

I am going to Lempkin. Where did you learn your trade? You stupid fucking cunt, you idiot. Whoever told you that you could work with men? Oh, I'm going to have your job, shithead. I'm going downtown. I'm going to talk to Mitch and Murray. I'm going to Lampkin.

I don't care whose nephew you are, who you know, whose dick you're sucking on, you're going out. I swear to you, you're going... Let's get this done. I find out whose fucking cousin you are. I'm going to go to him and figure out a way to have your ass. Poor Kevin Spacey is just getting annihilated. I guess not poor Kevin Spacey, but still.

And then Shelley and Williamson, I always really loved when Jack Lemon walks out of that room. And he goes, you are a shithead, Williams. Yeah, Jack Lemmon, like, nobody is better at playing real bravado than Al Pacino. And nobody is better at playing false bravado than Jack Lemon. It's a perfect match. So you're going to go with Roma and Link as yours, as your most rewatchable scene? No, come on. We got to do Blake.

Come on. Come on, yeah. We got to do Blake. Okay, what's age the best? I have the structure. I mentioned it's a day and night and day movie and that the last scene of the movie starts with Roma pulling up outside of that office and the jazz music starts playing. I just always thought that was like a thrilling way to infuse the movie with its own

feel and its own structure rather than the play. The way all these guys are dressed from cool to pathetic, I always thought that the costume design of this movie was really perfect, the Roma in Italian stylish suits, and then it's almost like the evolutionary chart down to Levine in his shirt sleeves and his suspenders, and he's all hunched over and feeling miserable. What else is age the best? Ed Harris's 10-year run from 1989 to 1999. speak on it. What happened? What do you do?

The Abyss, State of Grace, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, the firm, the rock Truman Show. Some duds in there as well. Not like a no-hitter, but those are the hallmarks. Those are the highlight reel of his decade there. This is kind of a silly question,

but I think you'll know what I mean. Is Ed Harris a movie star? No, but I think he's one of the great character actors of the last 40 years. Right. Like, that's sort of what I mean is he was fully referred to him recently in an interview, as a character actor. On stage, Ed Harris plays leads.

In films, he's brought in for what he did this year in Top Gun Maverick. Yeah, yeah. One or two scenes, pure power, pure authority. Every time he talks, pay attention. I always felt, he has been the star of, like, many movies. He played Jackson Pollock in a movie. He didn't win for Jackson. Yeah, Pollack.

He didn't win, but he was nominated. But it's interesting to think of, like, all of these guys. who carried movies being given three scenes. You know, Alan Arkin carried a lot of movies in the 70s. He has three scenes in this movie. Yeah, Jonathan Price is a pretty big deal in British dramas. Jonathan Price says less than 75 words in this movie. Yeah.

And he's brilliant and remarkable. And also such a smart choice there, too, to cast a Brit as the outsider, as the non-salesman, the only real non-salesman aside from the cop at the end. It's just very, very clever. So, you know, I mean, what's age the best is. like casting six of the best actors of their generations. Yeah, good, good job, Bonnie. We should take away good shot, Gordo, and say, great job, Bonnie here. Good job, Bonnie, yeah. What else is age the best? We've mentioned, like, it's sort of the recurrence through pop culture, but the

Santa's workshop sketch on S&L that Baldwin does telling Rachel Dratch to put that Coco down. Coco is for closers. And the Barry, the Barry scene is just still, like, crying with laughter every time I watch it. It's, like, it's one definitely funnier than the SNL sketch. Second prize is a set of steak knives. You know, he's so, he's so musical and happy. And everybody looks at his face watching it. It's wonderful.

I'm trying to think of what else is really, like, aged well in the movie. The fact that it is so contained means it hasn't aged that poorly. You know, there's not a lot happening in the world that differentiates it. I guess like working out of a restaurant is... That's cool. Do you wish we did that? I do. I have always like aspired to having like a shit now though.

We couldn't podcast from a restaurant. Oh, I don't know. That sounds like a dare. Well, I mean, I would podcast from a restaurant, but it took me like I'm still walking around with all this crap from like, you know, like the pandemic era equipment batch that we have. What's your ideal Los Angeles restaurant to pod from? That's a great question. It used to be 101 diner.

They changed over ownership. But 101 diner, I mean, geez, sit in a back booth. I would love to do like Muso and Frank, but you know it would just be too loud, right? But maybe that would be good for the ambiance. I'm sure that. Just music to Craig's ears. You'd have CR heads surrounding you, too, and surrounding that red booth. You know they would.

They don't go to Muso and Frank. I don't know what. I mean, there's been a lot of stuff that has not aged well, but I don't. Yeah. We could get to that in what's aged the worst. It's okay. we can be candid about this stuff. So what's age the best? We're done there.

The Kid Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness Award for the Best Needle Drop. There really are no needle drops in this movie except the very end. But I did find it fascinating. I did a little research on this. So that's Al Jaro's rendition of Irving Berlin's Blue Skies. Oh, okay. And I think that this is what I read. The soundtrack incorporation of Algero's rendition of Irving Berlin's Blue Skies is an allusion

to the Blue Sky Laws. These are state regulations intended to prevent fraud in sales of securities. The term is said to have been popularized by a Kansas state Supreme Court judge who said he hoped to protect investors from speculative jet ventures. Interesting. So a little inside joke, I guess, but also like appropriate jazz joint there. Big Cahuna Burger Award for the best use of food and drink. I'm going to go cutty in water here. I was going to say J&B, double J&B for Shelley.

Yeah. Double J&B before a work meeting is a choice. For Shawnee the Machine Fantasy, a little J&B. It's just not a choice that I would make, you know? I mean, that's the other thing is these guys are all fucking drunks. Yeah, we really beat like functional alcoholism out of the workplace at the ringer. Have we? The Dead of Thieves, Betty Hado Award for scene stealing location.

This is the China Bowl, right? I guess so. Although you mentioned the kind of drabness and the sadness of Premier property and the way that Baldwin stalks through it like a lion is pretty memorable to me. Can you imagine, though, walking out of a restaurant and as you're getting your coat telling like the matri-D, your daughter might be calling and all other calls, just tell people I'm at the office or whatever, like, just having multiple like hostesses, like managing your communications.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm saying. Like, let's find a landing spot where I can send all my calls, you know? When all the, I don't know, all the pod producers, when Craig wants to chat and I'm like, I'm not available. I'm at the China Bowl tonight. Yeah. Not going to happen.

I'm having a J&B. The Great Shot Gorder Award for the most cinematic shot. There's a bunch of really incredible lighting in this movie, I think. I would say more than it may be like a shot that I remember, Juan Ruiz on Chia did the cinematography and he wound up being the DP on a lot of mammoth movies. but the push in on Alan Arkin when Moss goes, says robbery. And then they kind of push it on Arkin.

I love that. It's really good. I think also there's a moment when the camera basically cuts and it follows Levine and Williamson into that little side room. Yeah. And it's so claustrophobic. And it goes handheld. Yeah.

And the walls are closing in on Shelley. And that's what it's over. It's over. He's screwed. He's going to jail. This movie is about to end. That's like a big shift. from the style of movie making all the way up until that final moment.

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that consolidates, migrates, and automates. all in one place. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. What's age the worst? I'm going to go eating a chocolate donut and a regular donut and a cup of coffee and a cigarette for dinner. I'm going to hard disagree. Honestly, if I could do that at this stage of my life, I would do it.

You would be dead at 49. Those are some of the best days of my life when I was like, you know what, fuck it. Two donuts and a cigarette, and I'm good. And I've had two J&Bs. Those were the good. times, man. I feel like my body can't handle it anymore. Yeah. The lifestyle hasn't aged well, but people are still living that lifestyle.

Yeah. Yeah. Most people in their 20s, they'll just be like, it's time for me to eat like a giant bowl of ramen and have a hard seltzer before I go. I mean, let's be real. The thing that is age of the worst has been saying, like, I'm a huge David Mammat guy. Yeah. Like, that's, it's, it sucks. I mean, you and I saw a race on stage in 2009, and

it was like, how excited were we? Like, oh my God. It was James Bader and Carrie Washington, right? Yeah. And we were self-identifying. We were excited for Red Belt. You know what I mean? Mammock guys.

We just love Mammitt. I will watch anything that he has written. But like in the world at large, it's been a really tough five years. Yes. It doesn't seem like he can really get anything made anymore. I mean, I know that he worked for a while on SEAL team. He had like a CBS show that he worked on.

for a while. I didn't see that. That's CR content. That's not really for me. And yeah, like, look, you know, you, this, we don't have to, didn't litigate David Mamet's political views, but they are getting increasingly conservative. So that's that. And I'd say like, you know, if you're somebody who's watching this movie for the first time, there is some racist language in it. There is some stereotypes. Oh, yeah. That are pretty like, you know. That stuff to me, so it, that is very accurate for this, these guys. That's the thing. That, that to me is one of those things where, like, to litigate the idea of these characters talking that way actually feels strange. There's some very

awful stereotypes. I don't even know if they're stereotypes, but awful language about Indian Americans, for example, in this film and in the stage play, which have since been excised from the stage play since it's been performed, which I find to be an interesting decision, and I assume Mamet approved this, but is an example of the kind of reactionary politics that Mamet has gotten very out of sorts about in the public sphere in the last five or ten years. He is like a real First Amendment, kind of like true let me speak my mind kind of person. And I guess has led him down the path of deeply conservative politics.

Well, this is, you know, he can go go take Glengarry back out on the road now with 100% more racism, you know? I know, I know, it sucks. I know. That sucks. But like the thing is, is, like, it's a, it's a piece of art that is true to the form. Like, these are 60-year-old men living in Chicago in 1984, of course there's fucking racist there. Of course they're saying these terrible things. So that part of it is what is so confusing relative to the status that he occupies in our culture right now, which is really kind of dim honestly. Like he's just not, he was the leading light of American playwrights in the 1980s and 90s. I mean, he really was probably the most famous playwright in America for a stretch of time there. And he's just been

diminished. Maybe I've learned as much about the art of dramatic writing from him as I have from William Goldman and I mean if you read some of David Mamet's books and there's even a couple of YouTube videos where there are basically seminars that he's doing on directing and to watch him work with there's like they're doing a play it's like him and Lindsay Krauss and another actor I forget

John Higgins I think they're working through like a scene and watching him kind of like on a micro level break down every single gesture every single movement every single idea that's happening in the scene is it's kind of, it's just so illuminating to watch somebody think about drama in that way. Yeah, he is an emotional technician. You know, like, he is so brilliant at deconstructing and recombining the purpose of a story. And that's part of what was very appealing

to me as a kid and even as a young man about his work. The other thing is, like, we're being pretty pointy-headed about this, but he just writes cool fucking stuff. Like, he just, he writes stories about cool guys doing crazy shit. He writes about con men. and salesman. I like this is like a kind of a recent phenomenon for you on this pod specifically is you're just like, I'm just let it rip guy. I'm just like I like what I like, you know? Yeah, well, it's true though. Like, I think because we've been doing a lot of movies recently that are kind of primal to my enjoyment, like saving Private Ryan and boogie nights and movies when I was like 16 and I was like, fuck yeah. And I didn't write an essay about why I liked it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I didn't have to over intellectualize it. Unfortunately, I think Mammitt's, like I said, his status in the culture now, like, kind of forces you to reevaluate what it is that you liked about certain things. But you can't take away that there is that primal enjoyment that comes from watching this movie and that it is saying something, I think, meaningful about, about guys. Like, it's a movie about guys. And it's a story about guys. And the fact that guys get sadder and more desperate and more lame as they get older. Yeah. And that guys, like, get high off of destroying one another. For sure. For sure. Giving each other shit, which is kind of like an essence of this pod, too.

Um, here's another thing that's aged the worst. Blake says that Moss drove a Hyundai to get to work. Moss actually has a pretty nice Buick. And I would like to shout out the guys from, uh, AutoWeak.com, who in 2018 did an honestly amazing blog post about the cars in Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. I can think of no better union between publication and content than AutoWeak.com being like, cars get mentioned a lot in Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross. Here are all of them.

So I'll just run through them. Blake drives an 850. That is a very expensive automobile. Williamson has a Pontiac Bonneville. Levine drives a 10-year-old automobile. It's falling apart. Ricky Roma has a Buick Riviera. And I just thought all those pieces of information

were relevant to my understanding of the characters. That's the other thing is you could really define a guy by his car in 1992. I don't know if you can as much these days. No. No. It feels different. All cars kind of look alike.

Yeah, there's a kind of sameness. And the sad American auto maker, you know, that was a different time. It was a different time. Do you think you would have driven an 850 I or would you have been too self-conscious about it getting scuffed up in the Chicago, New York streets that you were driving in? Were I making $970,000 in 1992? I don't know. I probably would have just had a driver if I was making that much money.

I'm not sure if I would have had a car. that I would have been driving to work. $970,000 in 1982. How much money annually is that now? $5 million? $3 to 5, yeah. I mean, that's, come on.

$5 million a year? I mean, he can go out tonight, make $15,000. On tonight's sit with those leads. Ron Burgundy Flute Award for the best time for a P-break. With all due respect to the legend Jack Lemon, when he's on the pay phone,

you can go get a chip. You know, like after viewing number, whatever, it's like, you don't need to watch him, like, argue with the, nurse practitioner about whether or not a bill is being paid. So best quote is difficult because we've already done a bunch of best quotes. I almost feel like we haven't done enough best quotes. I challenged myself for best quote.

And I'm going to give you some of my favorite Dave Moss quotes because the Dave Moss quotes this time around really jumped out at me. I know what I'll do. I'll rob everybody blind and go to Argentina because nobody ever thought of that before. So they kill the goose and a fucking man's worked all his life. It's got a cower in his boots. And then Arkin's like, boots. I also love robbery.

It is a crime. It's also very safe. And then I just like the great like him working himself up and also working Aaronow up as they're walking into China Bull and him being like, we take the fucking Glengarry leads. And they're just like standing in the pouring rain as they're imagining like robbing that place for Jerry Graf. Did you have any quotes obviously like the.

entire Blake squeech speech, every insult that Roma throws at Williamson. Well, I think near the end of the Moss blow up, fucked a lot of you is a very memorable Moss moment. A little bit earlier in that

conversation, Dave is so pissed off. And he's like, who's my pal Ricky? What are you? And what are you, Ricky, huh? Bishop Sheen? Which is one of the weird, anachronistic. Like Bishop Sheen was a priest who was on TV in the 60s, and it is perfect for the character.

And it's a reminder. Like, if you're watching this movie in 2022, you're bewildered by that. That's an immediate go to Google moment. Yeah, exactly. I really like that one. I don't, I mean, everything Blake says obviously contends. Everything Ricky says two-length contends. Even Williamson, you know, will you go to lunch?

Will you go to lunch? That's, those are. many of the lines are also surrounded by other great lines that it's sometimes hard to take the line out. I mean, the language in this movie is so dense and a lot of it is, it isn't just the lines. It's the scene within which the line is happening. Stephen A. Smith, Hottest Take Award. I don't, I have way more nitpicks and possibly an answer to question. So let's hear your Stephen A. Smith Award. Dave Moss was right. This is an inhumane circumstance that these men have been thrust into.

And it's a system designed to control lower middle class men. And he needs to break the system. So he's almost like a proto-jordan Peterson, the way he's seeing this as like a war for the independence of men. No. He's more of a calisi. He's breaking the wheel of functioning capitalism by bending the laws to his will and to getting what he needs.

And then getting back to Wisconsin, you know, or Argentina or wherever he needs to go to be safe. he's a bad person, but he was right. You know, this is not fair. They keep getting these shit leads. Come on. Help these guys out. I have a question.

It was for possibly I'd answer some questions, but I want to ask it now. Okay. What do you think the quality of the Glenn Gary leads are? Like, what are we talking about here? It imagines a world in which there are hundreds of rubs waiting to be sold bad land. you see that stack of cards?

That stack was thick. Yeah. And the beautiful production design with the gold string. God, I love that. But does that mean that every single name on that card wants to buy eight units of Mountain View?

Like, what are we talking about? No, I know. I mean, it's like, I don't even know whether or not people had financial advisors at that time, but is that supposed to be like, hey, this is from a guy

over at Fidelity? And he's inquiring on behalf of somebody who's got money burning a hole in their pocket. And they need to get into some land. God, I would hate this job. You guys are selling magic beans, you know?

It's, it's, uh, that's the thing is, it's, that is what is really keeping them on the leash. That is the carrot and they keep getting hit with the stick and they keep believing that there's something over the rainbow for them, that there's going to be a pot of gold somewhere because of the leads, quote unquote. And it's just, you know, that's obviously a metaphor for the way that it keeps us coming back to our bullshit jobs. Not you and I, you and I have wonderful jobs. are very lucky. But, you know, most working people, it's hard. It's really, really hard to wake up every day and go do the thing that makes you so fucking mad and spend nine hours, 10 hours, 12 hours if you were listening to Blake berate you at 7 p.m. on a Thursday. That's, that's,

that's not easy. You're full of fucking chocolate donut having this guy scream at you. Yeah. So you smoke 60 cigarettes a day so you can die at 63 in debt? I mean, that's just, it's sad. casting what ifs there's one that I want to focus on here and that is the Alec Baldwin right of first refusal Al Pacino saga so basically what happened

was Pacino had always been attached to this he had always wanted to do it he felt compelled to bring it to the screen but over the course of the near decade that it took to bring this movie to the screen Al Pacino experienced a bit of a cinematic renaissance was in Sea of Love, was doing Frankie and Johnny, was coming back to screens in a big way.

And movie production being the way it is, oftentimes his schedule might not match up. So while this was always envisioned with Pacino playing Roma, there was a point where Baldwin was in line to play Roma. And essentially Baldwin was like, if Al doesn't do Roma, I will. And otherwise, I'll still be in it, but I would like to play Roma.

Yeah. I mean, he could have done it. would have been awesome. It would have been great. I can't imagine really like anyone doing better than Al Pacino and I know people have tried and maybe Joe Medtania was on stage in Chicago like would have melted my face off. But like this is one of my favorite Pacino performances, but I would have really been interested in seeing Baldwin do it. You, the only thing is that Baldwin is so tall, dark, and handsome at this time that it would have strained a little bit of credulity that a guy like that would not have been able to rise above this circumstance and get into like a bigger playing field.

Yeah. That's part of what's so great about the casting of Blake is like, this guy actually is a life winner. You know, he's the kind of guy who prevails. Pacino, who, you know, made it his business playing like losers and dirtbags and kind of like unseemly looking characters in the 70s and Satan. But like in the 70s especially, like if you watch Scarecrow or something, you're like, this guy's a loser.

He can't. And even in his best Italian suit and his hair is feathered just so, he. he's still five six and he's still like an Italian guy from New York. You know, it's not, you, you believe that he has reached the highest level of the lowest station in life. Yeah, and he still get, like, he still didn't close link. You know what I mean? Like, that gets fucked up. It's not like he is Gordon Gecko. There, were there other, well, can we talk about Montania really quickly? Really quickly. Yeah. So he originated the part and then he went on and won the Tony for best actor. He and Praski were both.

nominated for best featured actor in a play. And he won. And there's this famous story that Montaena tells all the time now about how directly and gruffly that Mamet told Montaena he was, he had sold the rights to the play while they were doing the show on stage. And then he was not getting the part. That it was almost certainly going to be Al Pacino. But what I've done is I've written two movies for you that you will get to star in. One is House of Games and the other is things change, another really good movie that he made with Don Amici in 1988. And that's the other thing about Mammat that I really liked is, of course, Mamet had his troop and he had his guys, but that sense of loyalty that he had to write not one, but two movies

for Montania, because Montania, you know, kind of got soft screwed out of the part of a lifetime, the part that changed his life. Yeah. And then it got Al Pacino and Academy Award nomination because it's such a special role. But that Montana basically, like, has his career because of Mammett and has his movie career because of Mamet and got to star in two really good movies. I just think that's an interesting little, it's not a sliding door necessarily because Montaena never would have been able to be the star of this movie for a variety of reasons, but it is very notable. Did you like Montaigne on

Barry this past season? I did. I really liked him a lot in part because it felt like what he was doing, and actually Bill Hader talked to me a little bit about this one when I had him on the Prestige TV podcast, that you could almost feel him like bending that part around. the real Joe Montaena. Yeah. Who is a real like honor bound kind of guy. And there is this kind of class of working class artists at especially out of Chicago, but really out of like major cities around the country who have a very have a kind of like

pretentious, grounded pretentiousness. Yes. That's a really good way of putting it. I would say Ed Harris is not unlike that. Yeah. Very similar where it's like, this is kind of a tough guy. I could see. Hey Harris shows up to like a place with a neckerchief, but you're still like I wouldn't want to

fuck with him. Exactly. He might punch you in the throat, but also he knows Shakespeare. Well, when Ed Harris didn't stand up for Ilya Kzan, I was like, holy shit. Yeah. Yes. This dude is such a G about this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there is an ethics to an ethical point of view in this film, in their work, in how they see the world that I just really respond to. I think it's really, really interesting and like, I don't know if it's even admirable, but it is a way of life for sure. So there were a couple of other people mentioned as being interested in the and it was never clear which roles but Bruce Willis, Robert De Niro,

you know, it was one of those movies that gets thrown around in Rumor Mills but it does seem like once they got Pacino and Lemon in Roma and Levine like everything else kind of fell into place and it is sort of hard to imagine Robert De Niro playing like George Aronau although I could see him sort of maybe playing Moss.

Yeah. I mean, could he do Levine is an interesting question. Well, he would have been pretty young then, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. I could see Bruce Willis at 92, it would have been a little bit into his movie stardom, but there's a world in which I could see him being a good Williamson. Could he do Blake? Oh yeah. Jesus Christ, that would have been awesome.

Yeah. If he brought a little Jimmy Conway energy, he could do it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The Ruffalo, Ohana, Rubeneck Partridge Overacting Award. They knew, and they let it happen. Don't you call me, lady! I come in here. I give these things to you. I got? Give it all you got!

I treated you like a son! You fucking stand me in the heart! Fuck you! I guess we go Ed Harris for the end? Yeah. I mean, overacting is kind of necessity.

It's relative. Al Pacino's in this movie. I don't really know how we're giving that to anybody else. Best That Guy Award, I got Bruce Altman is Larry. Yeah. No doubt winner. Dion Waders Award changed the name

to Alec Baldwin Award. Do you have anything? for recasting couch. Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about this. I think this

is a fun exercise. I'm thinking a lot about actors in their 40s. Now, actors in their 40s now in

America are basically best known for portraying superheroes or franchise stars. So, your Chris is,

your Tom Hardy's, your Christian Bales, do you want any of those guys in a part

like this? I think one of the challenges is that these guys can't be too pretty. Mm-hmm. And they are really American to me. Mm-hmm. Like, for as much as it would be interesting to see Christian Bale do something like this or interesting to see Tom Hardy do something like this or interesting to see, I don't know. Like any of those guys from the MC, like Paul Bettney or somebody get in here,

there's something very New York, Chicago shitbag, maybe a, year or two of community college, bad suit, drives a Buick kind of energy about these guys that you just don't always get when Benedict Cumberbatch is pretending to be from Oklahoma. Okay. If we were in the, the budget was infinity, right? We were in blank checkbook territory here. Bezos has come through. Yeah. And he's just like, rings of power hit. I can do whatever I want again. Four hundred million dollar budget for this film. for a stage play. Yeah.

It's Leo. David, David Fincher recreates Chicago from in 1984 piece by piece. Right. Yes. Yes. Using all the same technology

that the Mandalorian, we'll shoot it on Favreau's green screen lot. It's Leo as Roma. Uh-huh. It's, it's Joaquin as Moss, Joaquin Phoenix. Colin Farrell is Blake.

It's Casey Affleck as Aronnell. Levine is tough. I like, I like Gary Oldman. You bring Pacino back. Oh, well, yeah. He knows how to do that. He definitely knows how to do that. Yeah. I'll tell you who else I really would be interested to see in something like this.

Is Eddie Murphy? Oh, yeah. I'd love to see somebody who's really, because Eddie Murphy also a king of elocution. Eddie Murphy was such a great comic and became such a great actor because he is an amazing sayer of words. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it is true. and so getting him in the mix somehow, I think would be really interesting. There's also like a class of actor

who of course could like blow the house down with something like this. Like if you just put like Richard Jenkins and J.K. Simmons in a movie version of this, like two guys who were just like, like if you just put Richard Jenkins as Levine and J.K. Simmons as Moss, like they would destroy.

Sure. It would be so good. Yeah. But if you're doing the movie star version of the movie, I think it's a fun exercise. Yeah, it was funny when I was watching that Pacino doing Levine scene that was part of like the Tony's in 2013,

David Harbor was playing Williamson. And I was like, I kind of do wonder whether we should just have Netflix buy the rights to Glenn Gar and Glenn Ross in perpetuity and just make this every five years. Well, this is something, I might have pitched this on this show a long, long time ago, but, you know, frankly, like one of my favorite things ever

is Playhouse 90 and the live plays that they did on TV in the 50s and in the early 60s. And a lot of great filmmakers came out of that space, like Sydney Lumet, John Frankenheimer, a lot of guys who went on to great, great, great, great film careers. And one of the reasons they went on to great film careers is because they learned how to block stage and coach actors

in a real-life environment with the stakes are really high. So when they had more time, they became very inventive filmmakers and very flexible filmmakers. And there have been a handful of live TV experiences in the last 30 years. There's a famous version of Failsafe from George Clooney. There have recently been a couple of like stage musicals that have been filmed for TV.

But if they made, if like Netflix or HBO Max or somebody made an event of this where they brought together huge cast of talented actors for very well-known pieces of like American storytelling and restage them for one night only, like on-demand viewing is such a huge part of our life. And sports is the only thing that we can get to people to watch in real time. Yeah, they do this with like classic sitcoms where they do basically like contemporary stars doing an episode of all in the family or whatever. Yes. I kind of don't understand why at a certain point, they should just do, for the sake of everybody getting to see it, whether or not I think it's a good play or not.

They should just do Aaron Sorkins to kill a Mockenberg, right? I agree. I mean, I think part of the reason why they don't do that is because most actors that appear in film and television now do not come out of the theater or do not have the 10-year lifespan working in the theater. Nor do they want to face-plant by forgetting the monologue on national television while live. And so they can fail. And there's more to lose and there's more eyeballs and all of these other things. But there are still a lot of really gifted actors who come out of that tradition who are famous. And you'd want to see them try this stuff. If like if I were if I were a hot shot producer. And frankly, this is another thing you could do to raise money is to just encourage people to say, just do this one, we'll raise some money. Do this one night a year. Oh, like as a charity. Yeah. I think that would be really cool. I don't know if Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross speaks to the heart of charity necessarily. But for bailing people out of the oncoming high. housing market collapse. I mean, that might be perfectly ironic.

I don't know. That could be good. This should have been part of tarp. It's like, we're just going to stage Glenn Garry and show it. So you fucking guys stop doing this. One more positive jobs report and one more difficult inflation report. And we might have to do this, you know? We can get Biden to play Shelley.

Wow. Well, he's been doing it on the national stage now for about three years. Get the chalk. Halfass internet research. Jack Levin reportedly called this is the greatest ensemble he'd ever been part of. I actually not reportedly. I watched them say that on a YouTube video.

Al's desk is the only desk facing in a different direction. Everyone else's desk looks forward towards Williamson's office. So just in that Vanity Fair article, they were talking about the little things that they would do with the production design of the office to make it seem like a bunch of slobbingly guys who eat donuts for dinner have been working out of there for a decade. Actors would spend days off

on set to watch other actors work. I love that apocryphal or not, like the idea of like, you know, Ed Harris taking a day and just being like in the shadows watching Al Pacino and Jonathan Price work. It's, who wouldn't? And this is my favorite bit that I found that you,

I did not bother to do all the calculations to find out if this was true. But when the play was written, Rio Rancho, if it is in fact, Rio Rancho in New Mexico, was just like basically desert. But it became a suburb of Albuquerque. so it actually would have been a good investment.

Oh, that's great. I love that. I didn't know that. That's so wonderful. Any half-ass internet research on your own? No, I just wanted to ask you, like, do you have investment properties? Is that something you've considered? No, I was wondering about like what, when it became, if it's still in fashion or not, or when it left fashion to buy eight units of something. Yeah, that's just like, because my parents had a timeshare in Vermont that they did

like the reverse deal with it because they like going there in the sun. summer. And it was like this place. And I recently looked it up like the apartment complex. And they literally haven't changed like the bed spread since August of 1997. Like it's still like the same pictures. It's got like a, a Geo City's website and everything. But they didn't like heavily invest, nor were they like, we need to buy seven units of this of this small Vermont apartment complex. What about you? I do. I own. You have a lot of Florida land. Several acres in Azerbaijan. which are available for rent, if people are curious. No, I've never done this before.

And it's one of those things where when I hear people, like, you hear the sales pitch in this movie, and you're like, are these people insane? Like, why do they need this? Why do you need this? Yeah. Are you so bored and so desperate and so, like, eager? I guess it is leveraging people's fears

that they're not making the most out of their little tiny piece of savings, that they have to make more of it. and that it like, it preys on their, their greed and their insecurity to kind of expand upon that. I understand that as the premise,

but like me personally, I got enough problems in living in my house, you know, like just getting by living here. Like, the idea of having to manage more is exhausting.

Well, I don't get the impression that a lot of these people are, like, really thriving off these investments. I mean, they're essentially criminals. So it's pretty bad.

Apex Mountain, I think you could make the argument that it is for Pacino. I mean, obviously Godfather is, is the alternative, but this is 1992 when he wins

best Oscar for Scent of a Woman. And then this performance as Ricky Romo goes on to live on for the next 30 years in a way that I don't think the Senate of a woman performance did. So I would just say

Pacino in 92, could you say Apex Mountain? He's scaled him out in a few times, I think. Yeah. I mean, he he made Serpico, the Godfather Part 2,

dog day afternoon all in a row. I mean... Those are pretty good. He's... He's probably the most accomplished actor of his generation. More, even probably more than Tenero. So, uh, it comes in waves. And then he does Jack and Jill, like 10 years later, you know?

And he gets that Sandler love. So he's, he's, he's thriving to this day. I love him. I rewatch the Irishman a few weeks ago and I was like, fuck. He's really great. He's great. I probably haven't done enough Pacino, but it's hard to do him in this movie because he has so many different sort of gears and keys in this movie. David Mamet on screen, Apex Mountain.

It is. It is. I think the Spanish prisoner followed by State and Maine is a very, followed by heist. That trilogy of movies is him at his best as a filmmaker. three very different kinds of movies that all are undeniably mammat that I love to this day that I would include Spartan in that? Well, Spartan is where the worm turns, right? I mean, Spartan is where it's like, is he okay?

Yeah. What's going on here? And it reveals like a lot of, I think, some of the underpinning of his thoughts. But, you know, it's notable that he didn't direct this because he's just not as gifted a visual filmmaker as someone like Foley, who like Foley is a real rises and falls by the the quality of the material filmmaker. You know, he's made a lot of movies. He made two of the 50 Shades movies.

And he's been, I think he worked on, do you work on Mind Hunter? Fully? Did not. No. What? Oh, no, House of Cards. He worked on House of Cards.

And so he kind of like, depending on what the script looks like, is whether or not he succeeds. In this case, perfect match. Perfect match of everything. Any other Apex Mountains? Is it salesman on screen? What would the competition be?

I'm thinking to myself. Because I wouldn't consider this like a finance movie, the way Wall Street is, the way industry is a finance show. Would you consider the Mad Ben guys salesman? Sure. Sure. I mean, they're not, they're ad guys. It's kind of different. I think in real estate sales, yes.

Apex Mountain. Tommy Boy? Tommy Boy. I thought Tommy Boy, they made like sporting goods or something. Break pads. Break pads. You know, I don't really go deep on the Farley Sanders cinematic universe.

Really sad for you. Moneyball? As a sales movie? This movie has a lot in common with money ball. Because they're selling the idea of advanced analytics. Yeah, and it's a bunch of unhappy men in a room talking about how to get success. That's like, that is a category of movie that I love.

You think Billy Beedon's unhappy? Oh, God. Are you kidding me? I mean, he's rich and he's a handsome, man and he was a great athlete and he's had incredible success, but he never won. He never won. That's true. You know, just like me. Never won. Sean, come on. Um, best race horse name. I have Mitch and Murray. It would help if you had two horses, but I would name the same horse Mitch and Murray. Oh, man. Best race horse name. I didn't prep for this. Well, A-I-D-A would be a good, because it would be so confusing, but you know.

The funny thing is like, Always Be Closing is so iconic and so brilliant and so repeated and parodied, et cetera, et cetera. We've mentioned it. You can't have a horse named only be closing, always be closing if it loses, though. That's right. Always be embarrassing, bringing up the rear.

It doesn't sound good. But AIDA is dumb as shit. Like, is that based on something real? Attention, interest, decision, action. Everything he says there is so stupid. I think it seems very rooted in like Midwestern sales, also like with a tinge of religiosity to it though. Have you made your decision for Christ stuff?

Like I'm sure that there is like a huge like Trevor treasure trove of sayings like that from like 50s 60s sales philosophy stuff. I won't let this pot end without saying good father, fuck you. Go home and play with your kids. That's the hardest I've ever laughed in a movie. That's Baldwin saying go home and play with your kids. Oh my God. Oh my God.

I don't give a shit. picking Nets. I think we kind of hit this, but this was, it's supposed to be Chicago, but it seems like it's also New York. This never really bothers me, but I do, I did notice it,

especially coming from off of a trip to Chicago. Better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo, Catherine Hahn, Steve Bishemi, Sam Jackson, J.T. Walsh, or Philip Baker Hall. Now, I think we all know that the answer is Philip Baker Hall is Shelley Levine and J.T. Walsh getting to play Williamson.

you know, that would be amazing to get to see that. Because they did play those roles in the past. Yeah, I have to say that Bernthal would be a fucking amazing Roma. And... What would it sound like? God damn, Shelly!

I didn't know I was working with the machine! That's pretty good. I mean, Bishemi as Arnau would work. That would work. Oh my God, yeah. You could see that. Just one Oscar who gets it. To me, on the rewatch,

it was, it was lemon. Okay. I go, I go with that. I, you know, obviously Roma is incredible, moss is incredible. The whole cast is lights out. Could, honestly, another, yet another example of why, like, why there's not a best ensemble Oscar is fucking beyond me, man. Like, come on. What a fun category that would get all the famous people to show up. Yeah, and then you could do, if you wanted to be an idiot and be like, here's Infinity War gets this. That's fine. Yeah. If the cast is good, who cares? Like, right. I'm, these, It's fish in a barrel for the fucking academy. I'm just giving out these ideas every year.

Nobody gives a shit. No one's listening to me. Best on solid. Why do you get Jack Lemon out there? 1980s sports gambling shark. All I do is give you winners. Possibly unanswerable questions. Probably unanswerable questions.

Yep. So midway through the movie, like he's out with, Moss is out with Aaron now and he's like basically saying, well, I'm not going to get in trouble because what did I do? I'm going to the movies and then I'm going to the Como in to get a drink. The movie was shot in August

1991. What movie do you think Dave Moss went to go see? Oh my God. Here are the top five movies in August 91. You tell me what would be the funniest place for Dave Moss to be the night of the robbery. Hot shots?

Uh-huh. Terminator 2 Judgment Day. Doc Hollywood or double impact? Double impact is by far the funny. Dave Moss. It was fucking loving double impact. Double impact.

Dave Moss has two donuts and a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, watching Jean-Claude Van Dam. You know what I can see him seeing as the last Boy Scout? That's a 1991 movie that I could see Dave Moss checking out and enjoying. Or maybe Cape Fear? Do you don't think he would be like he goes to Doc Hollywood? He's like, that's a good movie. Is...

Oh, God. What's a, what's a movie that one of the stars of this movie was in, that you could see that, well, I mean, Jack, I would bring J. FK. You know, you could go to JFK. It would break the fourth wall there. Yeah. Here's another, probably unanswerable question. Okay. You get one scene to add. Who do you cast as Jerry Graff? Wow. I got Dustin Hoffman. You know he can rock with Mammot, wag the dog. Yep. He seems like a Jerry graph. He could get slick. Slick his hair back. Is Jerry an older guy or is he a younger guy? No, I think he's like their contemporary.

I think they can't believe how well he's doing. They can't believe that he went and struck out on his own. He probably is a little bit corrupt because he's willing to pay for stolen leads. Interesting. I mean, what if it's even more high octane than that? What if it's like Warren Beatty? Yeah. And then maybe Hoffman could be twins playing Mitch.

and Murray. Are Mitch and Murray twins? Mitch and Murray are twins, both played by Dustin Hoffman. Warren Beatty plays Jerry Graff and Sidney Pollack plays Lemkin. I was going to Lemkin. Lemkin. Um, what if we just, just went full bore and just went Schwarzenegger's Lemkin? You know, like, why don't, why don't just blow it up? Let's get, let's make this the biggest movie possible. These are the good leads. Um, that was your Arnold. I've never heard to do Arnold. Best double feature choice for this movie. Get to the leads! What's the best double future choice for this movie?

Well, speaking of Hoffman, you could do the adaptation of Death of a Salesman. I think that's pretty reasonable. Jack Lemmon called Glenn Gary Glenn Ross Death of a Fucking salesman. Yeah, which is accurate. And they obviously, they're inextricable, right? And, like, Mamet uses Arthur Miller as, like, a guiding light through various stories that he tells. I don't know. I'm trying to think of another one. Like I mentioned Moneyball. I think that would be funny. I think that would be kind of an interesting pairing of, you know, two heavyweight screenwriters who excelled at rapid fire patter of double talk, syncopation.

I think that, you know, repetition obviously is a huge part of what Sorkin does as well. I think that'd be an interesting one. That's good. I like those both. You're the best, you're the best programmer of the double features of the new Beverly of the rewatchables. What would you pick? I think it would be fun. I think I've mentioned, I don't really love repeating it, but I think it would be interesting to do Boileroom

because it's fascinating to watch how the lessons get changed over the years of a movie and how, like, I think people, my dad's age when they saw this film, when they saw Glengarry, they were like, ah,

the corrupted dark heart at the center of capitalism and then the Boilerm generation watch it. We're like, that's pretty sick. Do you think that the makers of Boileroom

think that their characters are here? No, but I think they think that they are pretty entertaining. Right. Right. So, the Andy and Red Z. Wantonayo Award for what happened the next day. Is Premier Properties out of business? No. Levine and Moss are in jail. Correct. There's a chance Aronau goes down to. Roma just lost his link sale. Jerry Graff is ascendant. What happens to P.P? They still got the shattered glass. Nobody's going to come in off the street. Well, one thing that I like that is assumed that I've seen this written about is the idea that the survivors of this incident are actually Roma and Aronow.

That Aronow, who is the loser of the bunch, that is clearly the lowest performing figure, survives. Saves the job. Yeah. By not breaking the law, by not breaking the code, by not corrupting the ethics in this unethical world. And that there is something to that. that there is like being the schnook sometimes means you get to pay your mortgage. Or this is like a almost a moral outcome. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. That ultimately it allows him to kind of continue to operate in this universe, which is unfair, but at least allows for survival as opposed to trying to make something bigger for yourself and inevitably going down. I worry about premier properties, you know. You think they're closing up shop? I just don't know if it's got longevity. And where are Mitch and Murray?

they never they never pop up absentee landlords i like the that part where williamson is like don't go reclose anything if we have to get new signatures murray's going to come in and pretend to be the president from out of town it's a great part that leads me to the netflix prestige tv all black cast prequel or sequel question i do it's impossible to do it because it's such a compressed thing and it's such an inimitable way of writing but if you told me that there was like ten more scenes of glen garraglen ross on the floor i'd be like put them back in let's see it. Totally agree. I also,

Best Black cast, I mean, like, just take the cast of the wire and put them in this show. Yeah. You know, if you just repurposed Wood Harris and Idris and that whole crime syndicate and just made them do Glenn Gary, wouldn't you love that? I mean, so many of those scenes among those characters

feel like Glengarry scenes, where they're talking in this kind of coded language, and it's about a kind of like burdened masculinity and about like winning and beating the game and all of that stuff. It feels so heavily indebted to Mammon in that way. And I would just love to see those guys. I love those actors so much.

What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? The 850 I? Do we see? We never see it, right? Yeah, because when Levine's walking in, it's the security. Oh, you're right. Is beeping. Yeah, so it's in the rain, but you can see.

It's a big white car. Interesting. Big white car in a city, aggressive. Must get it washed a lot. I would never do that. I mean, honestly, I just want that bottle of J&B from China Bowl, you know, right now. Oh, the brass balls. Craig, of course.

We didn't really talk about the brass balls. You know, can I be honest? I don't think the brass balls is funny. Sure, you can be honest. I don't, I, I, I, this is almost your Stephen A. Smith hot take. Brass balls too much? Well, it's a guy who's got the right line for every single moment. Anything that Moss says back to him. Yeah, and he's like, hold on, I need to frame these, this like hammocker, shlemmer,

office supply right against my testicles. It's pretty weird. Yeah. I don't know. Does that work? I don't know. Maybe that's a hot take. No, that's good. I like this. Okay. I would take Roma's sunglasses. Those were big for a minute in the early 90s. The club masters. I love those. Yeah. I used to rock those all the time. Coach Finstock life lesson. I think this is pretty easy. Never open your mouth until you know the shot. That's something I adhere to. Yep. But it is, it goes against the podcasters creed, but still, I like it.

That's not true. You're a pretty smooth customer. I think you operate with a deep amount of savvy. Do you feel that you live your life that way? You don't make a lot of big mistakes, CR. Not anymore. I got them all out of my system. You're a new man. You know, I bought a lot of land. It was tough sledding there for a while. Who won the movie? I think Mamet. There you go. I'm going to go Pacino, but I'm okay with that. So let's bring in the type of It's producer Craig. A child of the boiler room in some ways. Craig, what did you think of Glenn Gary Glenn Rosson?

Who won the movie? I think Lemon won the movie. Oh, interesting. I watched this movie at midnight last night for an hour, and then this morning at 7 a.m. for the second hour. That's good. 7 a.m. Ricky Roma Express. Did you, so you basically like split it in half, like the two acts.

Yeah, I didn't realize that they would actually work out nicely that way. but I very much enjoy screen adaptations of plays. It just feels like the actors, you can just tell that like they're having fun. They're having more fun than normal, that they know they're having something extra to chew on. It's like you two talking about a manit movie. Sure.

Yeah. Did this movie like mean anything to, were you aware of it as a teenager, for example? Did you ever have friends quote this movie or was this like a new found thing for you? Honestly, this is backwards, but the only reason I know about it is because of SNL. I watched SNL growing up a ton and the Alec Baldwin stuff. He used to have all the DVDs of like all the best sketches and stuff.

And the Baldwin stuff was how I was introduced to it. And then like memes of the Blake speech. Right. That's about it. I thought, I almost thought because this movie came out in 92, which is like right when Seinfeld was starting. And the way that Dave and George speak is kind of Seinfeldian.

Like yeah. Like the repetition of like like like you were saying, Chris, like, the leads. There's no leads. What about the boots? The boots? Like, that's a kind of George and Jerry, and it's like New York, early 90s. I'm sure that, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry Charles

had seen some, some Mammett plays. No doubt about it. That's a great call. All right, Sean, thank you so much. Fuck you! That's my name, Chris. Thanks to Craig Horwell back for producing. We'll be back next week.