With my fourth pick in the Shelter in Place Alphabet Movie Draft, I will make use of the letter G to select:
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992):
Director: James Foley
Dir. of Photography: Juan Ruiz Anchía
Writer: David Mamet
Score: James Newton Howard
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce
Genre(s): Drama, mystery, crime
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
IMDb Entry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
There are many letters of the alphabet for which I have pulled multiple films to potentially select for this draft. I've already used up b and t, and I could have conceivably selected a dozen other films that I adore with those two letters. Selecting The Thing, for example, prevented me from drafting what I consider to be the greatest film of this young century, but that was a trade-off I was willing to make because of the seismic influence The Thing represents. Still, these are touch decisions, and it's difficult for me to keep from second-guessing myself.
So for now, perhaps I will focus on letters for which I have listed far fewer possibilities. I had exactly two films that mattered to me for h, and it was easy enough to snag Heat while it was still on the board. And I had exactly three films pegged for g, but Ghostbusters was recently selected, which honestly made my life a bit easier. It was then a toss-up between two movies that I love, but the one with brass balls ultimately won out.
Glengarry Glen Ross was written by David Mamet and adapted from his stage play of the same name. It stars an absolute murderer's row of acting talent, and stuffs them all into a cramped, sh*tty little real estate office where the stakes might at first seem rather small to the audience, but are absolutely monumental for the characters involved.
What I love most about this film is how un-cinematic so much of it is. I am a huge proponent of examining the craft of cinema when discussing a particular film. I believe that the manner in which a film is made matters just as much as the plot construction or the performances involved. But Glengarry Glen Ross can't help but feel like a play, with considerable attention paid to adapting Mamet's two-act classic as faithfully as possible.
The sets certainly have the kind of incredibly-detailed flair you find more in film than on the stage, but they are appropriately Mamet-esque in their humble styling, and the staging and blocking of the actors and the action on screen is very reminiscent of a theater production. The film's director, James Foley, worked on little of note before or since. This is very much Mamet's show. Rarely has the writer of a film felt like the biggest presence in it, and Glengarry Glen Ross certainly contains some BIG performances.
Interestingly enough, the character played by Alec Baldwin (credited only as "Blake") in perhaps the film's most famous moment, with perhaps its most oversized performance, does not appear in Mamet's original play, and only appears in this single scene. But despite that one noticeable departure from Mamet's play, the scene sets the tone for the entire film, communicates the stakes as brashly as possible, and clarifies the pressure the film's salesman are under. We learn so much about them through their reactions to this abrasive foreign object in their office. Dave Moss' petulant dismissals. Shelley Levene's acidic stares. George Aaronow's defeated passivity. And the absence of Ricky Roma, the office's most decorated salesman, looms large. We will eventually come to discover just how much Roma represents the core tenets of Blake's ideology:
ALWAYS. BE. CLOSING.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992):
Director: James Foley
Dir. of Photography: Juan Ruiz Anchía
Writer: David Mamet
Score: James Newton Howard
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce
Genre(s): Drama, mystery, crime
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
IMDb Entry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
There are many letters of the alphabet for which I have pulled multiple films to potentially select for this draft. I've already used up b and t, and I could have conceivably selected a dozen other films that I adore with those two letters. Selecting The Thing, for example, prevented me from drafting what I consider to be the greatest film of this young century, but that was a trade-off I was willing to make because of the seismic influence The Thing represents. Still, these are touch decisions, and it's difficult for me to keep from second-guessing myself.
So for now, perhaps I will focus on letters for which I have listed far fewer possibilities. I had exactly two films that mattered to me for h, and it was easy enough to snag Heat while it was still on the board. And I had exactly three films pegged for g, but Ghostbusters was recently selected, which honestly made my life a bit easier. It was then a toss-up between two movies that I love, but the one with brass balls ultimately won out.
Glengarry Glen Ross was written by David Mamet and adapted from his stage play of the same name. It stars an absolute murderer's row of acting talent, and stuffs them all into a cramped, sh*tty little real estate office where the stakes might at first seem rather small to the audience, but are absolutely monumental for the characters involved.
What I love most about this film is how un-cinematic so much of it is. I am a huge proponent of examining the craft of cinema when discussing a particular film. I believe that the manner in which a film is made matters just as much as the plot construction or the performances involved. But Glengarry Glen Ross can't help but feel like a play, with considerable attention paid to adapting Mamet's two-act classic as faithfully as possible.
The sets certainly have the kind of incredibly-detailed flair you find more in film than on the stage, but they are appropriately Mamet-esque in their humble styling, and the staging and blocking of the actors and the action on screen is very reminiscent of a theater production. The film's director, James Foley, worked on little of note before or since. This is very much Mamet's show. Rarely has the writer of a film felt like the biggest presence in it, and Glengarry Glen Ross certainly contains some BIG performances.
Interestingly enough, the character played by Alec Baldwin (credited only as "Blake") in perhaps the film's most famous moment, with perhaps its most oversized performance, does not appear in Mamet's original play, and only appears in this single scene. But despite that one noticeable departure from Mamet's play, the scene sets the tone for the entire film, communicates the stakes as brashly as possible, and clarifies the pressure the film's salesman are under. We learn so much about them through their reactions to this abrasive foreign object in their office. Dave Moss' petulant dismissals. Shelley Levene's acidic stares. George Aaronow's defeated passivity. And the absence of Ricky Roma, the office's most decorated salesman, looms large. We will eventually come to discover just how much Roma represents the core tenets of Blake's ideology:
ALWAYS. BE. CLOSING.
