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| Images courtesy of Lionsgate |
American playwright and screenwriter David Mamet’s career in
film began sometime around 1981 with his screenplay for Bob Rafelson’s The
Postman Always Rings Twice, over ten years after first breaking into the
stage theater scene with his first play Lakeboat in 1970. Though film work briefly ceased following the
release of Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, Mamet would achieve breakthrough
success with his 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play Glengarry Glen
Ross which all but cemented him as a master of the ensemble stage
production. Loosely influenced by Arthur
Miller’s Death of a Salesman while deriving its name from real estate
developments referred to throughout by the characters, the two-act firebrand
tragedy told of a group of Chicago based real estate agents who will stoop to
any and all unscrupulous lows to achieve a successful sale. Talky, shouty and foul mouthed, it spoke to a
particular brand of dialogue which would soon become even more mainstream
following screenwriting work on Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables.
After directing his first feature film in 1987 with House
of Games before returning to playwriting and screenwriting, Mamet
eventually got involved with Danny DeVito’s 1992 Hoffa biopic as a
screenwriter and associate producer.
That same year, however, would mark for Mamet the year he would revisit
and expand upon the world he opened up in 1983 with the tragically late At
Close Range director James Foley’s adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. Expanding the scenario and introducing new
additional characters such as a fast-talking foul-mouthed top salesman played by
Alec Baldwin and moving the locations to New York, the scope widescreen chamber
piece took four years to finance before casting and cameras rolled. Though it was a rocky road getting there with
financiers threatening to sue each other over credit, the expanded (and now
preferred) version of David Mamet’s stage to screen adaptation of Glengarry
Glen Ross hit movie screens in 1992.
In a shadowy, claustrophobic and tense quasi-12 Angry Men
chamber piece is a scrappy little real-estate sales firm commandeered by top
closer Richard Roma (Al Pacino), slimy George Aaronow (Alan Arkin), scheming
yet nebbish Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene (Jack Lemmon) and short-tempered Dave
Moss (Ed Harris) with John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) as their beleaguered
office manager. With leads dwindling, one
of the firm’s top salesmen Blake (Alec Baldwin) is ushered in to give a profane
fueled motivational speech and an ultimatum that only the top remaining two
closers of the month within less than a week will be allowed to keep their jobs. Setting the stage for these firebrands to
court clients and schmooze them into agreeing to shady business deals,
including but not limited to Roma zeroing in on sheepish prospective buyer
James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce) cozying up to the man’s weaknesses to secure a
deal. All seems to be going in their
favor, until the next morning the salesmen discover their office has been
burglarized and their hot business prospect leads have been stolen, turning an
already tense situation into a simmering pressure cooker.
A masterwork of gracefully filmed and staged ensemble
theater acting with spitfire dialogue shelled out by the actors at each other,
lensed handsomely by David Mamet’s own House of Games cinematographer Juan
Ruiz AnchÃa in scope 2.35:1 with a moody melancholic jazz score by James Newton
Howard, Glengarry Glen Ross is something of a minor powerhouse of cinema. One of the benefits of the film adaptation is
the use of leitmotif and in this world we’re often shown vistas of trains
and/or somber rainfall, implying the melancholic sameness of the salesman’s way
of life. A murderer’s row of casting
with the legendary Jack Lemmon giving one of his best performances since his
time spent with Billy Wilder, the always solid Alan Arkin, Al Pacino and Ed
Harris channeling their own ferocities across the screen space and the now
often quoted speech from Alec Baldwin opening the film, a large joy of the film
is seeing the actors so thoroughly attack their roles. The distinguished Sir Jonathan Pryce as a
meek and easily preyed upon client being pushed into a deal also leaves an
impression. The only impedance for some
viewers will be the presence of then-new Kevin Spacey who is quite good in the
part of the office manager shouldering these miscreants but like most cancelled
actors won’t be something everyone watching will be able to look past.
Despite underperforming at the box office initially, taking
in only $10.7 million against a $12.5 million production budget, Glengarry
Glen Ross was a largely unanimous critical success, winning its actor Jack Lemmon
the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 49th Venice Film Festival and
garnering an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Al Pacino in the role of
Best Supporting Actor. In the years
since thanks to home video sales and rentals, the film has since become a cult
classic with the opening ‘Always Be Closing’ speech by Alec Baldwin becoming one
of its high watermarks. A blistering yet
nonjudgmental regard for desperate rogue men operating under the radar scheming
their way through life as the world continues to train on, Glengarry Glen
Ross whatever your takeaway on Mamet’s construct is, you will be swept away
by the film’s tense and occasionally impassioned performances and moody, almost
bluesy filmmaking. Still widely regarded
as one of the very best ensemble casts assembled with one of the best
later-tier Jack Lemmon performances since Short Cuts.
--Andrew Kotwicki
