Word: salesman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What those watching and listening to Pacino's devilish sound-bites had been overpowered by was his believability. Pacino was not Pacino; he was Scarface. By that token, though, he never is. In "Glengarry Glen Ross," the new movie based on the play by David Mamet, Pacino is a salesman, Ricky Roma...
...other characters in "Glengarry Glen Ross" make it easy for Pacino to be bad: Jack Lemmon fills the role of Shelly Levene, an overworked, unconfident shadow of a "great" salesman ten years past his prime. Lemmon simpers and croons to customers, selling his soul to regain an irretrievable glory. In the end, he makes a good feast for Roma when the sleazy real estate sales company that puts a roof over both their heads crucifies...
...course, because "Glengarry Glen Ross" takes place in New York, it usually rains in torrents and the movie takes us clear to the underside of contemporary life like nothing since "Death of a Salesman." Unfortunately, another painful parallel to "Salesman" is that the film uses only a fraction of the potential that the medium bestows upon it. The scenes are limited and we rarely see any kind of action other than frustrated rampages and darkly philosophical dialogues...
...where the salesmen once made a killing, and Glengarry Highlands, the current stake, up for grabs. The past perfect tense gives way to the present imperative now -- because there's a dogfight among the four middle-aged men whose tough job it is to cozen the consumer. The top salesman will win a Cadillac; runner-up gets a set of steak knives. And third prize? Ask the cool executive (Alec Baldwin), himself a human steak knife, who has dropped by to explain the competition. "Third prize is you're fired...
...patient groups are often run not by professionals but by victims of the disease or their close relatives. "It's not your typical eight-hour-a-day job," says former beer salesman Ron Brazeal, executive director of the United Leukodystrophy Foundation, who lost two sons to the disease, which is a rare genetic neurological disorder. Such groups devote little time to the kind of sympathy campaigns that have characterized the March of Dimes or the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy. Instead they depend on their own highly committed members for operating funds...