An aspiring actor in the 1980s, Tarantino probably read and learned from Glengarry. In addition to the similarities, both scripts focus heavily on the shocking reveals of sympathetic characters as traitors (although the reveals occur halfway through “Dogs” and at the end of “Glengarry”). Both riffed on the moody nihilism of film noir. It finds conflict and drama in letting go, blaring accusations and suspicions, and yelling obscenities. and insults.
As is often the case when tempers flare and the stakes are high, such unfiltered interactions can give a sneak peek at the characters’ collective identities. early on in the most revered scene (a scene that Mamet newly invented and added to the script adaptation) becomes text. Alec Baldwin comes out as a ferocious Blake. Blake leads a sales meeting that amounts to eight minutes of vicious verbal abuse, with shots of him hot walking from his home office to Sheepshead his Bay branch. “You can’t play with Mangames, you can’t just close them, go home and tell your wife your troubles. Let’s go!” As Georgia Brown pointed out in her review for The Village Voice, “In the industry lexicon, the magic verb is close upWhen sad bag salesman Aaronoff complains that he can’t close anymore, he’s confessing impotence.
“They’re sitting there waiting to give you the money. Will you take it?” increase. “you Man Enough to take it? Director James Foley cuts to a steamy close-up of a lemon. All of his subsequent actions can be attributed to, and possibly are blamed for, that moment of his disastrous public humiliation. As if to somehow make the accusation clearer, Blake brandishes a pair of orbs hanging on a string and announces, “I need a brass ball to sell real estate,” before putting it back in his briefcase. increase.
Such haze rituals are commonplace among the performative savages of Reservoir Dogs, and are filled with male bonding rituals. Play with dozens, chew fat over coffee and beer, spin tall tales about crime and sex, and, of course, break into dramatic fistfights with the slightest provocation. But the details of Tarantino’s men—their identical suits, color-coded pseudonyms, their hidden identities—underscore the impersonality of expected behavior, and as salesmen in “Glengarry,” they are interchangeable and powerless.