3-Minute Intro: Glengarry Glen Ross
April 30, 2008 8:35 pm 3-Minute Intros, DramasScreened: April 29, 2008
Format: DVD - Lions Gate (2002)
Selected By: Roland
James Foley’s 1992 film adaptation of David Mamet’s modern theatrical landmark, Glengarry Glenn Ross, is a bit of legend, a case study in uncompromising, prestige filmmaking outside the studio system. The play shocked and tantalized prospective filmmakers and actors following its 1984 premiere, but the film adaptation languished in development hell for years before the final cast and crew were settled and a slim budget was painstakingly scraped together. Glengarry remains the most noteworthy feature film directed by Foley. While his steady, emphatic hand keeps the film humming along, the strength of Glengarry rests on the source material, and on a plethora of searing performances.
Chicago native Mamet caught critics’ attention with his early off-Broadway plays, including American Buffalo, but it was Glengarry Glen Ross that secured him a place in the modern American theater canon and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The play, set over two days in a high-pressure Chicago real estate office, features seminal Mamet hallmarks, including realistic, rough-hewn dialogue peppered with foul language. (The cast of the film famously referred to their production as Death of Fucking Salesman.) The play’s discomfiting themes and notorious obscenity hindered its translation to the screen for over a decade. In the end, Mamet himself penned the adaptation, and many cast members took significant pay cuts for the opportunity to appear in the film.
And what a cast it is. Glengarry boasts one the most impressive dramatic ensembles of the past fifty years. Any member could and has held together a feature film with his own talents: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, and Alec Baldwin, in a role Mamet added to the script specifically for him. Pacino delivers a vicious portrayal that taps into the raw elements of his familiar screen persona. The real standout, however, is Lemmon, who in the autumn of career delivers one of his most painful and humane performances, walking away with the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. Working from the raw material of Mamet’s absorbing lines, Glengarry Glenn Ross’ performers sculpt a portrait of despairing masculinity, an American Dream that is choking on contempt, duplicity, and delusion.
