STORY OF THE SHOT
Always. Be. Closing.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS’ most famous scene isn’t in
Glengarry Glen Ross. Which must have baffled anyone who, having seen James Foley’s adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer-winning piece, ever picked up the original play, about a group of embattled real estate salesmen, and turned to the opening scene. The one where a ball-busting executive called Blake shows up to deliver an ultimatum that sets the plot, involving the theft of prime leads, in motion: step up or ship out.
They’d be baffled because they wouldn’t find that scene. It was written specifically for the movie by Mamet because, as Baldwin recalls, “There wasn’t enough of an incentive for these guys to commit a crime.” It’s a good thing Mamet did, because it’s one of the most iconic speeches in modern American cinema, filled with lines that have been quoted and parodied (including, on a
Saturday Night Live episode about Santa’s elves, by Baldwin himself ) ad infinitum. “My name? Fuck you, that’s my name.” “Coffee is for closers.” “Third prize is you’re fired.” “A B C — always be closing”. It’s a glorious study and takedown of toxic masculinity, before that even had a name.
It all hinges on Baldwin, who came in for two days towards the end of the shoot and knocked it out of the park. As Blake, he is electrifying and terrifying as he delivers an almighty bollocking to some of America’s finest actors (Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris). A dynamic that, apparently, was echoed off-camera. “Everybody was very friendly except the week that Alec Baldwin was there,” says Foley. “They isolated him and treated him like he didn’t exist. They were responding to him as if he was Blake, this alpha male who had arrived on their set.” Baldwin himself admits that “those guys certainly didn’t want to hang out with me at the coffee truck”.
Baldwin had, at one point, been in contention to play Ricky Roma, if Al Pacino passed. Instead, “at the 11th hour”, Blake came his way. It was clearly a peach of a part, but he felt daunted. “I felt that people might say, ‘What the hell is this scene doing in this play that people love?’” he says. “Later on, people felt it did work, but going into it I was kind of concerned.”
Given confidence by Foley to treat the speech like “you are Patton, and you’re going to go in and slap these snivelling cowards who don’t know how to get the job done”, Baldwin’s delivery means the scene is now perhaps more famous than its parent film. One unexpected side effect, though, has been the speech’s adoption by people wilfully misreading the character and text, and, as with Gordon Gekko, saluting the achievements of a massive prick. “I remember seeing it had five million hits on Youtube,” says Foley. “It’s almost as if they’re seeing it from the point of view of Blake, beating these guys down. But that’s okay. Interestingly enough, the French title was ‘The Americans’. That put it into context.” It’s this embrace of Blake’s ideals, or lack thereof, that could point to a wider malaise; one that led, ultimately, to Trump becoming President. Still, at least that’s kept Alec Baldwin in work.