Headscratchers / Glengarry Glen Ross

• Why was Williamson so nervous about Roma re-closing the smaller deals?
  • Williamson is a petty tyrant who enjoys his position of superiority over his salesmen. Roma's sales effectively place him outside Williamson's control, and Roma eventually threatens to get Williamson fired.
  • I didn't get the impression that he's nervous. Roma is enraged that he'd have to re-close the deals, and Williamson merely informs him that the bigwigs are going to do it for him to prevent lost revenue. It's obviously a big deal, so everyone is on edge.
  • Going back to a customer who may be having second thoughts and asking them to re-sign is inherently risky. He/she may try to renegotiate the price or decline to sign entirely. In addition, it makes the company look unprofessional and fly-by-night (which isn't far from the truth).
• Ricky sells land in the Glengarry Islands to Lingk, but all the other salesmen are trying to sell Rio Rancho. Why is Ricky selling Glengarry without using Glengarry leads?
  • Ricky is a cocky hotshot who's been on a winning streak and wants to push his luck as far as he can go. He starts talking to Lingk and thinks, "Fuck it, this sucker's got a pile of money and probably could be willing to part with it. Who cares if he's not on the list of people who are all but guaranteed to buy? I'm Richard fuckin' Roma, I can do anything."
    • What has he lost if Lingk says No? It's not like Lingk was on the list of leads.
  • Because he's a good enough salesman that he doesn't need the leads. He sells Glengarry to Lingk with nothing but his sales patter and the brochure.
• When Moss claims to Aaronow that by learning about his burglary plan, he is an accessory before the fact, is he telling the truth, or is he just bluffing to bully him into going through with it?
  • If Aaronow doesn't turn Moss in then yes, he is legally culpable and could be charged since he knew about it and did nothing. What he's charged with and how serious it is would depend on a lot of factors, but Moss is correct. Of course, what that means is that Aaronow has a lot of incentive to turn Moss in to protect himself, so Moss bringing it up isn't particularly smart of him.
    • Aaronow could always deny Moss had said anything to him about a break-in. It would be one man's word against another's with absolutely nothing implicating Aaronow.
    • Actually, Aaronow is under no obligation to report a crime despite his knowledge of it as no such law exists within US jurisdiction. He would however be culpable if he had accepted a bribe from Moss in exchange for silence.
    • I'm not familiar with what the law actually says on this point. The film/play does contain legal inaccuracies (see the section on Artistic License on the main page), and if it's true that Aaronow was under no obligation to report what Moss told him he'd planned to do, Mamet may or may not have been aware of that fact. What is clear, however, is that Aaronow likely believes he could be held liable, which is why he didn't tell the detective anything, and why he was so nervous before and after the interview.
  • Of course, Aaronow could just claim that he didn’t think Moss would go through with his plan and that it was just alcohol-lubricated bluster and big-talk, and absolutely no one can prove otherwise; as noted it is, after all, just Moss's word against his. He also had every right not to say anything to the police without a lawyer present. At the end, he doesn't seem all that worried; most likely, he'll get off free or with a slap on the wrist. It's doubtful Mitch and Murray will even fire him, since he's the only salesman they have now who isn't facing serious legal problems. If they do can him, he may well be better off.
• Why does Shelly's accidentally blurting out the truth to Williamson matter? The cop didn't hear the conversation. If Williamson tells the cop about it, Shelly can just lie and deny the conversation happened (and we know he's a practiced liar). Of course it's possible Shelly was going to get caught anyway due to the evidence and a lack of alibi, but the play and film seem to imply that his accidental confession to Williamson is what blows the whole thing open, that if he'd only kept his mouth shut he'd have gotten away with it.
  • Shelly might not get jailed in the end (regardless of whether there's evidence or not, he knows way too much about the company's inner dealings for actually prosecuting him being a reasonable option for the company bosses), but sure as hell he'll be booted out of the company, and it's implied that he's unlikely to be able to find any other decently paid job.
    • Interesting theory, but it still doesn't answer my question.
    • It matters because nobody was even suspecting Shelly. He'd just closed a big deal, so why would he break into the office? Based on the post-interview reactions of the employees, the cops strongly suspected Moss (correctly) and Aaronow (incorrectly) as the culprits, but hadn't given Shelly any thought. Remember that Aaronow and Moss both came out of Williamson's office extremely upset about being treated like criminals, but Shelly and Roma left the same room calm and relaxed, indicating they'd received nothing more than token questioning. Shelly was in the clear UNTIL he blabbed that he knew about the contract. As soon as Williamson told the detective, the police would start seriously looking at Shelly; sometimes, that's all it takes.
  • Look at it this way: Williamson and the Detective looking desperately for clues are sharks. Shelly's slip is a few drops of blood.
  • Not to mention that Levene would probably be fired even if the police couldn't nail him for the crime. If Williamson passed on their conversation to the bosses at Mitch And Murray, he'd have the perfect excuse to fire Levene. Even if he didn't pass the conversation on, Williamson would still have extra motivation to fire Levene, and another perfect excuse to do it once the Nyborgs' $82,000 cheque bounces.
• Roma doesn't know that Williamson lied about cashing Lingk's check and the only plausible witness to this is Levene. If Lingk's suit does happen then - assuming Levene is arrested and can't testify - wouldn't Williamson have to cash it after the fact, thus incriminating himself as lawyers from all sides would compare dates?
• If it was common knowledge that the crazy couple who bought 8 units were insane - why are they still being passed to the salesmen as leads?
  • My interpretation is that Williamson was deliberately trying to sabotage Shelly, whom he despised.
  • Since the Rio Rancho leads were basically worthless, it seems like Mitch and Murray were trying to sabotage the entire office and fire everyone for "poor performance", but send in Alec Baldwin's character first to try to encourage the employees to quit (aka, Constructive Dismissal) so the company doesn't have to pay unemployment (in most states, "poor performance" isn't a disqualifier for unemployment).
• Is Roma in any trouble due to Williamson spilling false beans to protect the Lingk sale? Is Williamson? Furthermore, in the real world, would Williamson be in trouble if Roma went over his head in the chain of command to complaint about Williamson's clumsiness?
  • Hard to say. Williamson blowing a big deal is never good, but we don't know Mitch & Murray's power structure or how Williamson is thought of. If they like Williamson, they might try to mollify Roma by upping his percentage for a few months or somesuch. If they don't like Williamson, Roma complaining about him could get Williamson fired. Remember that earlier, Levene was bragging that once upon a time, he could have gotten Williamson fired immediately just by calling the main office and saying Williamson wasn't treating him well.
• The Glengarry leads are supposedly the "good" leads, but they're gathering dust while the salesmen are expected to work with crap like the Rio Rancho leads. If the salesmen are right about their leads being garbage, is the real problem that Mitch and Murray are Incompetence, Inc. and they suck at allocating their resources?
  • Let's think this through. We know the real estate being sold is almost uniformly garbage, and therefore a "good lead" would presumably mean a contact who's been established as an easy mark. The "weak leads" the salesmen complain about are along the lines of what we see Shelly facing in that early scene where the wife expresses interest until the husband quickly shuts it down. (That's also more or less the situation Roma runs into with Lingk—with the genders reversed—although that wasn't from a lead.) In other words, they're from people who may have tentatively expressed interest but who are unlikely to follow through, because either they get second thoughts on their own or a family member talks sense into them. The salesmen are nonetheless expected to be able to finesse these skeptical potential customers into buying, on the assumption that their only limitations are how creatively ruthless and deceptive they're willing to be. But given that even Roma (supposedly the ace) complains about weak leads, as well as the fact that the Lingk sale is handled by the skin of his teeth (a lot of viewers overlook the fact that he was on the brink of failure even before Williamson opened his trap and ruined it all), it's questionable whether this assumption is accurate. The suspicion that their job is not the meritocracy Mitch & Murray is claiming is one of the central themes of the story.
  • Given how hesitant (Lingk) or out to lunch (the Nyborgs) many of the Rio Rancho leads are, could even Blake make $15,000 off them the way he claims at the start of the movie? If he's such a swaggering, "I'm so much better than you" asshole, what kind of sales tactics would he employ?
    • See Misaimed Fandom at the YMMV page. In all probability, Blake's speech is taken at face value to a much greater degree than it was intended by the filmmakers.
    • Yes, and I think it says something that so many viewers take Blake's boasts at face value. Everyone knows he's an asshole, but a lot of viewers come away thinking he at least knows what he's talking about, which is questionable for the above reasons. In a way, it illustrates how easily even cynical people can get drawn in by blustery self-confidence.
    • When Blake bragged about how he could make $15,000 off the leads they had, there's a good chance that any one of the salesmen could have destroyed Blake with two words: "Do it." Imagine Blake going out with, say, Shelley, first dealing with Larry Spannel (who would have thrown him out faster than he showed Shelley the door), then making a sale to the Nyborgs then finding out the sale was worthless. Blake would have had to back down from his claim, or he'd have to try and prove he could be the ultra-salesman he claimed to be... and either way, he would be humiliated. Unfortunately, Shelley, Aaronow, and Moss have been beaten down to where they won't fight back.
    • The problem with that scenario is that they weren't in any position to call Blake's bluff. He had no obligations to stay there any longer than he did, much less to spend an entire night demonstrating his prowess as a salesman to them. If any of them questioned him further, he'd probably have just flaunted more of his material possessions as proof of his success, and there wouldn't be much they could do to counter him.

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