In an interview on Tom Peters’ website, David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web and coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, offers the following on Weblogs:
“If you browse randomly through these 500,000 to a million Weblogs, most of them that you come across will be uninteresting to you. But, so what? It’s not that everybody on the Web is famous for 15 minutes. It’s that everybody on the Web is famous to 15 people.”
“Sally was looking at a map now and said to the red-haired agent, “We’re on Sixty-four, right? Because if we’re on Forty-four, we’ll wind up down in Bumfuck, Missouri, and there’s no way back.”
From John Sandford’s latest novel, Mortal Prey. Most of the story takes place in St. Louis and I mention it here for my friends to live or lived there.
I had my 54th birthday a week or so back and this line (from Ridley Scott’s 1982 scil-fi classic, Blade Runner) kept running through my head. Replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) goes to see Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), the scientist that “designed” the not-quite-human Roy. Tyrell attempts to comfort Roy:
“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.”
But Roy’s not having any of it and proceeds to poke Tyrell’s eyes out. As Roy observes,
“It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker”
…but I thought he handled himself pretty well. He came for some answers –if not a solution to his problem– and he was damn well gonna get them.
The replicants of Blade Runner only got four years (I think Sean Young’s character got more than that) but it wasn’t so much how many years they got as that they knew when they were going to die. Maybe in the end, Pris (played by Daryl Hannah) got it right:
“Then we’re stupid and we’ll die.”
We are and we will.
“When you die, it is said you see your whole life. But you don’t see it minute by minute, like a speeded-up film. It’s like everything you ever did in all your days was a brushstroke, and now you see the whole painting all at once.”
— Everybody Dies, Lawrence Block
A great “sales” scene from Boiler Room (2000), written and directed by Ben Younger and staring Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Affleck, Scott Caan, Vin Diesel and Nia Long. The movie was just so-so, but the scene in which Ben Affleck’s character (Jim Young) explains things to a bunch of trainees in a small-time brokerage house is… chilling.
Jim Young: “Goddammit, you fuckin’ guys. I’m gonna keep this short, okay? You passed your sevens over a month ago. Seth’s the only one that’s opened the necessary forty accounts for his team leader. When I was a junior broker I did it in 26 days. Okay? You’re not sendin’ out press packets anymore. None of this Debbie the Time Life operator bullshit. So get on the phones, it’s time to get to work. Get off your ass! Move around. Motion creates emotion. I remember one time I had this guy call me up, wanted to pitch me, right? Wanted to sell me stock. So I let him. I got every fuckin rebuttal outta this guy, kept him on the phone for an hour and a half. Towards the end I started askin him buying questions, like what’s the firm minimum? That’s a buying question, right there that guys gotta take me down. It’s not like I asked him, what’s your 800 number, that’s fuckoff question. I was givin him a run and he blew it. Okay? To a question like what is the firm minimum, the answer is zero. You don’t like the idea, don’t pick up a single share. But this putz is tellin me you know, uhh, 100 shares? Wrong answer! No! You have to be closing all the time. And be aggressive, learn how to push! Talk to ’em. Ask ’em questions… ask ’em rhetorical questions, it doesn’t matter, anything, just get a yes out of ’em. If you’re drowning and I throw you a life jacket would you grab it? Yes! Good. Pick up 200 shares I won’t let you down. Ask them how they’d like to see thirty, forty percent returns. What are they gonna say, no? Fuck you? I don’t wanna see those returns. Stop laughing, it’s not funny. If you can’t learn how to close, you better start thinkin about another career. And I am deadly serious about that. Dead fuckin serious. And have your rebuttals ready, guy says call me tommorrow? Bullshit! Somebody tells you th-they money problems about buyin 200 shares is lying to you. You know what I say to that? I say, hey look, man, tell me you don’t like my firm, tell me you don’t like my idea, tell me you don’t like my fuckin neck tie, but don’t tell me you can’t put together 2,500 bucks. And there is no such thing as a no-sell call. A sell is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock, or he sells you on a reason he can’t. Either way, a sell is made. The only question is: who’s gonna close? You or him?! Now be relentless. That’s it, I’m done.”
Kind of makes me wonder if Ben Younger liked the Glengarry Glen Ross scene as much as I did.
“If you wear makeup or someone hands you a stuffed animal after you compete, it’s not a sport.” — Sarah Maguffee (after watching Olympic ice skating event)
In thirty years I’ve been in on or part of countless sales meetings, sales seminars and sales calls. But David Mamet boiled it all down to one great scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s the “Always Be Closing, Always Be A Closer” scene in which Blake (Alec Baldwin) is confronting the employees of a tough Chicago real-estate office, Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon), Ed Moss (Ed Harris) and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) while their unsympathetic supervisor John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) looks on. If you would like, this monologue I’m sure can be edited into one incredibly long one, if you want to take out the lines from the other actors.
Blake: Let me have your attention for a moment! So you’re talking about what? You’re talking about…(puts out his cigarette)…bitching about that sale you shot, some son of a bitch that doesn’t want to buy, somebody that doesn’t want what you’re selling, some broad you’re trying to screw and so forth. Let’s talk about something important. Are they all here? Continue reading
Let’s not argue about whether True Romance (1993) is the best movie of the past twenty years. Not many people would agree with me on that. But the scene between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken is –without a doubt– the best scene in a movie in the last twenty years . I wish I could be more flexible on this point but it just the best acting (and reacting) by two great actors in the last couple of decades.
The movie stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, but includes small but wonderful performances by Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson and James Gandolfini.
The movie was directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game and others). Quinton Tarantino wrote most of the movie but apparently got a couple of scenes from Roger Avary who –according to the Internet Movie Database– met Quentin Tarantino at a video store they both worked at in the 1980’s. I really think this was Tarantino at his best (the movie, not the video store).
Favorite quotes:
[In the Night Club after Drexel has beaten Clarence.]
Drexel Spivey: He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain’t white boy day, is it?
Marty: No man, It ain’t white boy day.
Vincenzo Coccotti: The Anti-Christ. You get me in a vendetta kind of mood, you tell the angels in heaven you never seen evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you. My name is Vincent Coccotti.
Alabama: If you gave me a million years to ponder, I would’ve never guessed that true romance and Detroit would ever go together.
But you have to see and hear this great cast deliver these great lines and scenes. Buy the DVD.
“They’re men with jobs, Jerry! They wear suits and ties… they’re married… they have secretaries!” — George to Jerry while waiting to pitch their sitcom idea to NBC TV executives. (The Pitch, 1992)
I recently read Carl Hiaasen’s new novel, Basket Case. While I don’t share his passion for the environment, I do love it when he rants about the state of journalism. I hope he doesn’t mind my sharinging a few of this thoughts here.
“Only two types of journalists choose to stay at a paper that’s being gutted by Wall Street whorehoppers. One faction is comprised of editors and reporters whose skills are so marginal that they’re lucky to be employed, and they know it. Unencumbered by any sense of duty to the readers, they’re pleased to forgo the pursuit of actual news in order to cut expenses and score points with the suits. These fakers are easy to pick out in a bustling city newsroom: they’re at their best when arranging and attending pointless meetings, and at their skittish, indecisive worst under the heat of a looming deadline. Stylistically they strive for brevity and froth, shirking from stories that demand depth or deliberation, stories that might rattle a few cages and raise a little hell and ultimately change some poor citizen’s life for the better. This breed of editors and reporters is genetically unequipped to cope with that ranting phone call from the mayor, that wrath-of-God letter from the libel lawyer or that reproachful memo from the company bean counters. These are journalists who want peace and quiet and no surprises, thank you. They want their newsroom to be as civil, smooth-humming and friendly as a bank lobby. They’re thrilled when the telephones don’t ring and their computers tell them they don’t have e-mail. The less there is to do, the slimmer the odds of them screwing up. They dream of a day when hard news is no longer allowed to interfere with putting out profitable newspapers.
The other journalists who remain at slow-strangling dailies are those too spiteful or stubborn to quit. Somehow their talent and resourcefulness continue to shine, no matter how desultory or beaten down they might appear. These are the canny, grind-it-out pros who give our deliquescing little journal what pluck and dash it has left. They have no corporate ambitions, and hold a crusty, subversive loyalty to the notion that newspapers exist to serve and inform, period. They couldn’t tell you where the company’s stock closed yesterday on the Dow Jones, because they don’t care. Once upon a time they were the blood and soul of the newsroom, these prickly, disrespecting, shit-stirring bastards, and their presence was the main reason that bright kids lined up for summer internships.”