Great moments in Glengarry Glen Ross

As you know, Glengarry Glen Ross is the greatest movie ever made. Everything about it, from the cast to the set design to the cinematography, is God tier filmmaking. Scarcely a minute goes by without a quotable line, and it's in the rare category of movies I can watch over and over, along with The Shining, Starship Troopers, and Event Horizon.

Today, however, I draw your attention to some of the small things that make this the greatest movie ever. I will spoil the ending of the movie and I advise you not to read this unless you have watched it several times.

"Have you made your decision for Christ?"

Alec Baldwin's speech is the most famous part of the movie, and this is the best part of it. The ever circling camera comes in to a low angle closeup and he gets a manic gleam in his eye as he delivers this line that comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It casts the rest of the speech in the terms of a revival preacher or some shit, making the whole thing even better than it ever was.

Some people think the line was supposed to be "for Christ's sake" or something like that, but it's so much better this way, like at any moment he's going to reach into the case he keeps his brass balls in and whip out a fucking snake.

Alec Baldwin holds the new leads with his fingertips

I love how Baldwin holds the leads like they're so precious he doesn't want to smudge them or something. He's holding them so daintily here while he bitches everyone out for their alleged incompetence, and then he hands them over his shoulder to Williamson, who doesn't even give a shit. This is something a lot of people don't appreciate about the film: Alec Baldwin is fucking insane, and is therefore perfectly cast in the role of Fuck You.

Levene's shoulder mount thing for his phone

While everyone else tends to lean forward on the phone, Levene likes to sit back and play with his glasses with both hands, letting this shoulder mounted clip hang onto the phone for him. This is the kind of attention to detail you don't get in most films, least of all mine. I have no idea if this was a common thing back in the golden era of the 1990s, when men were men and cellphones were the size of midgets, but it is awesome and I want to be a down-on-my-luck salesman in the early 90s just so I can have one.

The good cop

The main cop character is obviously the bad cop - he tries to boss everyone in the office around, and his partner (who has no lines) sits on the side of the office with Moss, who disregards him entirely. If there were only one cop it wouldn't be nearly as funny, but the fact that our main guy is the bad cop and is so totally ineffectual is brilliant.

"Anybody talks to this asshole is a fuckin' asshole"

In a movie so full of eloquent one-liners that make Shakespeare sound like a /b/tard, this is a hilarious little moment of reality where Moss can't think of another word for "asshole", so he says it twice. Hey, coming up with Mamet-esque dialogue all day is tiring work.

Roma sticks his gum under the desk like a kid

This is another endearing little moment when Roma sees Lingk coming and quickly makes up a story to throw him off. He realises he's been chewing gum and quickly sticks it under his desk. I like to think this sort of situation comes up every other day and the underside of his desk is covered in gum. I like the association with school days that this image conjures up, because, as we know, Roma is the John Bender of this movie.

"You saw my book!"

In the scene where Roma is bullshitting Lingk to get his dubious sale to stick, this little detail adds a lot to the improvisatory nature of his spiel. He's trying to tell Lingk he's too busy to speak to him right now, so he flashes a diary, which on closer inspection is near empty. It only has two lines written in it. If Lingk weren't such a pussy he could totally call Roma out on this, but he's the Jeb Bush of this film, so he doesn't.

Williamson chews gum

I like how Williamson chews gum at the end of the movie. Roma famously tells Moss "let me buy you a pack of gum, I'll show you how to chew it". I like to think Williamson chews gum because Roma already bullied him to tears over it. Williamson clearly pounces on the opportunity to fuck Levene at the end because every minute of every day of his life is spent being someone else's bitch.

I want to see a sequel where the two remaining salesmen on the team, Roma and Aaronow, give Williamson shit for two hours. Maybe Levene was right when he said Williamson would miss him. Or maybe I'm reading too much into the gum. Then again, people said that about Twin Peaks.

Neon Maniacs!

Neon Maniacs seems like it was adapted from, or meant to spawn, a merchandising franchise like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I say this because the first scene has a fisherman discover some neat-looking trading cards before getting kilt, and this is never mentioned again and has no impact on the story. His killers never leave the trading cards for anybody else to find, so it's not like it's a calling card, just an ad for something that never existed. Such is the audacity of Neon Maniacs.

Don't lie, you want these.

The movie stars such Hollywood legends as Leilani Sarelle (Basic Instinct) and Clyde Hayes (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter), so no one. Final Girl is minding her own business hanging out with the Scooby Doo gang when they all get brutally lynched by Moonman and his crew:

I guess they're the neon maniacs of the title, even though there's nothing neon about them and they're LARPers, not maniacs. They have a caveman, a samurai, an Indian, a robot, and a one-eyed lizard dog. They all live together underneath the Golden Gate bridge, which I'm sure you'll agree would make a much better sitcom than it does a horror movie.

In fact the best parts of the movie involve the LARPers trying to do mundane things like go through a turnstile. The Indian and caveman jump it, the samurai tries to chop it with his sword, and the robot zaps it with electricity that makes it spin. I wish the whole movie was like this, with them trying to figure out self checkout machines and parking meters.

I like this guy who clearly doesn't get paid enough to deal with this shit.

So for reasons that are never explained, the samurai, Indian, caveman et al take to stalking Final Girl. With her friends all dead, she starts hanging out with some sitcom guy who wants to get into her pants, and a budget Audrey Hepburn, who I guess is meant to be a goth girl or something.

The movie gleefully and wantonly sheds details and whole plotlines as it grows bored with them, which makes it seem like a first draft written by an ADD kid. Sitcom Guy has a dog in the early scenes which disappears completely from the movie, and Audrey is making a cheap horror movie about vampires which she seems to just forget about. Final Girl has a dream about raining blood that never affects anything either. And there's a cop character we keep cutting back to as he contemplates doing something, but never does.

Sitcom Guy and Final Girl: a love for the ages.

Audrey's oversized baseball cap.

The LARPers are an endearingly uncoordinated enemy for our forgetful heroes. They attack them as a group on the train, with the robot killing the driver and taking over from him. When our heroes flee from the train and hop on a bus instead, the Neon LARPers follow them, but they forget to tell the robot, and we cut back to him merrily plowing along in his train like the most contented autist you ever saw.

Clickety clack, clickety clack.

Audrey discovers that the Maniacs are kilt by water, like the Wicked Witch of the West, so she hatches a scheme to lure them to the Battle of the Bands and shoot water pistols at them (yes). This only sort-of works, but given how stupid an idea it was, we'll call it a success.

The gang then run off to the cop guy and tell him the whole story, offering no evidence, and he OKs them to ride along with the entire police department to check underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. People must just fuck with this guy all day long: "hey, I saw Bigfoot. Can I take a couple squad cars out to check the woods?" "Sure, why not. It's not like I do anything anyway."

"Alright, I'll go, but this better not be bullshit like the last seven times."

The movie ends with a great sequel hook, but tragically, and horribly unfairly, none was ever made because no one gives a crap about the Neon Maniacs. I think that's a shame, because there's more creativity and quality in the costumes, and originality in the premise, of this film than in entire modern franchises (Taken, Twilight, Paranormal Activity, etc.) and you have to credit the initiative of monsters who create their own merchandise in-universe. Imagine how much more respect you'd have for Jason if he came up with his hockey mask hamburgers by himself.

I think you can agree it's time we brought back Neon Maniacs.