I also saw Boiler Room for the first time too. I used to work in a boiler room, two of them actually, back in the early 1990's. In fact, my first day on the job was the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. The movie was pretty realistic too, they obviously did their homework. The interview scene wasn't very good though, because even boiler rooms accept new hires who already have a license. They want to get as many bodies in the door, hired and on the phone quickly as possible. I already had my license when I was hired at my second boiler room. (BTW, the person who hired me at that particular boiler room is known by many of you here. He's in prison right now). The way the firm owner was treated like a diety was realistic too. The branch manager at my second firm was very respected and feared. He had worked his way up and ruled with an iron fist, but he was also encouraging. His tailor sucked though, his suits fit him very funny. His pants looked like stretch pants around the thighs, even though he had skinny legs. The way they partied was realistic too, which was one of the reasons I never partied with anyone in the office. They were a bunch of out of control hoodlums. One guy lost his clothes at a party after skinny dipping in a pool and drove home in his t-top corvette naked. he was sick for a month. When Michael, the owner, announced the top three sales people and their numbers, the numbers were not realistic for a boiler room type operation, not even if he was announcing gross commisions, which he probably was. The second firm I worked with had a penny stock go from 5 to 45 in 1991 while the Dow was breaking above 3000. The top producer in that firm had a month where he earned $62,000, which was a gross of $124K, and nobody was close to him ever. It was a firm record. In the movie, he was bandying numbers above 300K. And to help put that in further context, in my first boiler room during the Saddam Selloff, the top producer was the branch manager earning $14K a month with overrides, the top broker was making $9K a month, and all of us newbies were earning nothing. We couldn't open a single account at that time. OK, so remember when I said you guys will know who hired me at my second boiler room? He was a lot like the boisterous brokers you saw in the movie. Tough talking, swaggering, writing big business. Soon after I was hired, the office started a mentor program where senior brokers were going to mentor the newer brokers. He was assigned to be my mentor, and everyone in the office came by to congratulate me because he was the best. But he never had time to mentor me because he was always handling compliance problems. You know him as Anthony Pacific, his real name was of course Tony Elgindy. He used to drive a gold corvette with the license plate STOKGOD.
Glengarry GlenRoss...... is an awesome film..... the fact that it takes place mainly at night, yet the colors are so vivid and sharp. Especially when played through a blue ray player. Any film that has no special effects, no car chases, no explosions.... just people talking.... yet it kept me on the edge of my seat.... this movie is required viewing for people going into real estate. I though every actor was superb in this...... Al Pachino was in top form.... Alen Arkin...... Baldwin..... ...but to me the best came from "the machine" Levene , Jack Lemon.... his best performance. Kevin Spacey wasnt as good as the others... to me.... but maybe because every one was so brilliant. I think Baldwins speech in the film could be applied to trading also. I consider myself a film buff.... my collection of films go all the way back to the silent era, with the earliest being the 1915 classic "Birth of a Nation" If I could only pick 10 movies from my collection, Glengary GlenRoss easily makes the list !
"Friday", "Next Friday" and "Friday After Next" some funny ass movies "You got knocked the hell out!"
WORD, "Barbershop!" funny ass sh^t. anything Icecube and Mike Epps do is ok with me Mike is one funny mother!
What do you think is the most emotional scene in ANY movie of ALL time??? My vote goes to the very last scene in the 1932 classic "City Lights", when the formally blind girl gives the tramp (Charlie Chaplin) a flower and a coin. To this day i dont think there has ever been a scene in the history of cinema that surpasses this one. Comments???
"In Bruges." Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell. Amazing. The hit man genre as never done before. Very much worth the rental.
Most emotional scene ever? Too hard to answer. Scenes where a beloved character dies are the most emotional for me. I never saw the play Rent on stage, but I bought the DVD. I don't like musicals, (even though I LOVE the music in them), and I didn't like this one very much either. But, the scene where Angel finally succumbed to AIDS and died was too much for me to bear. I bawled almost uncontrollably. The are two scenes in Brokeback Mountain that were emotionally overwhelming too. In the scene where Ennis Del Mar goes to Jack Twist's house to collect some personal belongins after his death, he discovers the shirt in Jack's closet that he thought he had lost on the moutain all those years ago. Then later in the last scene of the movie when Ennis' daughter asks him to come to her wedding. She leaves after he accepts, and then he opens his closet and there he has that shirt with letters and momentos of their relationship. I saw this movie in a theater during the day so it was not very crowded. But none of us in that theater, and I mean none of us, was able to get out of our chairs for at least five minutes. I sat there probably ten minutes or more, and I didn't get over the depression that movie gave me for days. To this day, I can not watch it again.