Glengarry Glen Ross

In the review of the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" in Maryland Live, the actor Alec Baldwin was identified incorrectly as Alex Baldwin.The Sun regrets the errors.You have to know the territory and David Mamet knows iwell: self-doubt, desperation, flaming greed, hunger, terror, and, finally, the will to close in for the kill. The hunter-gatherer's operative mind-set, be he a cave man stalking a mammoth, a Marine sniper stalking an enemy general, or a salesmanstalking a recalcitrant victim.Thus the real estate office of his "Glengarry Glen Ross" is less a warren of desks and files than some sort of primal glade.

What a great weekend: HBO sent a screener for "Phil Spector," a made-for-TV movie about the legendary music producer, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. Barry Levinson is the executive producer, with David Mamet as writer and director. That enough talent for you? David Mamet, whose "Glengarry Glen Ross" is made of the same fine angry American genius as Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," and he's writing and directing a Sunday-night made-for-television movie on HBO. Talk to me some more about how TV dumbs down the culture.

"Glengarry Glen Ross" sounds like lyric poetry, but in David Mamet's play of that name, it refers to a questionable parcel of land being sold by an even more questionable parcel of real estate swindlers.Under Suzanne Pratt's direction, Theatre Hopkins will produce this 1983 play about the underbelly of the real estate business for five weekends beginning tomorrow.Theatre Hopkins performs in the Merrick Barn on the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University. Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2: 15 p.m. Sundays, with one Sunday evening performance at 7: 30 p.m. on May 12, the final night of the run. Tickets are $10 and $12. Call (410)

I f you are not watching TNT's new drama, "Men of a Certain Age," you are missing weekly television's finest actor in one of the medium's most socially relevant roles of the season. I am talking about Andre Braugher as Owen Thoreau Jr., a middle-age Chevrolet salesman and father of three working for his dad's auto dealership, where he has become one of the staff's weakest performers. Talk about a TV series working the same thematic turf as Arthur Miller's American classic, "Death of Salesman."

What a great weekend: HBO sent a screener for "Phil Spector," a made-for-TV movie about the legendary music producer, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. Barry Levinson is the executive producer, with David Mamet as writer and director. That enough talent for you? David Mamet, whose "Glengarry Glen Ross" is made of the same fine angry American genius as Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," and he's writing and directing a Sunday-night made-for-television movie on HBO. Talk to me some more about how TV dumbs down the culture.

THERE'S a new book out taking the hide off Hollywood. Sex and violence are saturating screens, video as well as silver. You know it. I know it. We all hate it.But we can't escape, can we? And do you know who's to blame? Hollywood. The cultural elite. Those filthy swine.See that? Do you think I would have dreamed of using the words "filthy swine" in a family newspaper in the old days?Hear a personal tale which speaks of the degradation to which I have been brought by these mongers of sex and violence:It was a glorious October day. "Let us," said my wife, "take a drive through Vermont and Canada to see the autumn-tinted foliage."

The real-estate salesmen of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" spew venom the way a volcano spits out molten rock, and the foul discharge overruns everyone in sight.Audiences have been stunned by the noxious language and the unsavory methods of Mr. Mamet's land-peddlers, who turned up first in his award-winning 1983 play and more recently in the film version, which opened nationwide in October.Yet a stench has surrounded salesmen in America's popular culture almost as long as that culture has existed.

The great film critic Robert Warshow once observed that the most purely American movies were about cowboys and gangsters: men with guns. True enough, but there's at least some evidence of a minor counter-tradition worth considering: the tradition of men with spiels.Yakkers, con men, voluble, risible chums, they're nearly identical: Your best friend whom you never saw before, he wants to make you laugh or he wants to take your money (same thing, really); basically, he just wants to control you and have his way with you. That is, if the despair doesn't kill him first.

An article about the Oscar nominations in yesterday's editions said that Al Pacino was the first male to win a nomination in both acting and supporting acting categories. However, in 1944 Barry Fitzgerald received nominations in the acting and supporting acting categories for the same role in "Going My Way." That practice has subsequently been disallowed by the Academy.Now it can be told.The big news at yesterday's 65th annual Academy Award announcements wasn't the expected triumphs of "Howards End" and "Unforgiven," which received nine nominations apiece, but the outing of Jaye Davidson, who played the enigmatic Dil in Neil Jordan's "The Crying Game."

TORONTO -- When Toronto and Montreal, the sibling rivals of Canadian cities, both started film festivals within a year of each other in the mid-1970s, all the odds for lasting success seemed to favor Montreal. That city was exciting and romantic, possessed of both European sophistication and the glamour of a French-speaking population, while Toronto was, well, Toronto.While the Montreal festival has done fine, thank you very much, it pales before the 335-film colossus that is Toronto. Which is nothing to be ashamed of, because, though they don't like to hear this in Los Angeles, San Francisco and especially New York, this city's Festival of Festivals, which opened over the weekend, has in fact become the pre-eminent film showcase on the entire North American continent, the one to go to if you're only going to one.Family reunionLiving up to its name, Toronto functions as kind of a family reunion of festivals, scooping up films that have played at other sites and displaying them in one tidy locale.

"Glengarry Glen Ross" sounds like lyric poetry, but in David Mamet's play of that name, it refers to a questionable parcel of land being sold by an even more questionable parcel of real estate swindlers.Under Suzanne Pratt's direction, Theatre Hopkins will produce this 1983 play about the underbelly of the real estate business for five weekends beginning tomorrow.Theatre Hopkins performs in the Merrick Barn on the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University. Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2: 15 p.m. Sundays, with one Sunday evening performance at 7: 30 p.m. on May 12, the final night of the run. Tickets are $10 and $12. Call (410)

An article about the Oscar nominations in yesterday's editions said that Al Pacino was the first male to win a nomination in both acting and supporting acting categories. However, in 1944 Barry Fitzgerald received nominations in the acting and supporting acting categories for the same role in "Going My Way." That practice has subsequently been disallowed by the Academy.Now it can be told.The big news at yesterday's 65th annual Academy Award announcements wasn't the expected triumphs of "Howards End" and "Unforgiven," which received nine nominations apiece, but the outing of Jaye Davidson, who played the enigmatic Dil in Neil Jordan's "The Crying Game."

The real-estate salesmen of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" spew venom the way a volcano spits out molten rock, and the foul discharge overruns everyone in sight.Audiences have been stunned by the noxious language and the unsavory methods of Mr. Mamet's land-peddlers, who turned up first in his award-winning 1983 play and more recently in the film version, which opened nationwide in October.Yet a stench has surrounded salesmen in America's popular culture almost as long as that culture has existed.

THERE'S a new book out taking the hide off Hollywood. Sex and violence are saturating screens, video as well as silver. You know it. I know it. We all hate it.But we can't escape, can we? And do you know who's to blame? Hollywood. The cultural elite. Those filthy swine.See that? Do you think I would have dreamed of using the words "filthy swine" in a family newspaper in the old days?Hear a personal tale which speaks of the degradation to which I have been brought by these mongers of sex and violence:It was a glorious October day. "Let us," said my wife, "take a drive through Vermont and Canada to see the autumn-tinted foliage."

The great film critic Robert Warshow once observed that the most purely American movies were about cowboys and gangsters: men with guns. True enough, but there's at least some evidence of a minor counter-tradition worth considering: the tradition of men with spiels.Yakkers, con men, voluble, risible chums, they're nearly identical: Your best friend whom you never saw before, he wants to make you laugh or he wants to take your money (same thing, really); basically, he just wants to control you and have his way with you. That is, if the despair doesn't kill him first.

In the review of the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" in Maryland Live, the actor Alec Baldwin was identified incorrectly as Alex Baldwin.The Sun regrets the errors.You have to know the territory and David Mamet knows iwell: self-doubt, desperation, flaming greed, hunger, terror, and, finally, the will to close in for the kill. The hunter-gatherer's operative mind-set, be he a cave man stalking a mammoth, a Marine sniper stalking an enemy general, or a salesmanstalking a recalcitrant victim.Thus the real estate office of his "Glengarry Glen Ross" is less a warren of desks and files than some sort of primal glade.

I f you are not watching TNT's new drama, "Men of a Certain Age," you are missing weekly television's finest actor in one of the medium's most socially relevant roles of the season. I am talking about Andre Braugher as Owen Thoreau Jr., a middle-age Chevrolet salesman and father of three working for his dad's auto dealership, where he has become one of the staff's weakest performers. Talk about a TV series working the same thematic turf as Arthur Miller's American classic, "Death of Salesman."

TORONTO -- When Toronto and Montreal, the sibling rivals of Canadian cities, both started film festivals within a year of each other in the mid-1970s, all the odds for lasting success seemed to favor Montreal. That city was exciting and romantic, possessed of both European sophistication and the glamour of a French-speaking population, while Toronto was, well, Toronto.While the Montreal festival has done fine, thank you very much, it pales before the 335-film colossus that is Toronto. Which is nothing to be ashamed of, because, though they don't like to hear this in Los Angeles, San Francisco and especially New York, this city's Festival of Festivals, which opened over the weekend, has in fact become the pre-eminent film showcase on the entire North American continent, the one to go to if you're only going to one.Family reunionLiving up to its name, Toronto functions as kind of a family reunion of festivals, scooping up films that have played at other sites and displaying them in one tidy locale.