To start with I really do not like reading plays. With the names up the characters constantly being on the side of the page i find it very distracting to read. Also to me i just do not feel like the story flows as well when its written this way.
Act one scene one takes place at a Chinese restaurant with John Williamson and Shelly Levene. The two seem to be arguing over some business. Although Levene is older it seems like Williamson has more power and control with the business. It seems that Levene has had a run of bad luck lately and is having trouble closing deals. I'm not sure what kind of work these guys do but it seems to me like they are in the reality business or something of that nature. From reading just the first act i can already tell i won't like Levene very much. He seems like a cry baby and somebody who is all talk. Also he seems to repeat words a lot even withing the same sentence for some reason this really just aggravates me and adds to my dislike of Levene. For example the very first words he says in scene one, "John...John...John. Okay. John. John" (pg150). After he finally finishes saying John for the twenty time he goes on to say something else. Throughout the first scene the two seem to argue back and forth with Levene mostly complaining and trying to push the blame onto other people. Levene just really gets under my skin. On page 24 he tells Williamson, who i think is his superior, "Fuck that. That's defeatist. Fuck that. Fuck it...Get on my side. Go with me. Let's do something. You want to run this office, run it (pg 24)". I would never talk to my superior that way unless i pretty much knew i wasn't going to have a job there the next day. The scene ends with Williamson getting tired of Levene's crap and leaving the restaurant.
Scene two starts out with Aaronow and Moss sitting in a restaurant as well. They also seem to be talking about business and they both seem as though they are being screwed. They both seem to want to be more like Jerry Graff who found a list of like a thousand nurses. They say that Jerry clears anywhere from ten the fifteen thousand dollars a week. Aaronow and Moss both seem to think that they are being screwed out of good leads just as Levene believes that he is as well. For example Moss says, "That's what I'm saying. Why? The leads. He's got the good leads...what are we, we're sitting in the shit here. Why? We have to go to them to get them."(page 34). Later on in the scene is seems as though Aaronow wants Moss to break into the office building and steal all the leads making it look like a robbery. After they steal the leads he want to sell them all to Jerry Graff and go into business with him. This is pretty much how scene two ends with both me arguing back and forth about robbing the office of the leads and whats going to happen to each of them if they get caught.
Seville- is the capitol of the autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville, Spain
Antagonize- a person or group of people who oppose some one else or another group
Polacks- a derogetory reference to a person of Polish decent.
First things first, you were grumpy grumpy grumpy!!
ReplyDeletebut seriously, I think your analysis of Levene is really good, I hadn't really thought about him being disrespectful by talking to his supervisor that way, but you're completely right. No way would I talk to my boss/ superior that way either! He obviously hadn't been performing as he should have been, and he is trying to whine his way back into the top spot instead of just accepting that he is going to have to either take the less desirable leads or be fired. As much as it sucks, that is just the way the salesman world works! & I also liked the vocabulary words at the end, I didn't know what a Polack was but I was too lazy to look it up, so I'm glad you did!
Great blog though, Danny!!
Dude you are spot on. Levene is a bit of a cry baby it seemed like. He spent the entire freaking scene blaming other people for his low sales. They said that he was getting low sales because his sales had already dropped, and because of that he was getting properties that were harder to sell. But his sales had already dropped enough for him to make that happen, so it's obviously his own dang fault!
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