May 12, 2007

Make it a HousingPANIC movie night - Boiler Room, Glengarry Glen Ross and Wall Street

I love this scene in Wall Street when Gekko is all cool talking on his new mobile phone


Seriously, what happened in mortgage broker and realtor offices all around the country (if not the world) these past five years is straight out of these three movies.

We've been here before, and we'll be here again.

It's called greed. Makes people do crazy, evil things for a buck.

Got popcorn?

23 comments:

Peahippo said...

Yep! Now we have millions of daytraders walking around with their China-made cellphones, sipping a ridiculously expensive latte made by a $8/hr American, trying to score some Casey-Serin-esque "sweet deals" like he's a millionaire or something. A lot of these guys are going to end up serving ME coffee in my old age. The Great Scam requires a lot of fools, but the same scam certainly can't reward the same fools.

I blame the educational establishment in America, from K-12 on up. Americans have quite simply become too dumb to rationally calculate odds, determine the merits of saving money AS MONEY, and to figure out the consequences of living on credit.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure that phone made him look cool back then but now he looks like a dork.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I have "The Departed", "Borat", and "Casino Royale" from my local library ($1 a week for each!) to catch up on.

Anonymous said...

And to think, when this film was shot, his future wife was like 6!

blogger said...

I think the HP Film Festival would also include Fight Club and Tin Men

Any others?

Paige Turner said...

Of course I was just a sweet young thing back then, but those early cell phones looked like a brick with an attached antenna.

V.L.

Anonymous said...

Idiocracy- it shows where we're going.

FlyingMonkeyWarrior said...

Any others?
---------
V for Vendetta
Crash

Anonymous said...

when wall street was making money perhaps a year ago I told co workers that Bush musta called all his buddies and told them to put in any money they could spare and all his friends called their friends and so on and so forth and that is why they are making record making profits. With as much money they are making off the American public (buying overpriced homes, truly overpriced, bottled water, driving big motor homes, shopping for overpriced clothing at upscale stores, buying toys that satisfies for the moment but are outdated by the weeks end, playing the stock market yes like they are Michael Douglas in Wall Street, having Champagne taste with
beer money. All the signs were there for years. Kids and the playstation, parents and exotic vacations, if you drive a ford taurus you were on welfare if you drove a BMW you were in the cash. Movie stars bragging about buying a 5 million dollar home on TV with only one decent movie under their belt and then boring us to tears always in the tabloids to make sure we remember they are still alive. The 90's is where the term LIVIN' LARGE came from. Your sorry pitiful coworkers and you know how much money they make running around bragging about being in the stock market and who they have stocks with and how they have two homes and one being in Las Vegas, bought in 2004 or 2005 and now they aren't running around bragging so much.
Back to the stock market, everyone who has REAL money are throwing in all their extra cash from reserves in the caribbean islands to prop this mess up (trust they only invest in stocks that will pay off, not google and not walmart and not the oil companies, those are quick dumps for my coworkers who want to get into the game too late)what is going to happen when they get tired of putting money in this and stop. After a while they will have to quit lying about the finacial bottom line. I went into the stores about a month ago and they were empty no hords of mexicans speaking spanish as if there is no other language, no screaming kids needing to take a nap, a variety of items to choose from, not just the one on the shelf that looked like it was laying on the floor and was stepped on. Costco was empty, WalMart was empty, Ross was empty. I had never seen the checkout clerks calling customers to their lines. I almost felt wanted for me, not just my money, but me. I am not a finacial scholar by any means don't even to pretend to know what it's about but signs are signs. I saw this Asian guy getting out of his brand new black Infinity (couldn't afford a BMW)with his black suit on talking on the cell phone and looking around that look at me I am successful look about him and before I woulda been a little jealous because I didn't have that appearance at all, jeans tee shirt, dented plymouth neon 8 years old, but I own my house (almost) I have been on my job 28 years (probably how old he is) and I have a peace of mind about the future because I believe alot of what is on the internet and offering from others that do know. So I don't have a need to flaunt what I have in front of others. I know what I have. This whole thing is going to just blow up and I hope the explosion doesn't leave the fallout hitting me. I take that back I am just to much blame for any of my problems as those Asian kids. I also fell into the money trap and I hope that fallout doesn't come back to haunt me and I look around my junk filled house and I know I messed up because I believed all that living large and I wanted to be a player too. All I can say is OH OH this going to get ugly.

wine country dude said...

The "Boiler Room" scene with Ben Affleck intimidating the new hires is a pale imitation of Alec Baldwin's work in Glengarry.

Baldwin was genius:(to Jack Lemmon): "Put that coffee down! Coffee's for closers!" And to Ed Harris: "F you! You know how much I made last year?"

Baldwin appeared pure evil. Affleck comes off as a, well, 27 year old spoiled kid.

Anonymous said...

Wonder if that phone plays blackjack?

Anonymous said...

"The "Boiler Room" scene with Ben Affleck intimidating the new hires is a pale imitation of Alec Baldwin's work in Glengarry."

So true, Affleck is a no talent hack who rode on the average-talent coat tails of Matt Damon. On his own he reads false and flimsy.

Brett DiDonato said...

That Ben Affleck scene in Boiler Room is classic. OK, it isn't as good as Alec Baldwin did it but this is BA we are talking about here. Now watch some of the Vin Diesel scenes in Boiler Room (mostly towards the end) to see some painfully bad acting. BA is at least passable.

Anonymous said...

agree with Fight Club.

may I add American Beauty, JFK, and Gandhi.

Anonymous said...

"Greed Purifies, Greed is good"

Anonymous said...

"And to think, when this film was shot, his future wife was like 6!"

funny!

Anonymous said...

Any others?
---------

Enemy at the gates.

Anonymous said...

How about it is wonderful life for the run on the bank scene?

Anonymous said...

Grapes of Wrath as Americans flee from overpriced California back to the Midwest. They'll be replaced by Mexicans who will turn the place into an extension of the Mexican toilet bowl and houses will be priced in pesos and Mexicans will be living in the same shoddy shitboxes they built years earlier. How ironic is that?

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine an HP Film Festival without 'Reservoir Dogs'.
Yes, next year could be that bloody.

Anonymous said...

Evil RE developer is a subplot in "Dreamcatcher", of all movies. No one mentioned "The Money Pit" or National Lampoon's "Funny Farm".

I don't know if they are making a movie of Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full, but Charlie Croker is the quintessential over-leveraged developer. Just read the parts with the workout artiste at the bank. Saddlebags! LOL

Anonymous said...

That phone is the perfect prop for that character. He also had multiple "Bloomerg machines" on his desk, IIRC.

Anonymous said...

Oh MY GAWD!!! I Knew HE HAD A big ..........PHONE