Hacker Cinema
Glengarry Glen Ross
1992 · Film · 100 min
Directed by James Foley
An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office. Unscrupulous salesmen try to hawk dubious real estate to suckers.
17 positive5 negative15 neutralfrom 37 commenters
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38 comments on Hacker News
> Yes I exclude that,
So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no Invoke, no articulated humans?
It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here. Text prompts are not the currency of AI film. Controllability levers are essential to this whole endeavor.
> I do not think something that augmenting that input data counts towards actually reducing production costs and speeding up the process of creating media.
You haven't spent much time on set, then. An animator can do a performance capture on their webcam and adjust the IK. That's way different than booking a sound stage, renting an Arri Alexa and lenses, and bringing out a whole cast and crew. Set dec, wardrobe, makeup, lighting versus the moral equivalent of a Kinect and a garage studio.
My 6 AM call times, early mornings climbing up to the top shelf of the prop house to grab random tubas and statues, and signing countless legal forms and insurance paperwork all beg to differ with your claims here.
> AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human actors.
I don't think it necessitates this at all. Kids are going to be flocking to the media to turn themselves into anime VTubers and Han Solos and furries and whatever they can dream up.
Artists want to art. They're going to flock to this. We're going to have to open up the tech for that reason alone.
I'm sure fast moving marketers and the cottage industry of corporate workplace training videos won't use humans, but the creative side will. ElevenLabs is great, but there's also a reason why they hired Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, and Jack Black in the Mario movie.
> For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month or 2 that meets the success criteria above.
I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this creative explosion.
Random salesman movie association: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glengarry_Glen_Ross_(film)
There's a lot of great (and some remarkably bad) advice in the replies here, but one thing I can share from my two decades of having my hands in sales, engineering and service is that customers, regardless of they are B2B or private, are going to weigh your product on two things;
1. Does this solve a problem we have?
2. Can we afford it?
That's it. There's no magic tricks or dark patterns to be exploited, contrary to what a variety of sales/marketing books might tell you (those books are selling you the books, nothing more).
Here's a few easy things to remember:
1. Your customer has needs. Meet them or walk away before you waste valuable time and create resentment.
2. Your customer is a human that values honesty and wants to make an informed decision, so be prepared to give them the information they need to do so.
If you go into a presentation knowing your product and knowing your customer's needs, there's really no other controls you can account for that will sway that deal one way or the other. So, do your homework. Use OSINT techniques to gather info on your customer, build a profile of what they already use, what their pain points are, etc and don't forget to just talk to them. Not every interaction has to result in a sale, in fact, most are fact-finding/info-gathering sessions for both parties, in my experience.
Despite doing well for myself when I was operating in a sales capacity, I do not do sales much these days mostly because I prefer the troubleshooting and development side of the industry I'm in, but if you approach it with a Troubleshooting Mindset, you're better off. It sets you up to offer the right solution for the right problem if you think of your customer's workflow/processes as something to be studied so that it can be improved.
I say this because I have met countless salesmen in my day that think they can human-hack their way to a deal because they watched Glengarry Glen Ross too many times, or read a Malcolm Gladwell book. They're the reason why we have a used car salesman stereotype and why movies like Wolf of Wall Street are made (that movie is not about a hero). Approach with caution any advice that a behavioral economist or anyone claiming to be a market expert offers; none of these people have crystal balls or mind-reading capabilities and they make money by convincing people they do. You're in a position where a lot of that might seem attractive and I was there once myself, going so far as to paying real money to attend a Tony Robbins seminar more than once when I was first starting out. It's all nonsense in the end, boiling down to getting yourself out there, building relationships with people, spiced with a bit of luck and privilege.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blackberry-movie-review-2023
> “BlackBerry” is a MoneyBro movie par excellence, right up there with “Wall Street,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Boiler Room,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It shares their key, defining trait: even though its main characters are either charismatic sociopaths or sheep, and the capitalist system they operate in is deeply corrupt and rewards men without morals or conscience, the story is so excitingly told, the performances so watchable, and the dialogue so quotable that it becomes the verbal equivalent of an action flick—kinetic, suspenseful, and sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and weirdly moving.
It's almost completely gone in the US on Netflix also. I've had better luck watching older movies on Youtube 'Free with Ads' service, especially 80s and 90s movies, than I've had on Netflix. And there's no ads if you get Youtube's premium service (I currently don't, but don't mind the ads).
Currently on there is Wrongfully Accused (funny Leslie Nielsen movie), Glengarry Glen Ross, Robocop (1987), Ghost in the Shell, The Mask, License to Drive, The Neverending Story, Tombstone, Leon The Professonal, The Amityville Horror, Over the Top (some Stallone movie), Miracle on 34th Street, Con Air, Edward Scissorhands, Gone Fishin', Look Who's Talking, While You Were Sleeping, The Craft, Red Dawn, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Secret of Nimh, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Mad Max, Das Boot, Little Shop of Horrors, Hackers, .... okay, I'm just going to stop now, but t keeps going, I'm only a third of the way though the list.
This review of Markoff's take on the subject is rather less flattering:
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/stewart-brand-whole-earth/
It's really a kind of cultural caricature at this point - iconic of (some of) the boomer generation, who started off as a young idealistic hippie in the sixties, got jaded in the 70s, flipped over to Wall Street yuppiedom by the 1980s, and then onto more sales deals... imagine if the movie Glengarry Glen Ross was populated by these hippie salespeople. The Wolf of Wall Street kind of got it right in the pink sheets sales center, I think. This is why the punks of the 1980s printed stickers saying "Never Trust A Hippie", incidentally.
The kind of products these Whole Earth people sold were pretty shoddy as well - for years, many California roofs were littered with defunct solar hot water systems, corroded out due to the use of cheap materials. As far as the 'personal computer industry', it packed up and offshored production to overseas sweatshops as soon as they could get their friends in Congress to push it through with similar cheery positive vibes. All the high-end backpacking 'get in touch with nature' outfits, the North Faces and Patagonias, followed suit with their local Berkeley-based factories. As this happened, homeless populations boomed all across the Bay Area and Los Angeles where those jobs, basic though they were, at least allowed people to earn a fairly decent living. It's a story of hucksters looking for a quick buck while patting themselves on the back about their enlightened worldview.
As far as high-quality renewable energy tech, the Chinese approach is sure working a lot better. Hard work spent on R&D allowed Chinese companies to master monocrystalline silicon PV production, making them the world leader on durable, reliable and high-efficiency PV, also at the lowest cost (or would be if the US tariffs were dropped). Granted, China was highly motivated, having no domestic gas and oil and the world's worst air pollution, but it's really just a pathetic story for the USA, once the world's leader in tech manufacturing. Maybe the US domestic chip initiative will help, late to the party as it is, and it's not like China is slowing down on that front either.
This kind of behavior reminds me of a line from Jim Morrison of the Doors: "I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I'm gonna get my kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames."
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this movie:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/glengarry_glen_ross
Get ready to work 100 times harder than you think you need to, to land that first big client. But it can be done. It's how it's always been done.
I think there's something about this article that isn't just off, but encourages a sort of psychopathy-victim dynamic.
Where it oversimplifies reality, just for a few examples:
What about cases where people take credit for what others do?
What about when people prevent others from doing things, so as to create artificial scarcity?
Are others really knowledgeable about the long-term value of something to themselves? Are actors rational?
Just for instance: all of the characters in that Glengarry Glen Ross scene are white. What if that character decided blacks are worthless because no one wants to do business with a black person? Do we just passively shrug and say that's reasonable, if true? What about the long-term consequences of a workplace environment like the one in the film? Is there another way of doing it? What about the higher-order value of sales benefiting that company?
I think there's a certain false wisdom about the perspective of the article that rings hollow to me at this stage. Like, it's not just cold or harsh, but false.
Not too long ago there was an article posted here at HN about a sort of bias to see cynicism as intelligent, and I guess I see this as part of that pattern. I've met too many people in my life that justify rewarded narrowmindedness, bigotry, incompetence, or psychopathy in terms of "how life is". Maybe at some level that's true but to me it leads to a certain psychopathic brand of meaningless tautology in which we're all either swindlers or marks.
It was full names, brokerage numbers, and some account balances with trading activity.
It's a financial sales list, which is incredibly valuable. If you don't agree, then watch the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.
Great suggestions here, many that I've either never heard of or never considered - I look forward to checking them out and please keep them coming, I'm hopeful this can turn into a masterthread to keep coming back and discovering motivational media.
Should maybe have done this earlier but adding a few of the ones I've already watched.
Technical Motivation:
- Silicon Valley (TV show, 2014-2019) - The Social Network (2010) - The Imitation Game (2014) - Halt & Catch Fire (TV show, 2014-2017) - Iron Man (2008) - Primer (2004) - The Martian (2015) - Hidden Figures (2016) - Flight of the Phoenix (1965 original or 2004 remake)
"Sales" Motivation:
- The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) - Door to Door (2002) - Underrated straight-to-TV film about a man with cerebral palsy who wants to become a door-to-door salesman - Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - Pure sales, persistence and Pacino - Salesman (1969 documentary) (As above, but instead of Pacino it's real door-to-door bible salesmen and what they go through)
Honorable Mentions:
- Mr Robot (2015-2019): probably the most thrilling and technically accurate depiction of technology and hacking ever put to a screen, but as someone else said it's also very dystopian and depressing, and not too motivational except in the brief bursts that they show Elliot setting up a hack. Either way no VisualBasic GUIs here.
- Flash of Genius (2008): about the inventor of the modern windshield wiper who had it stolen from Ford and sued them. The premise is motivational, but I personally found it more of a cautionary tale on what you can lose for your principles when you go up against the giants.
Yes, well the same Steve Jobs who denied being the father of his daughter, who dumped the burden of supporting his daughter on ordinary working taxpayers while he counted his first hundred million, this was the guy who called someone who was convinced his company was worth more a liar for saying he knew it. And even got the guy to feel bad about his sin. Amazing. It was all part of his extraordinary toolbox of manipulative tools, the "reality distortion field" that his admirers spoke of.
I got to see him behind closed doors in meetings when he was at NeXT. If you want to see Steve Jobs in a private meeting, watch the scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin tells the salesmen that they are losers because the Baldwin character drives a more expensive car. Steve literally did that in one meeting, answering a question about why he didn't do such-and-such with a "I drive a Porsche and you drive a General Motors car" as his argument for why his superior wisdom must not be questioned by losers.
12 Angry Men. My Dinner with Andre. Steve Jobs (a stretch, but much more a play than a movie).
There's some play adaptations which have few characters and mostly dialogue: Carnage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Glengarry Glen Ross
Linklater's "Before" trilogy is also heavily dialogue-based, but the there are multiple locations.
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot.
There are many famous and great movies for which this isn't true. 12 Angry Men, Glengarry Glen Ross, Her, to name a few off the top of my head.
> Watch the movie Glengarry Glen Ross sometime. The life of a typical real estate agent really is that bad, or worse.
You do realize that all the salesman in that movie were scammers right?
"When I bought my house, my Realtor found some good listings, arranged viewings, did the paperwork, and set everything up for me. All useful services, and worth paying for. But was it worth $12k for less than 40 hours of total work? I don't think so."
A lot depends on the realtor.
One realtor I know not only does everything you mention, but also gives their clients lots of advice (based on many decades of experience in the industry) -- for instance, telling them if the prices they're setting on their home or bidding for are likely too high or too low, or what to do with a house in order to make it more likely to be sold. How much is such advice worth -- advice that could get them the house they're dreaming of or sell the house they desperately need to sell?
They also explain everything related to real-estate in great detail, tell them about the neighborhoods they're considering, drive them around all over the place (paying for their own gas, car, maintenance and insurance), sit in with them during the closing to go over the entire contract with them and explain everything and make sure they're not getting screwed. For sellers, the agent provides free advertising, spends a ton of time sitting at open houses waiting for people to show up and then showing them around, and trying to sell them the home, etc, etc. They negotiate deals and are the buyer's or seller's representative to the other party.
All this work is done for free unless the house is sold.
Again and again, I've heard how clients take months and months of this work done for free and then switch to go to another agent, paying the agent not a single dime for all the time they spent working for them. Or they'll just change their mind and no longer want to buy or sell.
I've heard so many horror stories from them: clients are often incredibly inconsiderate, calling at all hours of the night and on weekends (this is not a 9-5 job), expecting them to work when sick, or just being super abrasive assholes or liars. Personally, I would never put up with any of that, but agents have to make ends meet, so are often forced to work with those kinds of people or starve.
Watch the movie Glengarry Glen Ross sometime. The life of a typical real estate agent really is that bad, or worse.
Real estate agents also risk their own lives doing their jobs: they routinely go alone in to empty houses with complete strangers. It's not common, but real estate agents have been assaulted, raped, or killed while showing homes. How many people think of that: that being a real estate agent is actually a dangerous profession? I didn't until I got to know an agent well and they started telling me the horror stories of what they have to go through and put up with.
> tech bro... CEOs
Even in this headline, there's some pretty interesting equivocation happening between techies and CEOs overall. The article makes a decent case for why there's collective anxiety about tech companies, but neglects the question of "why only tech?"
The ~1990s had a whole string of movies with bankers and investors as villains: American Psycho, Rogue Trader, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Boiler Room, and so on. Lately, we had had Wolf of Wallstreet and The Big Short, but in a post-2008 world where banking already has trashed the economy we're surprisingly short on bankers-as-villains films.
We got a couple of global warming films in the 2000s, and a couple more in the 2010s, but I can't think of one which makes a serious attempt to cast oil CEOs as villains - certainly not in the sense that e.g. tobacco companies have been. Avatar is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the environment" that's been a hit.
Pharma companies lend themselves to human-interest tragedies, and we did get Dallas Buyer's Club. But there's no whole genre here like there used to be with "the bank takes the farm".
So there's the missing question: why tech companies specifically? The most obvious answer is just "more impressive visuals". I'm not sure we're talking about a particular anxiety of the moment, or if it's just that banks and oil companies work better on the page than on the screen.
Rio Rancho is now a functioning suburb, but it was originally a scam as well, along with Paradise hills and another i don't recall. Rio Rancho is, amusingly, what they're selling in Glengarry Glen Ross[1]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/synopsis
It shows a lack of imagination. You see this and want to be surprised. Learn about some fantastic unknown Malaysian film that blows doors...
I overuse a half learned Nietzsche quote from the beginnings of "The use and abuse of history..." - actually I think a requote of Goethe - along the lines of 'I hate that which merely instructs me without increasing my vitality...'
Butchered I am sure but I think that is the gist.
There is literally nothing new on this list.
Again - I am not a film buff - but I have seen movies in the past 3 months that are better than many movies on this list.
Glengarry Glen Ross comes to mind. Slate article is dead on about the omission of Ozu and Ackermann. What about documantaries like "Once were kings" or Errol Morris or for historical purposes, Leni Riefenstahl
I see things like this as an indictment of a dangerous lack of imagination in liberal US. Its killing us.
"Glengarry Glen Ross" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
“First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado…Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired,” explains Stewart Butterfield, the boss of Slack, a two-year-old software company with a $2.8 billion valuation, quoting from David Mamet’s play “Glengarry Glen Ross”.
Except he isn't actually quoting from the play because that quote and the whole Alec Baldwin character don't exist in the play. They were added when Mamet converted Glengarry Glen Ross the play into Glengarry Glen Ross the movie. It's a really interesting story, actually.
http://www.avclub.com/article/why-iglengarry-glen-rossi-alec-baldwin-scene-is-so-82782
With apologies to Glengarry Glen Ross (a must see movie, BTW)...
Always Be Networking
Good luck!
> If you "win" at law school, you get to join BigLaw firms that consume you, body and soul, for a handful of years. Only the tiniest percentage of graduates can earn these jobs, mostly the upper tier of the best schools. The middle tier at these schools can try for second-tier firms which pay two-thirds of the salary for exactly the same brutal hours and terrible conditions of BigLaw. The bottom tier, or virtually anyone at lower schools, gets nothing at all.
It reminds me of that great Alec Baldwin monologue in the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross: "First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize: a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."
Check out these threads:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4060887
Also my personal list of favorites that entrepreneurs should watch (although not necessarily about technology):
Glengarry Glen Ross - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
Moneyball - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/
The Pursuit of Happyness - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/
Jerry Maguire - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/
Catch Me If You Can - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/
When my business partner and I were starting our first business we would unwind at night by watching motivating movies like these. Some of the ones we watched included: Boiler Room, Wallstreet, and Glengarry Glen Ross. Two more recent movies that I would add to the list are Margin Call and the Social Network. My list of motivational books would be much longer.
I love the line - we have two kinds of sales people, rich and new.
There is a definite truth to the fundamentally different psychology of top sales people compared to engineering talent. Sales works best as a very objective judge by results environment - with great rewards at the top and a short walk off the plank for non-performers. I find, having done both, that a lot of engineers find it difficult or impossible to put themselves in the mind of a sales person and truly understand what motivates them, if they've not done it extensively themselves.
Glengarry Glen Ross gets it right with First Prize a new BMW, Second Prize a set of steal knives, Third Prize you're fired. If you're an engineer watch that movie or Boiler Room with horror and recognize that many sales people see those as very realistic expositions of certain kinds of aggressive sales environments.
At Startup Weekend events in LA it's popular to show Alec Baldwin's performance of the "Coffee is for Closers" speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross."
The intent is to try and rally the troops and build excitement. Really this is something I find sad and another example of missaligned priorities given the actual content of the movie and the plot that is actually unfolding.
Instead of seeing a sociopath that is driving people to commit fraud and crime, people see Jack Donaghy delivering the "truth" to some losers before heading outside to make love to Liz Lemon.
More to my point, there is this thread of unhealthy romanticized ideas about startups and perhaps work in general that some people, organizations, and publications like to promote. This is just another example. There isn't anything that says "don't be like this." It's a big fish story about the one that got away.
I don't know, I wouldn't use Glengarry Glen Ross as an example of something you'd aspire to. The play/movie is a criticism of the sleazy "sales animal" culture where the product doesn't matter, closing sales is equated to virility, and the players are so desperate for a sale they'd lie, steal and ruin other people's lives for it.
Isn't 'Always Be Closing' from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross? (though more emphasized in the film adaptation than the script)
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/glengarry.html
Sure, but there seems to be a difference between divesting of a conglomerate's lowest performing business units, lavishing on the highest-performing ones, and putting the rest on notice, and applying a similar system to a small team. The latter reminds me less of Welch than of Glengarry Glen Ross: "First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."
For anyone who hasn't seen the movie: it doesn't end well.
With respect to employees, the point of a "forcing function" has less to do with motivation than with finding some way to make change possible in a crumbling organization of fiefdoms whose managers insist that, nevertheless, "all my children are above average." If I recall correctly, Welch even points out that "C" players often go on to be "B" or even "A" players in other organizations, which doesn't change the fact that everyone can't be doing everything right when the overall organization is underperforming, so there are either weak spots, or no alternatives to immediate liquidation.
Finally, I'm quite confident Welch would agree that "blindly applying a vague principle you read in some book, then sticking with it for years because 'it worked for $MEGACORP'" is a stupid idea, regardless of who wrote the damn book!
Glengarry Glen Ross
Kinda cliche but still a fantastic movie about hustling and desperation.
Of course, one simply cannot talk about this movie without referencing, at least once, one of the greatest motivational scenes in movie history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0
If you liked this movie, may I suggest the David Mamet movie that inspired it: Glengarry Glen Ross (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/).
Brilliant (but NSFW, language) "Always Be Closing" scene to give you a feel for it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI
Strangely enough, I was talking to one of the sales guys at the $DAYJOB a couple of days ago, and we got on the subject of movies, and he brought up Boiler Room. I looked for the DVD at Barnes & Noble and they didn't have it... guess I'll go download it and see what the fuss is all about.
Glengarry Glen Ross is another fun movie about sales and life in the world of business. ABC!
It's strange. Most of the movies I use aren't here already. So here's my list.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096316/
Cinderella Man (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0352248/
The Secret of My Succe$s (1987) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093936/
Strangely I also find, Scarface (1983) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086250/ and The Bucket List (2007) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/ strangely inspiring.
Pirates of Silicon Valley and The Social Network would also be on my list but they have already been mentioned.
I also keep the fraud trilogy handy.
Wall Street (1987) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
Boiler Room (2000) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181984/
Echo Glengarry Glen Ross (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/). The tagline, "A story for everyone who works for a living" pretty much sums it up. For me, no other movie has done such a good job of capturing the horror of the workaday grind. The acting is also amazing (Pacino, Jack Lemon, Alec Baldwin).
Also in the spirit of quit your day job movies, Joe vs. The Volcano (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099892/)is pretty great. Not as masterful a film as Glengarry, but much more upbeat.
And Swordfish is a great movie about being a hacker... specifically the common recruiting process.
On a more serious note, I do agree with you. Some decent movies with a office environment/work theme: Boiler Room (2000), Duplicity (2009), Glengarry Glen Ross, Other People's Money (1991), Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street (1987).
I've also enjoyed the dramatized real-life stories in Rogue Trader and Barbarians at The Gate.
Boiler Room is one of my favs. Even though Glengarry Glen Ross was relatively boring, I like this line:
"It takes brass balls to sell real estate."
Then he turns around and he is holding brass balls. A-B-C is the best pitch ever in a movie, after greed is good of course.
If you want a great example of how to deal with rejection, come to Haight Ashbury and watch the homeless people ask for change. Sometimes if they have a good enough pitch, I'll give them a dollar. There was one guy giving "bad advice" and he told me to give him my credit card and to have unprotected sex with an intravenous drug user.
I gave him a dollar.
5. Saw it in 3D on a non-IMAX screen. I know enough to know that I'm supposed to be impressed by the CGI in the skin/eyes of the Na'vi and other creatures. And given that I'm supposed to know that, they (generally) succeeded. The 3D wasn't really any different than any other Real 3D movie, and I really didn't see any difference in the quality of the CGI landscapes versus LoTR or even Jurassic Park (which were just arial shots). The story, of course, is Dances with Wolves in Space.
I wish I went to Up in the Air instead.
As to the ZOMG: Glengarry Glen Ross could have been filmed in the 1930s, but it's one of the best films in my lifetime. To say that Avatar changes movies forever is insane.
It's a memorable line from a monologue delivered by the Alec Baldwin character in the movie 'Glengarry Glen Ross'.
[scene] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI
[transcript] http://www.whysanity.net/monos/ggr2.html
(Language is NSFW... unless of course your workplace is like the one in the movie.)