Word: pitchman
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...ever very good at his trade. David Mamet is no romantic. In his monstrously entertaining Glengarry Glen Ross, which opened on Broadway last week after earlier spins at the National Theater in London and the Goodman in Chicago, he shows his peddlers caught in the entrepreneurial act. One pitchman recounts a conquest he made by sitting, silent and motionless, for 22 minutes in his customers' kitchen. Another salesman flimflams his client with a hilarious spiel about life, existentialism and the pleasure principle; the monologue has all the narrative logic of Dadaist graffiti, but it whets the appetite, clinches...
...Stockbroker Billy Bob Harris, 44, who is "a regular celebrity groupie," says Writer Edwin ("Bud") Shrake, a former Dallas sports columnist. Harris is friendly with Don Meredith, former Dallas Cowboy quarterback, ABC Monday Night Football commentator and TV pitchman; former Cowboy and Denver Bronco Quarterback Craig Morton, his onetime roommate; and country-and-western Singer Kenny Rogers. The broker's parties are known for "wall-to-wall girls, champagne, hot tubs and more girls," says Shrake. They were vividly portrayed in fictionalized form in the movie North Dallas Forty. Harris, who gave stock reports on Dallas TV, announced...
...Jesse, run! Run, Jesse, run.The chants roll toward him, rumbling like a pent-up storm, rising to the rafters and the stained-glass portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. With the practiced rhythms of preacher and pitchman, he launches his sermon on power. "There's a freedom train acoming," he intones. "But you got to be registered to ride." Amen! "Get on board! Get on board!" There is fire in his eyes, a pin in his starched collar, a finger in the air. "We can move from the slave ship to the championship! From the guttermost...
...will find a showbiz paradigm: the exploitation of a smile and a conspicuous lack of talent into big bucks. Whites are not immune either. He can metamorphose into Gumby, the '50s cartoon character who has somehow aged into a carping Catskills comic; or a late-show pitchman, peddling Galactic Prophylactics and the Funeral in a Cab; or a suburban dandy, with attitudes and accent straight off the Main Line; or even an Irish priest, his brogue as thick as a County Clare mist...
...vocal atheist, on the subject of Christian belief. Their spirited exchange, waged before an enthralled and partisan audience of locals, is declared a draw. But the combatants have persuaded each other to switch positions. The minister resigns his post and faith, moves east and becomes a suave, voice-over pitchman in dog food TV commercials; the doctor takes up tub-thumping evangelical crusading. Late in the novel, a rematch is arranged. Once again, the debaters each wind up convinced that the other is right, but this time they embrace on the middle ground of skeptical belief. Tony gladly joins them...