One of my favorite actors is on Broadway right now. Al Pacino is playing Shelly Levene in David Mamet’s brutal and darkly comic 1984 play “Glengarry Glen Ross” about desperate salesmen in a 1980s Chicago real estate office, and “who stole the leads.” Selling is a much disrespected and underestimated occupation. It’s hard work, you have to be clever, relentless, articulate, intuitive, inventive, emotional. This cast of pitchmen is at the leather-beaten end of the spectrum, but we all depend on them, salesmen, without whom the wheels of the world would not turn. “Always be closing” is the play’s refrain. If you can’t venture to the Great White Way to see Glengarry Glen Ross then check out the film version, the cast is stellar: Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Al Pacino, Jonathan Pryce, and Alec Baldwin.
