THE PRIME GIG
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Independent Pictures Director: Gregory Mosher Writer: William Wheeler Cast: Vince Vaughn, Ed Harris, Julia Ormond, Rory Cochrane, Wallace Shawn, George Wendt, Stephen Tobolowsky
How do you react when a telemarketer calls you up out of the blue and tries to sell you something? You hang up right away, don't you? Of course you do, but perhaps you've never run across a salesman with the skills and charm of Penny Wise (Vince Vaughn), the avatar of telephone capitalism, who knows--contrary to the advice of "Boiler Room"'s Jim (played by Ben Affleck in Ben Younger's vivacious and exciting "Boiler Room")--that you can indeed sell to women. You simply have to use a different approach from that used to peddle items to men, quite a distinct one as Penny displays viscerally in Gregory Mosher's enticing first movie "The Prime Gig."
Pendelton Wise is a complex personality, a salesman with a heart (which, some say, is as rare as a lawyer with soul). He takes care of a physically disabled and emotionally immature young man, Joel (Rory Cohrane), whom he puts up in his humble abode while conning his boss, Mick (Stephen Tobolowsky), to give him a job at Mick's shady operation selling travel packages to unwary sun worshippers. After the shadowy operation closes down putting Gene (Wallace Shawn), Archie (George Wendt), and Sujat (Shishir Kurup) on the unemployment line, Penny's head is hunted by the sexy Caitlin Carlson (Julia Ormond), who convinces the master merchant to come on board yet another questionable business selling shares of a potential gold mine in Arizona to greedy clients. When big boss Kelly Grant (Ed Harris) persuades Penny that he can make more money in a month than he could earn in a year of his former job, Penny is in for the prime gig.
"The Prime Gig" summons memories of similar movies about telephone scams such as "The Boiler Room" (about the pushing of bogus stocks), David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" (about the selling of barren real estate), and John Dahl's "The Last Seduction" (which centers on a femme fatale who prods and goals her telemarketers by standing behind them with a stopwatch, informing them how many minutes and seconds they have before they'll be fired). Unfair though it may be to compare "The Prime Gig" with David Mamet's greatest work, "Glengarry," we can see in this production the hand of that play's director, Gregory Mosher, who helmed "Glengarry" on Broadway 25 years ago and this time around makes his debut as a film regisseur.
Here we have a character we can care about despite his delving in business deals of highly questionable ethics. He is concerned about the co-workers in the failing travel bureau, going to bat for them as a sort of union representative-- insisting that the head of the operation pay off the employees immediately in cash. We don't know exactly why he takes such good care of the seriously handicapped Joel despite Joel's occasional lack of appreciation and willingness to hobnob and get drunk with losers. Penny is just a good guy who gets involved with the wrong kinds of business. He knows how to sell, and in a particularly striking scene, he demonstrates how to handle male customers on the phone to get them to part with their money. He doesn't play the sympathy card with them as he would do with the fair sex.
Based on a script by William Wheeler, who received considerable encouragement from the folks at Sundance, "The Prime Gig" is absorbingly photographed, particularly one scene exhibiting the smashing Japanese-style office provided by Kelly Grant for the gold-mine operation. Cinematographer John A. Alonzo knows how to shoot the charming Vince Vaughn with sexy Julia Ormond to evoke the chemistry between the two, and Ms. Ormond herself does a first-rate job of portraying Caitlin Carlson as both a hard-as-nails assistant to a boss who won't take no for an answer and as a vulnerable little gal when she lets her hair down and is out to snare her man.
The old slogan of salespersons is that a good one can sell ice boxes to Eskimos. This maxim is no longer taught in business schools, which promote the idea of marketing goods by a scientific method to people who are most likely to profit from them. You'd never know this from the operation on display in Mosher's movie, as people with no prospectus and no real knowledge of the firm's assets are ready to hand over their life savings to strangers on the phone who are really selling intimacy. I've never bought from telemarketers, but I bought this movie.
Rated R. Running time: 97 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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