SynopsisUsageVocabularyLinks
Memorable QuotesIssues for Discussion
Powerpoint file for vocabulary test and discussion in class

Synopsis:

(Names:  New English Wire and Cable Company [represented by Jorgy Sullivan, Mrs. Sullivan, the manager Bill and the lawyer-daughter Kate Sullivan ] in Rhode Island
vs. Lawrence Garfield Investment Company [headed by Garfield] in New York.)

New English Wire and Cable Company is has a clean balance sheet (debt-free, no pension liabilities, no law suits), but it is not earning any money.  Its stock has fallen from 60 to 10 in a few years, which gets Lawrence Garfield, the head of an investment company,  interested.  His procedure in buying up is:

buying its shares to make the price go up from 10 to 14;

getting his lawyer to check if it is "booby trapped";

going to talk to the owner, persuading him to sell it.  (The first persuasion in the film)

Jorgy cares more about the company's workers and long history than the profit it makes.  Threatened by Garfield, who claims that he is not a "long-term player," Jorgy and his wife get their daughter, Kate, to help.
Kate takes different steps, first persuading Jorge to move the company (Kate's persuasion of Jorgy), and then going to Lawrence to negotiate with him.  Thus come the negotiations and battles between the two sexes as well as two companies.

Usage in Conversation and Argumentation:
The film is good for a conversation/argumentation class, because 

The issues of corporate merging and stock market are quite relevant to our society.  (Recently, Kimo is taken over by Yahoo.)

There are a series of persuasion, followed by the final debate, all of which we can learn about the different ways of persuasion and debate. 

1. Different ways of persuasion:

Lawrence's first speech: use of fairy-tale and personification + concrete calculation

Kate and Jorge:

practical reasoning: "Somebody knocks on you door and if you don't do anything, it's like leaving the door open to let him in."

move the company to Delaware, which has strong anti-trust laws, on paper.

Lawrence and Kate: negotiation and love/sex battle

standstill agreement

Going to court takes money.

I won't love you if you don't take it.

Lawrence's breaking the rule, but claiming that it's a fair game

greenmail -- offering to buy back the shares

Lawrence's offer: sex (Whoever comes first loses it.)

 

Jorge and his wife

Jorge -- resort to the shareholders' conscience

Mrs. Sullivan -- glorious history + 1 million dollars.

(To persuade Lawrence into going to the shareholders' meeting, Kate and Lawrence again meet--this time in a Japanese restaurant.  Kate challenges Lawrence by asking him to prove that he is "a man with balls.")

the last debate -- Analyze the skills used by both sides (Jorgy-Peck and Garfield-DeVito) at the shareholder's meeting inside the factory to win the shareholders to their side.

   Final Persuasion: Although Garfield, a better speaker, wins, he does not win the woman's heart.  The final twist in the film is made with a phone call in which Kate makes another offer to Garfield, asking him sell the stock back at 28.  She also reveals that a Japanese company is going to work with the company to replenish it and produce air bags.  Their negotiation begins again, and the film ends with Garfield's getting the manicurist, barber, florist excitedly, preparing to do his "business."
 
   The happy ending should not stop us from thinking over some important issues brought up or hidden in  the film.

What do the two protagonists represent respectively?  Which do you agree with?  The Peck's industrial America sentimentality and DeVito's naked greed practicality?  (details about Larry's life - born in the poor neighborhood in Bronx, having an expensive corner office in the Manhattan tower, a blocklong limousine, a town house, a butler, playing an awful violin, sleeping with a computer on the side, calling the computer "Carmen" and his sexist language.)

What role does romance play in this film?  In what way is the film typically Hollywood?  In other words, what do you think about the use of love and sex in this film?   Is the "love" between Lawrence and Kate well developed and convincing?   Is Kate's success in her business negotiation convincing?

What do you think about the representation of the Japanese in this film?

The film is about corporate takeover.  Do you have any examples of that?  (One example of SONY.)

Do you have examples of any Taiwanese who "play god with OPM" (Can we read it as "doing stock speculation" or "corporate merging and take over")?

Vocabulary:
 p.s. "Other People's Money" is rated R for language.   You'll see a little here.

--slate (n) wipe the slate clean, or a list of candidates
--slate (v) choose, schedule The meeting is slated to take place next week.

 
Memorable Quotes
 

Garfield: Since when do you have to be hungry to have a donut?

 

Larry "the Liquidator" Garfield: Lawyers are like nuclear warheads. I have them because the other guy has them, but the first time you use them it fucks everything up

Lawrence: "Don't think of it as suicide; think of it as euthanasia."

What would be "murder" in the real world, intones Peck, is called "maximizing shareholder value" in Garfield's. "In his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain."

"Easy Come, Easy Go."

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Reviews:

"Other People's Money" by Desson Howe. Washington Post Staff Writer, October 18, 1991,  The Washington Post

Another Washington Post Review;

Roger Ebert

For more info on the film, please go to Internet Movie Database