Other People's Money
for Conversation and Argumentation

(90 min, R, Comedy, 1991 Director: Norman Jewison Cast: Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck, Penelope Ann Miller, Piper Laurie)
Tagline: Meet Larry the Liquidator. Arrogant. Greedy. Self-centered. Ruthless. You gotta love the guy.

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.
    Jorgy
     Garfield
    1. Emotional appeal: 
    a. friendship with the shareholders
    b. the long history that the company has
    1. Refutation+ Emotional Appeal first: 
    "Amen" -- Jorgy's speech is a prayer for the dead. 
    The company is already dead.  But I'm not responsible for it.
    2.  Refutation of the opponent: 
    a. Larry the Liquidator, who kills things but not build things, who leaves behind him a blizzard of papers to cover pain. 

    (False analogy: closing a company // "murdering people")

    2. Reasons: 
    a. Situation Analysis: Wire and cable are obsolete, replaced by optical fiber; obsolete like buggy whip.
    b. Utilitarian/Pragmatic: "Who cares [about the people]?"  They [the employees and the community] don't care about us.  They don't reduce our tax when the times  are tough.  If you invest in a better company, you can create more jobs.
    c.  Emotional appeal: Shows his understanding of the audience.  As stockholders you want to earn money. 
    3.  Reasons: 
    a. Humanitarian: the company cares about people, is worth more than just the value of stock. 
    b. Situation Analysis: the bad situation is only temporary.  When the situation changes, there will be a great demand for wire and cable. 
    3. Moralistic: If we let corporate takeover go on happening, our nation will be a nation of hamburgers, lawyers, and tax shelters. 
    3. Emotional appeal: 
    a. I'm your only friend. 
    b. I can make you earn money, with which you can create new jobs, do social services and keep "a few bucks in your pocket."
       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.
    2. issues for discussion --
  • 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.
    comply with 依從(environmental restrictions) 
    booby trapped 被困住
    have the jitters about 緊張(anxious) 
    my driving test 
    What a shit pit! 
    爛攤﹐
    money pit, 錢坑
    paramedic 醫護人員
    doctors and paramedical workers
    chauffeur 司機 get lost  file the 13-D with the S.E.C. 
    TRO--Temporary Restraining Order
    get everybody's ace together 一起出點子
    out of whack機器)壞了
    have a whack (try) at 
    pension liabilities
    (liability insurance, 
    liabilities vs. assets)
    settle, sue, defense? 
    injunction 命令 
    put under indictment
    被起訴
    a tender offer 投標
    (a tender︰標價的表格 )
    wire and cable, buggy whip,-- 
    obsolescence
    scratch your balls 
    (usu. scratch one's back)
    at salvage  變賣﹐搶救出來
     
    liquidation
     
    working capital 
     
    make a profit
    fiber optics 光纖 standstill agreement

    greenmail

    predator  corporate takeover 
    appeal to your sense of decency  in droves
     
    proxy vote
    first item on the agenda  Larry the liquidator
    murder on a mass scale brief  (v) buy me out  manicurist 修指甲師
    lawyer on retainer (retaining fee) 
    長期聘用律師
    You've got the balls (testicles, meaning self-confidence; ) think in contingency
    考慮偶發事件
    get rug pulled (from) under me before the finish line 最後被將一軍
    look out for one's self interest  going down the tube, slow but sure  Your slate is elected; 被選上
    clean debt slate; 
     
       
     
    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."

  • 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
    Many thanks to Ms. Ching-Ching Yi for bring my attention to this film.