I watched this movie as a teenager. I remember agreeing wholeheartedly with Peck's speech. Who could deny his truth? And then Danny Devito gave his speech and everything changed.
The idealist... Who came to my defense in 2020? When a simple catering business with a dozen employees was a "super spreader"? And that business was only dead for a day and suddenly widespread protests were safe and effective.
And today, 30 years later, we understood that he was right, and DeVito was wrong. All industries have been sent to China, they change their industries, don't destroy them. And in USA, millenials and centennials can't find jobs.
"I got 2 words for that? Who. Cares? You didn't becoming investors to be nice. You did it to make money! You don't care if they make wire and cable, sell fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You want to make money! I'm the only friend you got. I'm making you money. Take the money."
That part at 1:27-1:52 is the best of this particular scene. The words delivered by Peck and the look on Danny's face when his character is called out is a seminal point in the movie. Great dialogue, acting, directing, editing, etc.... it all came together here.
Jorgy was old school. He was stuck in WWII era. Time passed him by. I understand he was trying to tell the stockholders he cared about them and making them money, but he also cared about the employees, providing them their way of making a living because what’s the alternative? Unemployment? How does that help serve the community and economy?
yet, look at that fictional town today. A shadow of its former self with no industry no jobs outside of maybe a Walmart. That generation took the money but left nothing behind for future generations.
Gregory Peck's character is a Fordist industrial capitalist who represents an era when the United States was the leading manufacturer of goods. Devito's character represents the new finance capitalists of the post-Fordist age under Reagan's deregulation of the financial sector. Both want to make money for the shareholders but the former believes they should do everything to produce a great product while the latter is interested in taking the company's shares to invest in another market.
Morally he was right. Tactically (refusing to take out a loan to buy back stock, refusing to change the way he did business, and refusing to change the state where the factory was incorporated) he was wrong. He was right about the future of America too but this was his fault and even his friends and family told him so because they saw what was coming.
Larry the Liquidator --- "the robber barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake. A coal mine. A railroad. Banks. This man leaves nothing. He creates nothing. He builds nothing. He runs nothing. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if he said 'I know how to run your business better than you', That would be worth something to talk about. But he's not saying that. He's saying that at this particular moment in time you're worth more dead than alive."
The one major flaw in this speech is when he basically says "Someday, things will get better and we'll be profitable". But there's no promise that day will ever come. If a business can't change and adapt to changing circumstances, to innovate and explore new avenues of profit when the old well starts drying up, that business is going to die a slow death. We do genuinely see, in the ending, that Garfield is more than willing to sell the factory to the workers so it can be repurposed to make the steel mesh needed for airbags. That's literally something that Peck's character could have looked into to help make his business profitable. Explore new avenues of business, seek new means by which he could use his existing business to produce the products that are needed in the here and now, rather than what used to be needed decades ago. But no, he wants to keep things as they are. He thinks that the world should change to suit him, rather than he change his business to suit the needs of the world he now lives in. He could have easily saved his own business long ago, but he was too set in his ways to do what was needed to make that happen.
But gamestop was already adapting to the changing economic winds. Most businesses don't start adapting until the proverbial meteor has already struck the earth, blotted out the sun and destroyed most plant life.
There are 2 kinds of economy. The financial economy which is paper-based stocks or share holders stock s and worth nothing because it is not supported by anything tangible. The physical economy which is physical industrial assets-based producing industrial properties and lands producing physical tangible products that supports the worthless shareholders stocks which are worthless pieces of paper by themselves alone. The financial economy produces nothing and is a worthless paper-based economy supported by psychology. The physical economy THAT PRODUCES SOMETHING and is a worthy physical tangible products-based economy supported by worthy products that has REAL WORTH. The real economy of a nation is it's physical producing economy, not it's worthless paper-based speculating economy of fucking wall street.
Because of people like Larry that produces nothing because they only make worthless paper-based shares of stockholders shares of stock supported by nothing, nothing except by speculation and politicians' promises, America's economy is in a state of disrepair that President Trump wants to repair it back to where it was in 1979 when everything that Americans are buying are ALL LOCALLY MANUFACTURED AND PRODUCED!
@@darthvader5300 Very well said my friend. Ever since the dollar was de-linked from gold the financial economy lost all connection to the real economy.....financial collapse was therefore inevitable
The irony in this situation is that it didn't need to happen. The ending, the plant gets sold back, re-equipped and will make airbags for cars. If the company had started looking for such a plan 6-12 months before Larry the Liquidator took notice of it... ...its not headed to this point. But the "do it the way we've always done it" mentality while ignoring the ascending costs of utilities, maintenance on aging equipment, and a workforce that probably was vesting in pensions... He's not wrong that "Made in America" should mean something. But hopes & prayers aren't a business plan. Larry's (Danny Devito) subsequent speech maybe isn't what you want to hear... but it's what you need to hear. How many iconic franchises & brands that were expanding from the 1950s & 1960s have been disappearing since the 1990s? Kodak Polaroid Kmart Sears Ben Franklin RadioShack Tyco Toys R Us K & B Toys Herbergers Macy's Blockbuster Pizza Hut Pamida Howard Johnsons What was their leadership like at the end?
@@libertyprime69 Where? Their 80s buildings are turning into tax preparers or Panda Gardens or Mexican restaurants scooping them up. I don't doubt Pizza Hut still exists in 2024. But it's been shedding locations for about 10 years now...
Now right there is an awesome presentation of the business sense, morals and ethics in America on keeping the business of America alive by the late great Gregory Peck. RIP Gregory Peck!
Peck's character IS old school--but not in a good way. From 2:15 to 2:52, he seems to have a hunky-dory, rose-colored view of "oh, don't worry about it--we'll pull through, when the economy changes in our favor." Well...what if it doesn't? "It WILL!" Of course, Devito's character points out the folly of this reasoning.
I don't agree,, he hints at this at the beginning of his speech, when he states that if "Larry the liquidator" had a better plan for running the business, that would be another thing, and tough economic times is a thread through out his speech. It's a long view (think China currently.) Versus the short view, (the US unfortunately) One model is sustainable, the other is not.
@@ricardocantoral7672 Garfield appealed to fear. That's why he won. The lizard brain always wins and the elite know that and use that to manipulate us to be modern slaves for them.
No because Netflix will always have value by owning their own IPs and being recognizable as able to provide a service. They're the next Fox Entertainment, they're going to get absorbed by a bigger company at some point.
The problem that Jorgy has is the "I'm doing it the way I've always done it" mentality. This is a meeting about to decide the fate of of a business that has its stock traded on the stock market. Jorgy offered no strategy. He offered no plan to increase wire & cable sales or diversify into making something in a growing market... like the air bag solution that came up after the vote. He approached a shareholders meeting like a pastor with a sermon & a prayer. Larry Garfield (Danny Devito) came to a business meeting armed with candor and information. He wasn't about hurting people. But what his group was about to do would cost jobs. [So was the way Jorgy was going... the difference was Larry wasn't heading for bankruptcy when the stock price drops so low its no longer traded. Jorgy was... the only question was how long before he got there.]
steve job's lesson plan in business 1 Customers don’t know what they want.“We built [the Mac] for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research.” Twelve years later, he told Business Week: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” 2 Maintain obsessive secrecy This didn’t just apply to the ultra secrecy around Apple’s products, the details of which were famously guarded until unveiled in Jobs’ mind-bending keynotes (down to his famous “there’s one more thing”). Super secrecy also applied to the eight-year-long, closed-lipped strategy that Apple employed with investors and the media about Jobs’ health problems (the concealment of which “disgusted” one board member, the late Jerome York). 3 Project a reality-distortion field.- I have a PhD in this area, and he was so charismatic he could convince me of things I didn’t actually believe.” Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field” is legendary, and refers to his ability to exert his knowledge, charisma, personal and persistence to convince anyone of anything. 4 Micromanage every detail. Not only did he control every aspect of product design, he also weighed in on the glass stairs in Apple stores (for which he held a patent), the design of the Apple shuttle buses, and the food in the cafeteria, to cite just a few examples. 5 Beat people up. Machiavelli provided the philosophical justification for the “ends justify the means” in politics and war; one could argue that Steve Jobs was the personification of that approach in business.
So true...the really bad part is they (Gov) don't even turn a profit...because there is no reason to turn a profit...they just tax the money they need.
Also, because some things are important to life, like healthcare, education, housing, and don't turn a profit, but ARE necessary to have a civilized and decent society. That's what taxes are for. The roads, pipes, electricity, gas, and everything you need and take for granted but didn't build personally yourself, none of that infrastructure was free. Luckily we have this thing called "government" so we can have a society for everyone, not just the rich. Roads and bridges and new technology all came from taxes and taxes maintain and develop it...or should... instead we give tax cuts to the affluent and wonder why stores have to put shampoo behind locks. Maybe the wealth hoarding at the top needs some regulations of any kind. Maybe bilkionaires shouldn't exist while people are starving. Maybe the army should be building housing instead of destroying other countries.
@@kitcoffey7194 Outside of communications, many comforts we have today are a result of private enterprise and you assume that government should be the only one providing those aforementioned services. Why? Why can't free enterprise provide some of those services? The competition would do us all good, we shouldn't have one entity controlling it all. Also, this whole notion of subsidizing the rich is naive when you actually understand income stats. Many people will reach the top one percent tax bracket only once in their lives. They are not permanently rich and those with businesses will frequently experience downturns in the market. What we need is more control over our lives, give more money back to the people instead of giving it to people who waste it and never answer for any consequences.
“A business is worth more than the price of its stock!” Yours was, that’s why he bought up all that stock when it was cheap. If the price had gone up, then it would have been valued accurately.
missed the point entirely, finance bro a community having solid jobs and real benefits and pensions preserves the only kind of standard of living that's worth having a society for.
@@pjabrony8280 go home, capitalist, you're drunk on your own ideology. Try learning about alternative economic systems because no one cries at landlord or financebros graves. No one visits them either.
I’m going. To say something controversial Peck was right here, not just in his moral view but how he started. His predictions about how the company could become profitable were reasonable. You can’t turn on and off industry, it take time and requires skills. Destroying a company because it’s looks bad at the moment has a devastating effect in the future.
Rebuilding the infrastructure. If the fictional New England Wire & Cable would've held on until the most recent infrastructure bill, he'd been exactly right.
I have always loved Devito’s speech more than Pecks, but the older I get, I realized that DeVito is just a robber-baron, which is the exact reason the USA is in the state it is in at this very moment.
Devito was speaking truth. Peck would have bankrupted the company with his old thinking and hoping the world would turn back to how it used to be. Either they sold now and got something or lost it all when it went bankrupt. The "airbags" ending had nothing to do with Peck.
DeVito did not create the conditions that killed the company. He just showed up at the end when the company was already dead, like DeVito's character said. If anybody killed the company it was the politicians that allowed manufacturing to be shipped overseas or the leadership of the company, which didn't change with the times.
Can we get this with better audio? It deserves it. Lot of cynics in the comments. Meanwhile y'all think inflation, limited choices, monopolies happen out of nowhere. We have 1 percent of the country owning something like 90 percent of the wealth. it's unsustainable. Finance types and landlords are parasites and no one cries at their graves.
All he says, doesn't matter squat in the real world - it would matter --- IF the Directors and the CEO had been worth their salt and enabled the business to change with the time - that is THEIR JOB. They failed and so the business failed. Workers can only work so hard, and so long...
"when the Yen is weaker and the dollar is stronger" Oh dear. He doesnt know anything about fractional reserve banking and inflation. Money As Debt or Money Banking and the Federal Reserve are two great documentires. Id have to see this movie again. Last time i seen it i was a kid> now ive got an education its hard to tell from two short speeches whos in the right and whos in the worng
Sometimes I think the world has forgotten this philosophy---that in order for an economy to flourish you have to make things people want and sell them, not just shuffle around paper and send e-mails.
Making things people want was Garfield's point in the end: this company is dead because of obsolescence... nobody wants to buy what they're making any more. Take the money and invest it where you'll produce something of value.
The employees and shareholders have made a mess of the company. The shareholders have a chance to salvage something. The employees and their unions sucked all the blood out of the company and that killed the golden goose.
There are 2 kinds of economy. The financial economy which is paper-based stocks or share holders stock s and worth nothing because it is not supported by anything tangible. The physical economy which is physical industrial assets-based producing industrial properties and lands producing physical tangible products that supports the worthless shareholders stocks which are worthless pieces of paper by themselves alone. The financial economy produces nothing and is a worthless paper-based economy supported by psychology. The physical economy THAT PRODUCES SOMETHING and is a worthy physical tangible products-based economy supported by worthy products that has REAL WORTH. The real economy of a nation is it's physical producing economy, not it's worthless paper-based speculating economy of fucking wall street.
