Frozen Pitch
Picture the lot of the old-time gentleman heroin dealer.
Going by The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), the job of furnishing local reprobates with ‘the gear’ was one that required suavité, a spiffy set of duds, and considerable gift of the gab. It seems to me that standards in this area have fallen in recent years. Mind you, I’m mostly going by what I’ve seen on The Wire, where heroin deals are transacted bluntly, hastily and with little sense of occasion. After pulling up to a ‘corner’, the prospective customer is brusquely serviced by an often surly ‘hookup’, garishly attired in a baggy tracksuit or puffy down-filled jacket, and enormous trainers. After insolently snatching the proffered tender, this ill-mannered functionary offers a curt nod to an associate, who conveys the merchandise from a nearby ‘stash’, often a dirty milkshake container or filthy sock crumpled beneath a ‘stoop’. Occasionally, the customer will also receive a mouthful of abuse, or even several rounds from a Glock pistol to the upper thigh, for their trouble. Where is the service, I ask you? The style? The pride in the sale?
Compare this with how similar transactions were conducted, just a few decades earlier. In The Man with the Golden Arm, Frank Sinatra plays ‘Frankie Machine’, an out-of-work drummer who’ll do anything for his next ‘fix’. The fact that Frank is called ‘Frank’ is a constant distraction; one waits for Sammy and Dean to join him in his seedy apartment to tie off and shoot up, between wisecracks and choruses of ‘Luck Be a Lady’. Equally confusing is Frank’s card-sharp nickname, ‘The Dealer’. The film’s dealer is constantly asking after The Dealer, who is hard to miss – he looks just like Frank Sinatra – and when the dealer finally tracks down The Dealer, that’s when the fun begins.
For this is no sleazy curbside lowlife. The Man’s Man is a dapper gent with a pencil moustache and wardrobe much like that worn by Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles. Tailored tweed jacket and pants, a shimmering waistcoat complete with fob watch, a silver-topped cane, spats, and possibly, in one scene, a top hat. Played with unctuous élan by Darren McGavin (later Kolchack: The Night Stalker), this debonair ‘pusher’ wafts into scenes like Jeeves himself, reminding Frank that his estimable service is available round the clock and at a very reasonable price. None of the aloof manners and foul-mouthed depravity of present-day Baltimore’s spoilt corner-churls. And unlike them, this gentleman, the dealer, has to work to secure his custom. Several times, The Dealer declares that he is off the gear, that ‘the monkey’s gone’, and the dealer is forced to remind him that ‘the monkey never dies, Dealer. It just sits in a corner, waiting its turn.’ It’s never that easy, of course, and the dealer then has to crank the patter up a notch, sidling up behind The Dealer, Iago-style, to roll out a lengthy and seductive sales pitch, heavy on the metaphor (‘I tried to give up candy once’), while positively bursting out of his immaculate vest with pride in the quality of his product. It’s an exhausting performance, especially when you realise this is all to secure a single five-dollar sale! And included in the price is a languorous visit to the dealer’s cosy digs, where the necessary tools of addiction are laid out on the dining-room table with all the ceremony of elevenses at Gosford Park. ‘What savoir-faire!’, one thinks. Now this is how a drug deal should go down! Although the dealer does soon plunge to his death, headfirst down a stairwell.
Of course, in those days, it wasn’t just the ‘horse’ that was marketed with a monologue of swirling beguilement. This approach was soon adopted by the car salesman, and the ad man of the type seen on TV’s Mad Men. Don Draper’s silky, ‘soulful’ pitches, usually to a table of sceptical no-nonsense midwestern business squares, are fast becoming the show’s most parodiable element (would that I had the budget, I would love to stage a scene in which Draper pitches a new campaign to Ken Bruce and his ‘twin sister’, Madonna), but they get me every time. Such slick pitches had fallen out of style by the time I worked, briefly, at an advertising agency in the early nineteen eighties, replaced by an early version of the ‘PowerPoint presentation’ and even more alcohol intake than that of Roger Sterling himself (am I imagining it, or did I see him pour himself a drink in the elevator in a recent episode?). These days, aside from the ongoing work at our car dealerships, there seems to be little call for the Don Draper approach. The art of one-on-one salesmanship has faded, like a shopworn party trick. Ever since an exhausted Jack Lemmon failed to secure ‘the good leads, the Glengarry leads’, we’ve all developed a kind of shared immunity to the traditional salesman’s velvet patterstorm. Most of them aren’t even trying any more.
No less than four times in the last twenty months, a salesman has tried to tell me that the item I’m considering for purchase is a good choice because ‘I’ve actually got that one at home myself’. I assume it’s something they’ve been told to say, at a course, or weekend seminar. The items in question were, in chronological order, a table, a computer printer, a quite bizarre cabinet for the storing of DVDs, and another computer printer (at the same store). In each case, the number of options on display was well into double figures, so the chance of the salesman having selected the exact same couch, for example, was statistically remote. But they don’t seem to like this being pointed out, nor do they seem keen to offer proof in the form of photographic evidence to be supplied the following day, and in most cases I have been asked to leave the store before purchase could be effected.
Except for the other day, when I tried to buy a cheap workhorse printer at a large office supplies store.
‘I’ve actually got that one at home myself,’ said the salesman, but halfway through he kind of dropped the ball and the sentence just…petered…out…awkwardly. We both knew it was bullshit. Without meeting my eyes, he thrust the box at me, turned, and scuttled away.
True, it may be bullshit, but I say bring back the dapper gent salesman and his oily patois. They’d shift a lot more dodgy printers if the dealer from The Man with the Golden Arm were cruising the shop floor, dressed to the nines and fondling a fob.
Even the heroin dealers could take a leaf. Oh, to see Don Draper manning a Baltimore corner, selling, really selling, a couple of caps of ‘WMD’ to a mesmerised drive-by customer.
‘Think of this hit of scag as your grandmother’s secret recipe for apple crumble.’
‘Fuck you, man! I just want my shit and outta here!’
‘Think of it as a trip to a pleasant tropical island.’
‘Gimme my shit, Draper!’
‘It’s yours. The world…is yours.’
(SCREECH OF TYRES)
‘Peggy, can you send over my two o’clock, a Mr Bubbles from the west tower. Oh, and feel free to tie one on yourself.’
‘Yes, Mr Draper. Oh, and I’ll have them move the stash house again.’
And so ends another episode of Madison Ave Re-Up.
Cue ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and roll credits.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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