Thanks to Dina, who came up with the correct answer, the movie in question is "Schindler's List."
(Also submitted to Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "W" is for "Wheeling")
Each week I’ve been posting a little Berownial quiz. Folks seem to like them so here’s another one.
If we’ve had enough Shakespeare for a while, how about motion pictures as a topic? I wrote the following scene, inspired by one of the best movies of the past few decades. Your assignment – should you choose to accept it – is to figure out from the clues which movie it suggests.
“What is all this? I go on vacation for a couple of weeks and come back to chaos! What happened?”
“We’ve been closed down.”
“Closed down? What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s the opposite of ‘opened up,’ except it’s ’closed down’.”
“Come on, Irv. Skip the wisecracks. Tell me what has happened.”
“I thought you knew. It's been very eventful. We’ve got a new CEO and he’s moving the corporation to Wheeling, West Virginia. So he has very softly closed down our whole branch of the company.”
“Wheeling – where the hell is that?”
“I believe it’s in West Virginia, as I may have mentioned.”
“So why does this guy want to take the company there?”
“Well, it seems that he lived there as a kid and wants to move back.”
“You mean to tell me this whole huge corporation is being uprooted and torn apart and moved across the country, with all the hardships that implies, simply because the CEO wants to go back to his home town? Is that possible?”
“Welcome to Economics 101, titled ‘The Perks of Management’. Even worse, they're taking all our workers here in this division and shipping them off, almost like to prison.",
“But why would he shut us down? Our record is profitable.”
“But we’re manufacturing. Seems that in our country people who work in manufacturing, folks who actually make stuff as opposed to folks who just sit in front of computer screens, are on the way out.”
“But we make excellent products! We contribute to the national economy. We in manufacturing are what has made America great! There’s a moral issue here.”
“Sounds like you’re making a speech. As for the moral issue, that’s a pretty high-falutin’ term for what we’ve actually been doing here – making pots and pans for the military.”
“So what? They’re still excellent products!”
“Yes, but face it, they’re pots and pans that can be made by kids in Jiangsu Province or some such place for a fraction of what it costs here to make a pot. Or, as far as that goes, a pan.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to look into this. They say there's a lot of prejudice in our country because of the positions taken by our Leader. But here I am doing business with a Jewish guy and we're doing fine.”
“I'm happy to hear it.”
"I mean it. I’m going to see that at least you, Irving Starr, will have a job. Let’s face it, I’m the one in the front office but I’m just an echo of what goes on here. I'm well aware that you’re the guy who made things run. This business would have been nothing without you.”
“And now it’s going to be nothing with me.”
Go on, have a go. Which movie is suggested by the above scene?
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings.)
11 years ago