Boiler Room

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Sure to make you think twice before responding to the next telephone sales call you receive, this volume explores why telephone boiler rooms and other scams thrive and how fraudulent techniques and deception migrate to and from conventional businesses. "The Boiler Room and Other Telephone Sales Scams" is grounded in the nine years Robert Stevenson spent working covertly as a "participant-observer" in telephone rooms (the ethical implications of which he discusses in an epilogue). As Stevenson details boiler room hierarchy, you'll learn why all boilers are telephone salesmen but not all telephone salesmen are boilers. You'll read about the "heat" rising in rooms where experienced pitchmen use tried-and-true manipulative techniques to overcome objections to sales. And you'll marvel at Stevenson's insider knowledge of product houses, service shops, and other aspects of a major industry in! which both employees and customers are in daily peril-the former of losing their jobs and the latter of losing their money. "The Boiler Room and Other Telephone Sales Scams" is required reading for anyone who's ever picked up a telephone and been asked to buy a product or a service. It's also an invaluable study of a widespread form of deviance and occupational crime, essential reading for students of criminology and the sociology of occupations.DVD'SThe intense soundtrack of Boiler Room is a fitting underscore for this movie, which pulses with the vigor of young, rich, amoral men wreaking havoc. This is not the antisocietal havoc of Fight Club, but the more deliberate mayhem that comes from greed run amok. The testosterone-junkie brokers of J.T. Marlin (the only female in the office is Abby, the receptionist and love interest, played by Nia Long) are out to make the sale, and whether that sale is legal or ethical doesn't matter.

Seth Davis (Giovanni Ri! bisi) is a 19-year-old college dropout who strives for approva! l from h is father (Ron Rifkin), a judge who is horrified that his son operates a 24-hour illicit casino. When an old friend visits the casino with a fellow broker, Davis is impressed by their wads of money and yellow Ferrari, and decides to join the firm. In no time he's making sales and settling into the groove of the office and all the after-hours perks, but the dream fades when Davis discovers the scam that is making all of the brokers wealthy beyond their dreams.

Borrowing heavily from Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room is at its best when dealing with matters of money, and powerful scenes of Davis learning to be a "closer" showcase the significant talent of Ribisi, Nicky Katt, and Vin Diesel. The movie flounders when developing the relationship between Davis and his father, becoming sentimental and trite. However, as a fable of modern society and a nostalgic vehicle about the days of yuppies past, Boiler Room is right on the money. ! --Jenny Brown

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