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Speed The Plow

Bobby Gould is the highest ranking person who can get money for movies but must decide which projects and people to support, weighing personal and financial value. Charlie Fox works hard but depends on Gould's approval since he lacks Gould's position. Karen is new to the industry and tries to use her body and manipulate Gould's conscience to advance her career. The play depicts the hierarchy and each character's strategies to succeed in a cutthroat environment where unofficial deals can easily fall through.

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185 views1 page

Speed The Plow

Bobby Gould is the highest ranking person who can get money for movies but must decide which projects and people to support, weighing personal and financial value. Charlie Fox works hard but depends on Gould's approval since he lacks Gould's position. Karen is new to the industry and tries to use her body and manipulate Gould's conscience to advance her career. The play depicts the hierarchy and each character's strategies to succeed in a cutthroat environment where unofficial deals can easily fall through.

Uploaded by

tape3499
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Speed-the-Plow

As a quote of David Mamet states, “[he] always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn’t what’s
on the screen. It’s what you have to do to raise the money.“ In his play “Speed-the-Plow“ it is
especially the three different positions in hierarchy of his characters which show the violence of this
process by it’s involvement of responsibility, dependence and use of each other and overall the fine
line between having it all and losing it all.
The highest-ranking one in the Hierarchy is Bobby Gould. With his high position it is easy
for him to get money for a movie, at least to a certain degree. Though, at the same time this
becomes a burden for him, because he has to make a decision, and many know of his power and
try to use it. He now has to be leery of everybody, even of his friend Charlie Fox. When he comes
up to him, he is first trying to tell him that he is bothered by people asking him for favors. Only
when he realizes that Fox has a movie proposal that is also valuable to himself he accepts it. He
has the power of the money, but has to make the decision weather it is valuable to him personally
or financially and which people he supports and if they deserve it.
The second highest is Fox, who seems to work as hard as Gould, but did not make it to the
same position. As a result, no matter how hard he works, he is dependent on other peoples will to
support him eventually. He has to use his friendship with Gould and still with a change of mind of
him he loses everything. Because of the short amount of time there is to deicide about movies, Fox
pretends to have had the chance of going to another studio to get the movie made, however, I think
this is a bluff, because he knows that he went to Gould not because he wanted to let him have a
share of the success, but because it was his only chance to even get this far.
Karen then, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. She has never before worked in the business
and therefore sees the chance to get into it by using her body and playing with Goulds conscience
and trouble to do the right thing. By this, she is also accepting that Fox loses his chance to get his
movie made and interpose herself between Fox and Gould. But since all of those ways of trying to
succeed are not based on contract and are unofficial, it is very easy to lose everything.
All those characters and the ways they try to achieve their goals show the dichotomy they
have to handle. They might have to act against their true beliefs, with a huge chance of it being
worth nothing. It becomes clear that there is no succeed in “going through channels“.

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