The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of

"I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."

--Dashiel Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, as said by Kasper Gutman

Being a trial lawyer is a lot like being a private detective. Each case is its own little mystery. There are witnesses and testimony. Some are lying. Many are withholding part of the truth. It is the lawyer’s job to find the truth, put the pieces together, solve the mystery, and then tell the story.

I have just about the perfect case of detection going on right now. It combines my government contracts and my wage and hour knowledge. The man and his moment had met. There are three other parties were involved long before I came in the picture but none of them understood what the case was about.  Each was operating under a misunderstanding of the facts and the law. The case is a classic detective novel — I  had to pulled the strings and unraveled the mystery; one party is trying to conceal the truth. Another party was incompetent. The third party is drunk on power. And the fourth party, my client, is the damsel in distress, an innocent victim. It has all the elements of a great mystery.  

Which leads me to the point of this blog – my ode to my favorite movie, The Maltese Falcon. If you want to really learn something about a person, ask them what their favorite book or movie is. The answer is a window into their soul.  

The New York Times yesterday listed The Maltese Falcon as the greatest hardboiled fiction book. I find myself identifying with the author Dashiell Hammett and his fictional private investigator Sam Spade. It is good to know my fixation is not singular. 

The interesting thing about the movie is how it was almost entirely cribbed from the dialogue in the book. The Maltese Falcon was a low budget production, with a new first time director (John Houston) and shot mostly in single takes in chronological order. It was never expected to be anything important. Yet, I tell people it was the best movie ever made. Each of the actors has his or her own story. Humphrey Bogart was a B-grade supporting actor until his breakout in this movie. Mary Astor  was recovering from a sex scandal and divorce. Peter Lorre was just emerging as a great character actor. And my favorite, Sidney Greenstreet (The Fat Man), was playing his first movie role at age 62. 

As great as the book is, the movie is even better. That isn’t usually the case. The last line of the movie — “the stuff that dreams are made of,” isn’t in the book, and was reputedly ad libbed by Bogart. There is no better last line in over 100 years of movies.