I’m an Alec Baldwin fan from way back. Forget all you Johnny-come-latelys who are jazzed by his performances on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live. I’m talking She’s Having a Baby and Working Girl. I’m talking The Hunt for Red October.

And then, 1990’s Miami Blues launched him into the pantheon. His performance in that wonderful film remains one of my favorite by anybody ever.

He followed that up with a nice turn in Woody Allen’s Alice and a very winning and sentimental performance in Prelude to a Kiss. The rest of the 90s weren’t as kind, apart from a memorable role in Malice (where he had some delicious Aaron Sorkin dialogue to work with) and a funny cameo in Notting Hill. But the 00s have seen him rebound in a huge way, starting with his superb narration of The Royal Tenenbaums (not to mention his voice work on Thomas the Tank Engine), moving on to wonderful performances in Scorsese’s The Aviator and The Departed, and culminating in one of television’s best-played roles on 30 Rock.

Quite a career. But I’ve left out the film that could well be the highlight of that whole 20 year span — Glengarry Glen Ross. Baldwin begins the film with a 10-minute monologue that instantly went down in movie history. Much credit goes to playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, of course, but as with all of Mamet’s work, it takes just the right actors to pull off his hyper-stylized text. Joe Mantegna is an expert at it. William H. Macy is, too. And Alec Baldwin might be the best of them all.

I worked in a movie theater when this film came out and my fellow ushers and I would sit in the back of the theater watching this scene so often we could recite it from memory. I still can. Going further, we would invent scenarios where we could use the same language to berate/motivate our staff of ushers.

“You rode a bike to get here today, I drove a fifteen thousand dollar Toyota.” “A.B.C. Always. Be. Cleaning.” Stuff like that.

I bet if this movie came out today, Baldwin would be nominated for an Oscar for this brief scene. He should have been in 1992. He’ll have to settle for a mention on my blog.