Sam is a national treasure, and I don't mean to step on his brilliant filmmaking, but...
I like the Duck of Death and am not trying to pile on, but when he wouldn't declare his pick for the football game tomorrow it reminded me of something that happened when I was the macher closing big wall street deals. It was 1998 (I had to google the deal to remember when it happened:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB888852288204262500). I was working at a smaller NYC law firm that was your classic NY Jew lawyer firm...where the white shoe firms were all about being proper and by the book (think Mitt Romney as a lawyer), my firm was 99% Brooklyn guys who would do whatever it took to get things done in the way the client wanted.
The partner on the deal, Steve Wolosky (
https://www.olshanlaw.com/attorneys-Steve-Wolosky.html), was probably the smartest and most ruthless negotiator I've ever met and he was really getting annoyed with the lawyers for the company our client was acquiring (we represented WHX in the acquisition off Handy & Harman). Those lawyers were at Skadden, a firm that at the time was probably the top big firm for mergers and acquisitions, and Steve hated them.
So...because the deal was being financed with a private debt offering, and Handy & Harman was a public company that had not yet filed its quarterly report with the SEC at the time of the deal, we needed H&H to file an 8K with the upcoming quarterly results so we could then incorporate those numbers into the 144A private placement document that was being used to pitch the debt to investors. We got on a call with Skadden, their accountants (I think it was KPMG), H&H, the SEC and a few other interested parties to finalize the plans for the 8K filing.
Skadden just wouldn't answer a question without a really long, pointless and unhelpful story(much like this post) as to why they weren't going to agree.
At that point, Steve took over the call from me and said "You know what? I love Skaddden. You can ask them to look outside and tell you whether the sky is blue and they'll talk for an hour about the request, then tell you they'll get right back to you after they can discuss it internally, then a few weeks later they'll call you back, finally, and tell you that the sky may or may not have been blue but if you need the answer now they'll have to hire a meterologist and then they'll stick you with the bill."
There was utter silence for a few seconds and the Skadden guys just hung up without saying another word.
That reminds me of how Duck answered the question (and by the way, we actually did have desert drinks at closing dinners, but usually it was port).
