1

-Obie: They wanna lock you out.

-Tony: Why, cause the stocks dip 40 points? We knew this was gonna happen.

-Pepper: 56 and a half.

-Tony: It doesn't matter. We own a controlling interest in the company.

-Obie: Tony, the Board has rights too. They are making the case that you and your new direction isn't in a company's best interest.

-Tony: I'm being responsible. That's a new direction. For me... for the company. I mean, me on the company's behalf being responsible for the way that... Oh, this is great!

-Obie: Oh c'mon, wait! Tony, Tony!

-Tony: I'll be in the shop.

-Obie: Hey, hey, Tony, listen. I'm trying to turn this thing around but you gotta give me something. Something to pitch them. Let me have the engineers analyze that, you know, draw some specs.

-Tony: No. No. Absolutely not. This one stays with me. That's it Obie. Forget it.

-- Iron Man 2008

Does making the case mean making the arguments? What components constitute a typical case/argument? Is c'mon used here to show that you know what somebody has said is not correct?

Does pitch mean persuade here? Can I say pitch somebody something (ditransitive)? The dictionaries don't give a hint.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Yes, making the case means making reasons to support what they want to do. I suppose that could be arguments. As to what a case or argument consists of, that would probably be a question you could ask a lawyer.

c'mon (contraction of Come on! = exclamation of disbelief) basically means something like "wait" or "hold on". He is trying to get Tony's attention to tell him his point of view.

When you are trying to sell something (or some idea in this case) to someone, you can use to pitch to describe that action. Check this definition pitch senses 6 or 28. In some ways it is a persuasion I suppose.

Improve this answer
5
  • I clarified the "expanded" version of c'mon because it probably isn't obvious to some non-native speakers. Personally I find the cited pitch without to (or maybe at) a little bit "iffy", but I'm sure it's used.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jun 28, 2014 at 16:15
  • Oh, I see. After Obie shows his disbelief he tries to convince Tony by making his case. And, sir, are you suggesting Something to pitch (to/at) them? I didn't hear that said in the movie. The scripts didn't show that either. Then it's just colloquial. @FumbleFingers
    – Kinzle B
    Jun 28, 2014 at 16:30
  • I tend to think of c'mon as being more literal in a metaphoric sense- You are "standing" over there with your belief which is so "clearly" unbelievable that you must be sticking to it out of sheer pigheadedness. "C'mon" (Come on) means we are encouraging you to stop standing over there and to come on over and join us and our "clearly superior" arguments and that if you do we won't hold your initial beliefs against you.
    – Jim
    Jun 28, 2014 at 16:32
  • Very good arguments you got there. You've connected the dots! @Jim
    – Kinzle B
    Jun 28, 2014 at 16:37
  • @Zhanlong: As you probably know, prepositions (and other "non-essential" words) are highly likely to be discarded in particular specialised contexts (especially, spoken ones) if they need to be used often in that context. The more general community are often aware of domain-specific slang usages where this happens, but we tend to keep the preposition longer because it helps other people recognise that we're referencing a "specialised vocabulary" usage.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jun 28, 2014 at 17:38

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .