1. Interpersonal
Communication in
American Hustle.
Gregory Lapointe
CMS 330

2. The Plot
This movie centers around Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and
Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) who are two con artists. Their
relationship blossoms, but Irving is hesitant of leaving his wife
Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) for the fear of losing his son
Danny. While working on their loan scam act Sydney and Irving
are busted by a low level FBI agent trying to make his mark in
the Bureau Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso offers to
release the two of them is they help him make four additional
arrests. Soon after Dimaso realizes how big of a bust he could
possibly make, by catch corrupt politicians. He plans to set up
New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), by using a
Arab Sheik to front money for the rebuilding of Atlantic City.

3. Irving Rosenfeld
(Christian Bale)
In American Hustle every
character has their own ways of
listening. For the movies main
character, Irving Rosenfeld he
has more of a content-oriented
listening style. He listens to what
the person he is talking to is
saying and bases what he will
say next off of that. He is a con
man to his roots, and the way he
listens reflects that. Every con he
pulls he knows what to say next
because of what the other person
talking is saying to him.

4. Sydney Prosser
(Amy Adams)
Sydney Prosser is Irving’s girlfriend and
second hand women for all his cons.
She has learned a lot from Irving about
how to con someone. Her listening
styles are kind of a mix because she has
two personalities, herself as Sydney and
the person she pretends to be when she
is conning someone Lady Edith
Greensly. Her listening styles mix from
People-oriented to Action-oriented.
When she is Edith she is more People-
oriented, conning someone to believe
she cares about every detail of that
persons life. As Sydney she is much
more action-oriented, wanting everything
to be in line and ready for when the next
job is at hand.

5. Richie DiMaso
(Bradley Cooper)
Richie DiMaso is the FBI agent that busted
Irving and Sydney’s con operation. He then
makes a deal to let them go free if they will help
him make four more arrests. Richie wants to
make his name in the FBI so when he sees a
chance to go bigger he does. Richie’s would
best be classified as a textbook case of Time-
oriented listening. He is constantly wanted to
jump to the next thing, and believes he knows
the end of everything someone is going to say
before they say it. The best example would be
how his boss, Stoddard Thorsen keeps trying to
tell him a story from his childhood that reflect
why Richie needs to not try to make a huge
splash all at once. Every time the story comes
up Richie cuts him off thinking he knows the
meaning of the story. Each time he is wrong
and he ends up walking away before Thorsen
tells him the end.

6. Rosalyn Rosenfeld
(Jennifer Lawrence)
Rosalyn Rosenfeld is the wife of Irving.
She Struggles with the fact that her son
Danny is the only reason Irving stays with
her. She is unpredictable and unstable,
but for some reason that draws Irving to
her every time. As for Rosalyn’s listening
technique she is a mix as well. I felt while
watching she feels like her is people-
oriented, she tries to use the books and
articles she reads to help her understand
more and she does say she has a gift for
reading people, but deep down she is
somewhat time-oriented. She isn’t as bad
a Richie but she has her moments when
she rushes through what people are
talking about or continues talking over
people but still hears what they are
saying.

7. Self Perception
Everyone in this film has a self perception
that they want to keep up. They all want
people to see them a certain way, or want to
influence someone to do something. With
Irving he has an extreme combover that he is
constantly having to keep up, but he has this
so people wont look at him any different.
Richie curls his hair, which was the style of
the time. He does this so he will be noticed
just like he wants to be noticed by the FBI.
Sydney comes up with an alter ego (Lady
Edith) to influence people to fall for the con,
which even Richie does. As for Rosalyn her
self perception can be seen in the nail polish
she is talking about. “It's like that perfume
that you love, that you can't stop smelling
even when there's something sour in it. Can't
get enough of it.” Which sums up the
character of Rosalyn perfectly.

8. Communicating in the Work Place
The communication in the work place is
very informal and unnatural, I would say
this is the one thing in the film that didn’t
seem realistic. Richie’s boss Thorsen is
kind of a push over but will not budge for
what Richie wants to do with busting
politicians. Richie cuts off his boss while
he is talking quite a lot. Richie also
always thinks he knows what everyone is
going to say, including his boss. One
scene that stood out was that Richie
goes against what his boss says and
transfers 2 million dollars to a bank
account to run his con. Thorsen boss
calls him and congratulates him for such
a great idea, even though he had nothing
to do with it.

9. Uncertainty Reduction Theory
There is one scene that really shows the
uncertainty reduction theory perfectly.
When Richie first works with Irving and
Sydney to bust another four people Irving
goes to a friend of his who lines up
people to get conned. Even though Irving
knows for sure that this man can line up
four people to buy fake art he asks him
twice so he can get him on tape saying it
so their isn’t any uncertainty. A couple of
moments later Richie comes in and the
guy tells him they could go for a much
bigger con with politicians and it catches
Richie’s attention. They talk for a moment
and Richie turns to Irving asking if he
heard him even though he is standing
right next to them and can clearly hear
them.

10. Implicit Personality Theory
When Irving and Sydney first meet
Irving notices a charm on Sydney’s
bracelet and uses assume similarity
to form a connection with her. The
charm is something related to Duke
Ellington and a conversation begins
between the two of them. She
states that “He saved her life more
then once”, and Irving says “Me
too.” They both say the song Jeep’s
Blues was the one that did and then
they go off together to listen to the
song. From that song alone their
relationship was formed.

11. Managing Conflict
The second scene in the movie really shows
how the conflict in this movie is managed,
and there is a lot of it in the movie. Irving has
to deal with the fact that he is not in complete
control of a con for the first time since he
started doing this. Richie is in charge but his
head is to big and sometimes will go a bit to
far and make a mistake. In this scene Irving
and Richie are having a small argument that
leads to Richie messing up Irving’s
combover which took the first couple minutes
of the movie to get right. You can see the
frustration build in Irving’s eyes when Sydney
steps in to manage the conflict. She tells
Richie to stop being stubborn while fixing
Irving’s hair and telling him to stop taking
everything personally. This is an example of
compromise.

12. Interpersonal Influence
This movie is laced with Interpersonal
Power. Irving has a way of influencing
everyone around him to do what he
think needs to happen. One of the first
examples of this is when Carmine
Polito (who they are trying to bust)
walks out of the room because he
thinks the deal is “shaky”. Irving has to
go get him and influence him to go and
take the deal, which he does by
showing that he relates to Polito and
because he has the knowledge so
Polito with trust him. Irving is also
influencal towards Richie because
unlike Richie, Irving is a con man and
knows what actually needs to happen
to make one of these deals go down.

13. Evaluation
First off I wanted to say that this is one of the best movies
for this project and I would completely agree with anyone
that says this is one of the best movies of the decade. The
communication in this film, while the content is a little more
extreme then my daily struggles, is very accurate in it
portrayal. Everything seems so seamless and real, While
putting it under the microscope for this project I was really
blown away by that aspect. This movie is a dialogue heavy
movie, there is little to no action, but the dialogue really
hooks you from the first scene. In comparison to my own
life, like I said; I have never been apart of an FBI bust. Yet
after seeing this movie I feel like it wouldn’t be too far off.

14. Sources
• Verderber, Kathleen S., and Rudolph F
Verderber. Inter-Act: Interpersonal
Communication Concepts, Skills, and Contexts.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Print
• American Hustle. Dir. David O. Russell. Perf.
Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper,
Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Ranner. 2014. DVD.
• Google Images