Matt,
 
 
> Doesn't he [Cosmo] at one point say to Robert Redford
 
Now I remember. Martin is his character's name.
 
> about his
> crime connections, "That's just my day job," and he moves the
> conversation into a sealed room to prevent his discussion with
> RR from being bugged by his Bosses (capital B)?
 
Yes. A key scene for me: The Cray room dialogue.
I have titled it like that because the computer in that sealed room where
they sit on to talk is a Cray. They are actually sitting on the cooling
engines. When Cray designed that supercomputer they did not know what
to make of the heat sinks (it produced a *lot* of heat), so they made them
into a comfy sitting group around the actual machine.
Upon ordering a Cray MPX for at least $4Mil, one could negotiate the pattern
or colors on the cushions for free.
 
>  I guess I
> interpreted his motivations as purely socialistic (or, at
> least, Hollywood's version of such).
 
Hmmm... Hollywood's version of socialism is something I never put an eye on.
However. Do we really need socialism here?
I may be naive, but what are the chances of Cosmo having larned about
socialistic ideology or him developing the ideas himself?
He is depicted as a bright '68 generation type with a broad insight
of 'how life works' after all.
I may be wrong here, upon second thought.
Yeah, what is Cosmo's motivation? hmmm...
 
Hollywood _loves_ two characters: the crazy hippie (as a discriminized
element) and the crazy scientist (that is not taken seriously).
There could be so much more to tell about such characters, but I guess
that differentiated views about 'other ideas' are not allowed
in Hollywood.
And I deem that there are a lot of phobias mixed in there.
(->cold war syndrome, McCarthyism, etc.)
 
Daniel Pisano
Darmstadt Tech, Germany