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| American Theater Guide: David Mamet |
Mamet, David (b. 1947), playwright and director. Born in Flossmore, Illinois, he studied at Goddard College, then settled in Chicago where he helped found the St. Nicholas Theatre Company, which produced many of his early plays. New Yorkers first saw his work Off Broadway with the popular double bill Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Duck Variations (1975). Among his subsequent plays are The Water Engine (1977), American Buffalo (1977), A Life in the Theater (1977), Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), Speed‐the‐Plow (1988), Oleanna (1992), Cryptogram (1995), The Old Neighborhood (1997), and Boston Marriage (2002). Mamet has directed his and others' plays, as well as written and directed films. Much of his work is characterized by minimal plots, sleazy characters, and colorful, rhythmic dialogue punctuated with profanity.
| Biography: David Alan Mamet |
Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet (born 1947) is highly praised for his accurate rendering of American vernacular, through which he explores the relationship between language and behavior.
David Alan Mamet was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 30, 1947. He studied at Goddard College in Vermont and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York.
Mamet's first play to receive attention, The Duck Variations (1972), displays features common to much of his work: a fixed setting, few characters, a sparse plot, and dialogue that captures the rhythms and syntax of everyday speech. In this play, two elderly Jewish men sit on a park bench discussing a plethora of unrelated subjects. Mamet's next play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974), examines confusion and misconceptions surrounding relationships between men and women. While some reviewers found this work offensive and misogynistic, Julius Novick contended that the play "is a compassionate, rueful comedy about how difficult it i…. for men to give themselves to women, and for women to give themselves to men. It suggests that the only thing to fear, sexually, is fear itself." This play was adapted for film as About Last Nigh….
In American Buffalo (1975) and The Water Engine: An American Fable (1977), Mamet explores contradictions and myths prevalent in the business world. American Buffalo, for which Mamet received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, is set in a junk shop where three men plot to steal a valuable coin. A lack of communication and understanding causes the men to abandon their efforts. The protagonist of The Water Engine creates an innovative engine but is murdered when he refuses to sell his invention to corporate lawyers.
A Life in the Theatre (1977) offers a stark and wryly humorous view of the theatrical world through the performances and backstage conversations between a veteran actor and a novice. Edith Oliver remarked: "Mamet has written - in gentle ridicule; in jokes, broad and tiny; and in comedy, high and low - a love letter to the theater." The Woods (1977) involves a young couple who discover the darker realities of their relationship while vacationing in an isolated woodland cabin. Mamet followed The Woods with three short domestic dramas in which he places considerable emphasis on dialogue. In Reunion (1977), a woman and her alcoholic father come to terms with their twenty-year separation; in Dark Pony (1977), a father relates a story to his young daughter as they drive home late at night; and The Sanctity of Marriage (1979) concerns the separation of a married couple.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), Mamet's most acclaimed work, is an expose of American business. In this play, four Florida real estate agents in competition to become their company's top salesperson victimize unsuspecting customers. Although Mamet portrays the agents as unethical and amoral, he shows respect for their finesse and sympathizes with their overly competitive way of life. Glengarry Glen Ross was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize in drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Mamet's next play, Edmond (1982), involves an unhappy businessman who leaves his wife and ventures into the seamier districts of New York City. After being beaten and robbed, the man turns to violence and is imprisoned for murdering a waitress. Gerald Weales viewed this play as a chilling example of how "we become part of our destructive surroundings." Prairie du chien (1985) and The Shawl (1985) are companion pieces in which Mamet employs supernatural elements. The first play centers on a bizarre, unsolvable murder, while the second concerns a psychic's fraudulent efforts to obtain a client's inheritance.
In addition to his work for the theater, Mamet has written several screenplays. The first, an adaptation of James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, is generally considered Mamet's least successful effort. In The Verdict, based on Barry Reed's novel Verdict, a downtrodden, alcoholic lawyer battles injustice within the judicial system to win a malpractice suit for a woman who suffered brain damage during childbirth. Reviewers extolled Mamet's terse dialogue, citing the lawyer's jury summation as a particularly powerful sequence of the film. In his screenplay The Untouchables, Mamet incorporates elements from federal agent Eliot Ness's memoirs and from the popular radio and television series. Set in Chicago, the film focuses on Ness's struggle to uphold the Prohibition law and bring mobster Al Capone to justice. Although David Denby found the script substandard for a writer of Mamet's talent, he called The Untouchables "a celebration of law enforcement as American spectacle - a straightforward, broadly entertaining movie."
Mamet has also taught at Goddard College, The Yale Drama School, and New York University. Further, he often lectures to classes at the Atlantic Theater Company and was one of the company's founding members.
Further Reading
Bigsby, C. W. E., David Mamet, Metheun, 1985.
Bock, Hedwig, and Albert Wertheim, editors, Essays on Contemporary American Drama, 1981, Max Hueber, pp. 207-23.
Carroll, Dennis, David Mamet, St. Martin's, 1987.
Contemporary Authors Bibliographical Series, Volume 3, Gale, 1986.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 9, 1978, pp. 360-61; Volume 15, 1980, pp. 355-58; Volume 34, 1985, pp. 217-24; Volume 46, 1988, pp. 245-56.
King, Kimball, Ten Modern American Playwrights, Garland, 1982.
America, May 15, 1993, p. 16.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: David Mamet |
By the beginning of the 21st cent. Mamet was widely regarded as one of the finest American writers for stage and screen. Some of his later plays, such as The Cryptogram (1995) and The Old Neighborhood (1997), have explored difficult semiautobiographical material. Mamet also ventured into satire with November, a play about contemporary presidential politics that was produced on Broadway in 2008. Throughout his career, Mamet has treated the themes of belonging, the vagaries of authority, the pivotal role played by loyalty, and the importance of speaking the truth. In addition to more than 20 plays and some two dozen screenplays, the prolific Mamet has also written novels, e.g., The Village (1994), several collections of essays (including the autobiographical Jafsie and John Henry, 1999, and Bambi vs. Godzilla, 2007, on the film industry), a book on acting (1997), and The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews (2006).
Bibliography
See biography by I. Nadel (2008); L. Kane, ed., David Mamet in Conversation (2001); studies by D. Carroll (1987), A. Dean (1990), N. Jones and S. Dykes (1991), L. Kane, ed. (1992) and as author (1999, 2004), G. Brewer (1993), C. C. Hudgins and L. Kane, ed. (2001), D. K. and J. A. Sauer (2003), H. Bloom, ed. (2004), and B. Barton (2005): C. Bigsby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet (2004).
| Works: Works by David Mamet |
| 1972 | Duck Variations. The Chicago playwright gains his first attention for this play about two old men who are sitting on a park bench and musing about their lives and the habits of ducks. The play showcases Mamet's characteristic sparse plot and convincing dialogue. |
| 1974 | Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Mamet receives his first critical success in this Chicago production of a drama about a budding romance jeopardized by the sexual hostility of the lovers' best friends. The play would reach New York in 1975, to be followed by a film version, About Last Night (1985). |
| 1975 | American Buffalo. Premiering in Chicago, Mamet's drama about a bungled heist of a valuable coin collection would reach Broadway in 1977, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and praise for its symbolic naturalism. |
| 1977 | A Life in the Theater. Mamet's drama contrasts attitudes toward acting and the theater from the perspectives of established and younger actors. Critics praise it as a witty encapsulation of the twentieth-century stage. The Water Engine, a play about the business world, in which an inventor is murdered after refusing to sell his creation, is also produced. |
| 1982 | Edmond. Mamet's play shows a middle-class New Yorker's descent into the city's seamy, criminal subculture, depicting, in the words of one reviewer, how "we become part of our destructive surroundings." |
| 1983 | Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet's ensemble play features several male characters in a real estate office, vying to obtain sales from the same list of prospects. As much a comedy as a drama, Mamet explores not only the salesmen's mentality but the different ages of man, as they desperately confront the demand to get ahead. Notable critics such as Robert Brustein call the play a classic--as good or better than Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. |
| 1988 | Speed-the-Plow. Mamet's trenchant dissection of Hollywood concerns a producer who is having an affair with his secretary. She persuades him to back a film adaptation of a literary work instead of his usual big-budget action films. The work wins the Tony Award for best play. |
| 1992 | Oleanna. Mamet's two-character play explores the timely subject of sexual harassment through the interactions of a female student and her professor, whom she denounces as a sexist. The professor may be self-satisfied or worse, but the audience is left to decide for itself whether he deserves the denial of tenure and ruined career that result from what might be the work of a manipulative woman with a political agenda. |
| 1995 | Death Defying Acts. Three authors each write one one-act play: Mamet, An Interview (in which a lawyer is sent to hell); May, Hotline (in which a hooker tries to gain solace from a neophyte phone volunteer); and Allen, Central Park West (a comic attack on Manhattan's upper crust). The plays are unified by an astringent, hard-boiled, big-city attitude. |
| 1995 | Cryptogram. The playwright wins the Obie Award for best play for this drama set in Chicago during the 1950s, about a child's emotional abuse. Reviewer Vincent Canby calls it "a horror story that also appears to be one of Mr. Mamet's most personal plays." |
| 1997 | The Old Neighborhood. Mamet's play is about Bobby, returning to his roots, rethinking what it has meant to grow up as a Jew. Critics find him an engaging character and are intrigued by Mamet's rare foray into his own Jewish background; they are also divided on how successfully this material is integrated into the play. |
| Quotes By: David Mamet |
Quotes:
"The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious."
"The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates."
"We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive."
"People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want."
"In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us."
"Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status."
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David Mamet
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| Wikipedia: David Mamet |
| David Mamet | |
|---|---|
Mamet at the premiere of Redbelt |
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| Born | November 30, 1947 Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Occupation | Author, playwright, screenwriter, film director |
| Nationality | United States |
| Notable work(s) | Lakeboat (1970) The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) The Unit (2006) |
David Alan Mamet (born November 30, 1947) is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for their exploration of masculinity. Mamet received Tony Award nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988), as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross. As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business. His newest play Race, starring James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas, is currently slated to open on Broadway on December 6, 2009.
Contents |
Mamet was born in Chicago, the son of Lenore June (née Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney.[1] One of his first jobs was as a busboy at Chicago's The Second City. He was educated at the Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Mamet is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company; he first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo.[2] He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross, which received its first Broadway revival in the summer of 2005.
Mamet's first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice (directed by Bob Rafelson), based upon James M. Cain's novel. He received an Academy Award nomination one year later for his first script, The Verdict, written in the late 1970s. He also wrote the screenplay for The Untouchables.
In 1987, Mamet made his film directing debut with House of Games, starring his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, and a host of longtime stage associates. He uses friends as actors,[3] especially in one early scene in the movie, which featured Vermont poker playing friends. He is quoted as saying, "It was my first film as a director and I needed support, so I stacked the deck." Two of the four poker buddies included in the film were fellow Goddard College graduates Allen Soule and Bob Silverstein.
Mamet remains a prolific writer and director, and has assembled an informal repertory company for his films, including Crouse, William H. Macy, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Ricky Jay, as well as some of the aforementioned poker buddies.
Like independent director John Sayles, Mamet funds his own films with the payments he receives for credited and uncredited rewrites of typically big-budget films. For instance, Mamet did a rewrite of the script for Ronin under the pseudonym "Richard Weisz" and turned in an early version of a script for Malcolm X that director Spike Lee rejected.[4]
Three of Mamet's own films, House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, and Heist, have involved the world of con artists.
In 2000, Mamet directed but did not write Catastrophe, based on the one-act play by Samuel Beckett, and featuring Harold Pinter and John Gielgud (in his final screen performance).
Mamet has published three novels, The Village in 1994, The Old Religion in 1997, and Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources in 2000. He has also written several non-fiction texts, as well as a number of poems and children's stories.
Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. The majority of his posts are scans of his own doodles, all political satires laced with humor. His first post chronicled his astonishment that one can communicate on a computer.[5]
He has also published a lauded version of the classical Faust story, Faustus, in 2004. However, the play, when staged in San Francisco during the spring of 2004, was not well received by critics.[6]
Recently he directed and wrote the mixed martial arts movie Redbelt, about a martial arts instructor tricked into fighting in a professional bout.
Mamet is also the creator, producer and frequent writer of the television series The Unit, co-produced with Shawn Ryan of The Shield.
In 2007, Mamet directed two television commercials for Ford Motor Company. The two 30-second ads featured the Ford Edge and were filmed in Mamet's signature style of fast-paced dialogue and clear, simple imagery.
Mamet wrote the "Wasted Weekend" episode of Hill Street Blues that aired in 1987. His then-wife Lindsay Crouse appeared in numerous episodes (including that one) as Officer McBride.
His sister Lynn Mamet is a producer and writer for television shows, such as The Unit and Law & Order.
In recent years, Mamet has also contributed several dramas to BBC Radio through Jarvis & Ayres Productions, including an adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross for BBC Radio 3 and new dramas for BBC Radio 4. His most recent work is a comedy, Keep Your Pantheon, or On the Whole I'd Rather Be in Mesopotamia (aired 28 May 2007).
Mamet's style of writing dialogue, marked by a cynical, street-smart edge, precisely crafted for effect, is so distinctive that it came to be called Mamet speak.[7] He often uses italics and quotation marks to highlight particular words and to draw attention to his characters' frequent manipulation and deceitful use of language. His characters frequently interrupt one another, their sentences trail off unfinished, and their dialogue overlaps. Mamet himself has criticized his (and other writers') tendency to write "pretty" at the expense of sound, logical plots.[8]
When asked how he developed his style for writing dialogue, Mamet said, "In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, based solely on our ability to speak the language viciously. That's probably where my ability was honed."[9]
One classic instance of Mamet's dialogue style can be found in Glengarry Glen Ross, in which two down-on-their-luck real estate salesmen are considering breaking into their employer's office to steal a list of good sales leads. George Aaronow and Dave Moss finagle the meaning of "talk" and "speak," steeped in fraudulent connivance of the language and meaning:
Mamet dedicated Glengarry Glen Ross to Harold Pinter, who was instrumental in its being first staged at the Royal National Theatre, in 1983, and whom Mamet has acknowledged as an influence on its success, and on his other work.[10]
In On Directing Film, Mamet reiterates the objectivity of filmmaking. He believes meaning is found in juxtaposing cuts, and that when shooting a scene, the director should consistently follow the point of the scene. He doesn't believe film should follow the protagonist or consist of visually beautiful or intriguing shots, but should be focused getting a point across in an essential and necessary way. He wants his films to be shaped by logical ways of creating order from disorder in search of the superobjective. Mamet believes in minimal stage and prompt directions.
In 1990 Mamet published a 55-page collection of poetry called The Hero Pony. Mamet has also published a series of short plays and monologues. As part of his contributions to The Huffington Post, Mamet has drawn many cartoons about strife in Israel.[11]
Mamet also appeared as a guest on Episode 312 of the animated Comedy Central program Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. The episode, "New Phone System," originally aired on March 2, 1997.
Mamet teamed up with wife Pidgeon to adapt the novel "Come Back To Sorrento" as a screenplay.
Writing in The Village Voice,[12] Mamet announced that he was no longer a "brain-dead liberal", but instead believed in free market thinkers.[13]
Mamet and actress Lindsay Crouse were married from 1977 to 1990, and have two children together, Willa and Zosia. Mamet has been married to actress and singer-songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon since 1991. They have two children, Clara and Noah.
| Year | Plays | Films | Books | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Lakeboat (revised 1980) | |||
| 1972 | The Duck Variations, Lone Canoe | |||
| 1974 | Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Squirrels | |||
| 1975 | American Buffalo | |||
| 1976 | Reunion, The Water Engine | |||
| 1977 | A Life in the Theatre | |||
| 1978 | Revenge of the Space Pandas, or Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock | |||
| 1979 | The Woods, The Blue Hour | |||
| 1980 | Lakeboat (revision) | |||
| 1981 | The Postman Always Rings Twice | |||
| 1982 | Edmond | The Verdict | ||
| 1983 | The Frog Prince | |||
| 1984 | Glengarry Glen Ross | |||
| 1985 | The Shawl, Goldberg Street: Short Plays and Monologues | |||
| 1986 | The Poet & The Rent | About Last Night... | ||
| 1987 | House of Games (director), The Untouchables | Writing in Restaurants | ||
| 1988 | Speed-the-Plow | Things Change (director) | ||
| 1989 | Bobby Gould In Hell | We're No Angels | ||
| 1991 | Homicide (director) | |||
| 1992 | Oleanna | Hoffa (producer), Glengarry Glen Ross | On Directing Film, The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions | |
| 1994 | Oleanna (director), Vanya on 42nd Street | The Village | ||
| 1995 | The Cryptogram | |||
| 1996 | American Buffalo | Make-Believe Town: Essays and Remembraces Three Uses of the Knife |
||
| 1997 | The Old Neighborhood | Wag the Dog, The Spanish Prisoner (director), The Edge | The Old Religion | |
| 1998 | Ronin (writer) | |||
| 1999 | Boston Marriage | The Winslow Boy (director) | True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor The Chinaman (poems) Jafsie and John Henry: Essays |
|
| 2000 | Lakeboat, State and Main (director) | Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources | ||
| 2001 | Hannibal, Heist (director) | |||
| 2004 | Faustus | Spartan (director) | ||
| 2005 | Romance, The Voysey Inheritance (adapted) | Edmond | ||
| 2006 | The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews | |||
| 2007 | Keep Your Pantheon, November | Bambi Vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business | ||
| 2008 | The Vikings and Darwin (commisioned by national theatre connections project) (Mamet play) | A Waitress in Yellowstone (musical) | Redbelt (writer, director) | |
| 2009 | Race Keep your Pantheon School |
The Prince of Providence (writer) | ||
| 2010 | The Diary of Anne Frank (director) |
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