anderswolleck

David Mamet is one of the greatest writers who ever lived. Hes had success in every medium hes worked in from theater to film and in the past year in television with The Unit, which he co-created with Shawn Ryan. The show has become a ratings success for CBS. But what people love the most about Mamet is his wit, his hilarious cynicism and his ability to teach. That teaching gene has been put on display with Mamets acting classes, his book On Directing Film and now his new book, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. Due to the nature of making studio films and mainstream television Mamet has been steeped in the business end of Hollywood for many years now. With Bambi vs. Godzilla he uses the classic 1960s cartoon short as a metaphor for how Hollywood treats its denizens.

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Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?

David Mamet: Im working on about eight things. I think mainly Im working on revising a television script for my TV show.

DRE: The Unit has obviously taken off and its going to be around for a little while. Youve never had your own show on before. How has that experience been for you?

DM: Its a lot of fun. Its like making a movie constantly.

DRE: Whats it like working with Shawn Ryan?

DM: Ive got a lot to learn from Shawn. Hes running two shows and he looks like hes half asleep all the time. Im in awe of him sometimes. I have a shitload to learn from him. Hes great. In addition to being a wonderful administrator and a terrific producer, hes got a terrific story sense. The hardest thing about dramaturgy is of course the plot. They say anybody can write a good first act and thats true. So a lot of times wed be sitting around in the room and I or someone else will be jacked up and hell say Instead of the guy, what if it was the girl? What if you took scene three first and put it first? The other good part is that he loves going into the editing room, which is another form of storytelling. It is taking the finished product and saying, Okay, I get it. My good ideas dont make sense. Im going to reshuffle them and make them make sense. To answer your question, its great working with him.

DRE: Im sure youve had the chance to make television shows before, what was it that made you say, Now its time?

DM: I dont know. I know I had the chance to make television before. I wrote a couple episodes of Hill Street Blues back in the dark ages. That was before sound had come to television. It was silent. But it just happened. I was just mucking about. I had directed a couple of episodes of The Shield for Shawn and I just finished a movie called Spartan with Eric Haney who had written a book called Inside Delta Force, about his years in Delta Force. Shawn, Eric and I were having sushi and the idea came out of the woodwork to do a TV show based on Erics book so there you have it.

DRE: So everything just came together at the right time.

DM: Yeah, thats right.

DRE: Its interesting that this book, Bambi vs. Godzilla, has come on the heels of you directing a movie for a major movie company [Spartan for Warner Bros] and you have a show on a major television network. So youre literally in the middle of Hollywood and youre writing this book about Hollywood. Are those things connected or is it something youve been thinking about for a while?

DM: I think theyre very much connected. Ive always counted myself really fortunate to be in show business. It was either that or crime because other than show business I dont think I have any skills. So Ive always loved the business and the craft end of it. As a dramatist you dont have to spend much time with the business side of it. You write the plays, you put them on, the people come, you make some money. The people dont come, you write another play and put that on. Its fairly straightforward. So since getting more and more involved in Hollywood Ive been more involved in the business side of the equation and its fascinating.

DRE: Youre someone thats given a lot of respect by actors and directors, do you feel like youre given the proper respect by the people you call out?

DM: I dont know that Id call them out. I certainly dont name any names nor would I. Thats not my place. Im not there to invite individualism. Im there to support the system for good or ill. What Im talking about is that show business is absolute, unfettered free market capitalism. Ive never thought about economics before so to look at it that way has been very interesting.

DRE: Are you someone thats been able to reconcile the idea of art as commerce?

DM: Yeah because if I dont reconcile it for myself, my grocer aint going to. Im very fortunate. I grew up in Chicago in the golden age of Chicago Theater. Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey had just written Grease in a garage. Dennis Franz and Joe Mantegna were doing work over at the Organic Theater and I was doing American Buffalo with Billy Macy and Mike Nussbaum in our little garage theater. Then John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalf came down, took over the little garage theater and they started doing all the Sam Shepherd plays. There was nothing between us and the poorhouse except putting the asses in the seats. Thats all there was. So we never drew a distinction between art and commerce. Here we were putting on plays for the fun of it, but if the people didnt come we didnt eat. That was a wonderful salutary experience in the essence of show business. Which is, if they didnt laugh, it aint funny.

DRE: [laughs] One of the things you talk about in the book is how screenwriters will change their scripts to accommodate all the notes they get. I interviewed a big television writer named Bruce Helford last year. If I had to guess I would say he agrees with you about that. But one thing he said was, Their notes may not be exactly what you wanted to do but you find ways to slip those notes into what you do. What do you think about something like that?

DM: Well, Ive had two experiences, one was notes in television and the other was notes in the movies. In television I havent gotten any notes. Shawn may have gotten a couple notes because hes, quite graciously, much closer to the networks and the studio than I am. But as far as I can see we havent gotten many notes. The only notes that weve gotten are about clarity. In the movies when youre working as a writer for hire, you get an incredible amount of notes and theyre almost always bad and stupid. The problem is, youre getting paid to put up with stupidness and once in a while somebody has a good idea. So one is constantly wearing ones artists hat and exchanging it for ones whore hat and sometimes your head gets chafed.

DRE: Have you ever felt like a whore?

DM: Ill tell you what my dear friend Shel Silverstein, may he rest in peace, said. I was bitching and moaning about screenwriting and he said, Dave, Ill tell you what its like. Its like youre the greatest cabinetmaker in the world. People come to you and say I want you to make a perfect example of a Biedermeier table and well pay you whatever you want. You say, okay. You work on it youre so proud of it and they take it and they set fire to it. You say, You said youd pay for it and you set fire to it. They say Oh no, we just wanted to do it for a movie effect. So they come back next year and say, We want you to make another one of those Biedermeier tables. Well pay you even more money than we paid you last year. You say, Ok, Im a craftsman. Its all about craft. I need the money because my girlfriend and my kids like it. So you build the Biedermeier table even better than before and they take it and set fire to it. By the third or fourth year you arent going to be making that table quite as well anymore because you know theyre going to fucking set fire to it. The problem with writing movies for hire is that youre constantly saying to yourself What difference does it make? Theyre going to ruin it anyway. Of course you cant say that because then you are a whore. So you say, No, I will not go down that road. Im going to write the best goddamn script I can. Then they hate it. So you say, Whats the problem? The problem is not with the people who are paying you because what they do is perfectly clear. The problem is with yourself. Not that youre writing a less good script, but that you know that youre getting paid to write a script that no one is ever going to fucking understand.

DRE: A willingness to have your work destroyed, is that what it is?

DM: Destroyed, but the idea is that it aint your work. Its somebody elses. The law calls it writer for hire because thats what you are.

DRE: How long did it take in your writing career to come up with the three questions that you write in Bambi vs. Godzilla?

DM: Its actually Aristotle, right out of the Poetics. But it took me a long time to realize, Duh, thats what its all about. Part of it is Ive been working very closely with the writers on the TV show and trying to impart to them the few things that I know that might be helpful to younger writers.

DRE: I know that youre someone that likes to have a lot of control when it comes to your work and for a television show you have to let go a bit. Is that where the team-up with Shawn comes in?

DM: Not so much with Shawn because were co-producers on the show. Its like any good marriage, automatically one persons going to do one thing and the other person is going to do the other and you help the other guy out. In a bad marriage you say Okay, listen, I took the garbage out Wednesday, you take the garbage out Thursday. I fed the cat yesterday now you have to feed the cat, In a good marriage you do it automatically, so I think weve got a pretty good marriage as producers. But its the nature of television, one cannot direct every one. When you finish your show on Monday, someone else has been prepping to shoot a new show on Tuesday so you cant be both prepping and directing. You cant do them all. Also, you cant write them all. Theoretically you could, if you were younger and had a lot of chemical aid. But you would go insane if you had to write a 46 minute movie, basically half a movie, every eight days. You might be able to do it for a couple of weeks but after that youre going to start to go insane because its very taxing. So when youre doing a television show, you have to delegate responsibility to the other writers and directors.

DRE: Does one have to know the rules of Hollywood in order to break them or avoid them?

DM: The greatest document of Western Civilization in, my estimation, is Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. They put the two guys into the cage. Remember what the guy said?

DRE: Two men enter, one man leave. Right?

DM: Yeah, but what does he say after that?

DRE: I dont remember.

DM: We know you wont break the rules, there arent any.

DRE: [laughs] Thats better than what William Goldman says.

DM: Nobody knows anything. Both of those lines are spectacular.

DRE: [laughs] Is Bambi vs. Godzilla, along with your book On Directing Film, the way that you teach classes?

DM: I dont teach classes in writing. Ive tried. I cant do it. I do teach classes in acting. Bill Macy and I started an acting company 21 years ago in New York called The Atlantic Theater. Its still thriving in New York and I just started an outpost branch in LA so were going to be teaching acting a little bit out here. The rules for acting and the rules for writing are the same. Who wants what? What happens if I dont get it and Why now?

DRE: I interviewed Bill Macy a few years ago and he told me that you really love actors.

DM: I adore actors.

DRE: But do you love the bad things an actor can do as well? Such as when the unnamed actor in Bambi vs. Godzilla stomps all over that car wearing combat boots.

DM: Thats not because he was an actor. Its because he was an asshole. Many of the most successful writers in the history of the world were either actors or failed actors or in love with actors. Thats because the way you learn how to write a play is not by sitting in your chair, its by watching actors and especially by watching actors around an audience. It helps to try to figure out whats the actor actually doing. What is it that the audience perceives about what the actors doing? Ive been an actor, Harold Pinter was an actor and Chekhov was in love with actors. Youve got to watch what the actors doing if you want to learn how to write a play.

DRE: I spoke with Stuart Gordon last year about Edmond and he mentioned about how you were willing to change the script for the movie version. It seems that the directors that direct movie adaptations of your plays are very reluctant to take out the dialogue. But when you direct there is much less dialogue.

DM: Well, you dont need dialogue. If somebodys making a movie out of my plays, theres a self-regulating mechanism that regulates the rhythm of the performance and of the audience. Theres a feedback loop between the actors and the audience. In a movie thats not true. So sometimes in a movie one has to alter the pace because the pace is the pace of the shots not the pace of the performance. Therefore sometimes youre going to make cuts in a movie.

DRE: Have you finished Joan of Bark yet?

DM: I finished the screenplay but I didnt shoot it. Its sitting on the shelf.

DRE: Is that what youre planning on doing next?

DM: I dont know. Ive got several of things. Sony Classics asked me to do a movie version of The Voysey Inheritance, which is a 1905 play I adapted. Its currently on at The Atlantic Theatre in New York. Ive got this other project I may do about the martial arts community in LA.

DRE: What would that be about?

DM: Theres this subterranean community thats cross-pollinated between cage fighters and cops and boxers and stuntmen and Navy Seals. Its a really interesting community. It is sort of a samurai film. It is about a guy whos the worlds greatest fighter but he doesnt compete. He just trains people because he says, Ill train you to walk out of the alley alive but I wont train you to get points from a referee. The movie is about how he gets seduced away from his path and becomes commercialized.

DRE: Is that something you would write as well?

DM: I wrote it already. I think I may do that in the next year or so.

DRE: Spartan and, one of my favorite films, Wag the Dog are very political, are you still interested in writing about politics?

DM: Yeah, Ive been working on a secret play. I dont know how good it is. But its a play about a political issue I think concerns us all. Its about the President of the United States and whether or not hes going to pardon a couple of turkeys for Thanksgiving.

DRE: Oh thats funny. He always does it. Isnt that bizarre?

DM: Yeah.

DRE: Have you heard of these prank phone calls where they use Al Pacinos dialogue from Glengarry Glen Ross?

DM: Oh yeah. Do you know about the Toynbee tiles?

DRE: No, I dont. Whats that?

DM: This is the weirdest thing that ever happened. I wrote this play [called 4 am] about a million years ago that was an homage to Larry King when he was late night talk show host on radio in the 70s. A guy calls in and hes talking about the film 2001 based on the writings of Arnold Toynbee. The Larry King character says, I think youll find that 2001 is based on the writings of Arthur C. Clarke. The guy says, No, Larry. I believe that youre wrong there. 2001 based on the writing of Arnold Toynbee tells us that all human life will be reconstituted on the planet Jupiter. They had this rather silly conversation for ten minutes. It turns out that now you can go on the internet and look up Toynbee tiles. There are these tiles that are showing up all over the country that say in mosaic Toynbee says all life reconstituted on Jupiter. You can go to these links and theyll tell you how to make these tiles and where to put them up.

DRE: Are things like the Toynbee tiles and the prank phone calls complimentary?

DM: Its great.

Ill tell you another weird thing. A guy sent me this in the mail. Apparently, one of the Iraqi ministers, like the minister of electricity or something like that, got kidnapped and they held him for a while. I dont know what they did; they probably whacked him on his knuckles. He got away and the Times asked him how he escaped and he said and I quote, I did the Chicago way. Which is an idea that I made up for Sean Connery in The Untouchables. I thought it was nice this guy was quoting from that.

DRE: I remember reading a story about during a screening of The Untouchables you walked out during the Eisenstein homage because you didnt write it, is that true?

DM: I dont know if its true or not but I do mention the Eisenstein sequence in Bambi vs. Godzilla. I describe it as a prescient adumbration of Brian De Palmas The Untouchables.

DRE: I believe that De Palma is supposed to direct a prequel, any interest in seeing that?

DM: No, not really but I suggested to Brian that he do a sequel and call it The Retouchables.

DRE: [laughs] Did he think that was funny?

DM: He didnt think it was funny.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck