David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, author, and filmmaker.
He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow. He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of 1970s off-Broadway plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.
Feature films that Mamet both wrote and directed include House of Games, Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner, and his biggest commercial success, Heist. His screenwriting credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Wag the Dog, and Hannibal. Mamet himself wrote the screenplay for the 1992 adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, and wrote and directed the 1994 adaptation of his play Oleanna. He created and produced the CBS series The Unit.
Mamet's books include: On Directing Film, a commentary and dialogue about film-making; The Old Religion, a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son, a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business; The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, a commentary on cultural and political issues; Three War Stories, a trio of novellas about the physical and psychological effects of war; and Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood, an autobiographical account of his experiences in Hollywood.
Early life and education
Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Lenore June, a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, a labor attorney. He is Jewish. His paternal grandparents were Polish Jews. Mamet has said his parents were communists and described himself as a "red diaper baby". One of his earliest jobs was as a busboy at Chicago's London House and The Second City. He also worked as an actor, editor for Oui magazine and as a cab-driver. He was educated at the progressive Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. At the Chicago Public Library Foundation 20th anniversary fundraiser in 2006, though, Mamet announced "My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign".After a move to Chicago's North Side, Mamet met theater director Robert Sickinger, and began to work occasionally at Sickinger's Hull House Theatre. Thus began Mamet's lifelong involvement with the theater.
Career
Theater
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. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross, which received its first Broadway revival in the summer of 2005. His plays American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow were included on Harold Bloom's list of works constituting the Western Canon. His play Race, which opened on Broadway on December 6, 2009, and featured James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas in the cast, received mixed reviews. His play The Anarchist, starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, in her Broadway debut, opened on Broadway on November 13, 2012, in previews and was scheduled to close on December 16, 2012. His 2017 play The Penitent previewed off-Broadway on February 8, 2017.In 2002, Mamet was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Mamet later received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for Grand Master of American Theater in 2010. In 2017, Mamet released an online class for writers entitled David Mamet teaches dramatic writing.
In 2019 Mamet returned to the London West End with a new play, Bitter Wheat, at the Garrick Theatre, starring John Malkovich. In 2023 it was announced that a new Mamet play, titled Henry Johnson'', was expected to debut in Los Angeles starring Shia LaBeouf.
Film
Mamet's first film work was as a screenwriter, later directing his own scripts. According to Joe Mantegna, Mamet worked as a script doctor for the 1978 film Towing. Mamet's first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, based on James M. Cain's novel. He received an Academy Award nomination one year later for the 1982 legal drama, The Verdict. He also wrote the screenplays for The Untouchables, Hoffa, The Edge, Wag the Dog, Ronin, and Hannibal. He received a second Academy Award nomination for Wag the Dog.In 1987, Mamet made his film directing debut with his screenplay House of Games, which won the Golden Osella Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival and the Film of the Year in 1989 from the London Film Critics' Circle Awards. The film starred his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, and many longtime stage associates and friends, including fellow Goddard College graduates. Mamet was quoted as saying, "It was my first film as a director and I needed support, so I stacked the deck." After House of Games, Mamet later wrote and directed two more films focusing on the world of con artists, The Spanish Prisoner and Heist. Among those films, Heist enjoyed the biggest commercial success.
Other films that Mamet both wrote and directed include: Things Change, Homicide , Oleanna, The Winslow Boy, State and Main, Spartan, Redbelt, and the 2013 bio-pic TV movie Phil Spector.
A feature-length film, a thriller titled Blackbird, was intended for release in 2015, but is still in development.
When Mamet adapted his play for the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, he wrote an additional part for Alec Baldwin.
Mamet continues to work with an informal repertory company for his films, including Crouse, William H. Macy, Joe Mantegna, and Rebecca Pidgeon, as well as the aforementioned school friends.
Mamet rewrote the script for Ronin under the pseudonym "Richard Weisz" and turned in an early version of a script for Malcolm X which was rejected by director Spike Lee. Mamet also wrote an unproduced biopic script about Roscoe Arbuckle with Chris Farley intended to portray him. In 2000, Mamet directed a film version of Catastrophe, a one-act play by Samuel Beckett featuring Harold Pinter and John Gielgud. In 2008, he wrote and directed the mixed martial arts movie Redbelt, about a martial arts instructor tricked into fighting in a professional bout.
In On Directing Film, Mamet advocates for a method of storytelling based on Eisenstein's montage theory, stating that the story should be told through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. This method relies heavily on the cut between scenes, and Mamet urges directors to eliminate as much narration as possible. Mamet asserts that directors should focus on getting the point of a scene across, rather than simply following a protagonist, or adding visually beautiful or intriguing shots. Films should create order from disorder in search of the objective.
In 2023, reports emerged that Mamet would direct and co-write a new film titled Assassination, his first film since 2008. The film will center around the Chicago Mob ordering the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and will star Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, Courtney Love, Al Pacino, and John Travolta. The film's production was scheduled to start in September 2023. In October, Barry Levinson took over as the film's director, while Mamet remained as the screenwriter.
In June 2024, Deadline reported that the film, titled The Prince, will be directed by Cameron Van Hoy, which will center around Hunter Biden, the second son of Former U.S. President Joe Biden. It will star Scott Haze as the lead character Parker; alongside Nicolas Cage, J.K. Simmons, Giancarlo Esposito, and Andy Garcia. Mamet added that the film won't be "a travelogue", and will be inspired by Hunter's life, rather than serve as a biopic.
Books
Mamet published the essay collection Writing in Restaurants in 1986, followed by the poetry collection The Hero Pony in 1990. He has also published a series of short plays, monologues and four novels, The Village, The Old Religion, Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources, and Chicago. He has written several non-fiction texts, and children's stories, including True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor . In 2004 he published a lauded version of the classical Faust story, Faustus, however, when the play was staged in San Francisco during the spring of 2004, it was not well received by critics. On May 1, 2010, Mamet released a graphic novel The Trials of Roderick Spode .Mamet detailed his conversion from modern liberalism to "a reformed liberal" in The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture in 2011. Mamet published Three War Stories, a collection of novellas, in 2013 ; the novel The Diary of a Porn Star by Priscilla Wriston-Ranger: As Told to David Mamet With an Afterword by Mr. Mamet in 2019; and the political commentary Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch in 2022. In 2023 Mamet recounted his experiences in Hollywood and the movie-making industry in ''Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood.''