The Sunday Times (London)
June 5, 1994, Sunday
Sealed with a Kiss
Stephen Amidon
A Whore’s Profession Notes And Essays by David Mamet, Faber Pounds 12 pp412.
The veteran film producer Art Linson tells a story about David Mamet which should warm the heart of any screenwriter. Linson wanted to hire Mamet to write a film version of the television show, The Untouchables. Mamet agreed, turned in a screenplay on time, then went off to start directing his own film, House Of Games. Linson, meanwhile, decided that there were some problems with the first draft and called Mamet on location to ask if he could see him. Sure, Mamet answered. Linson flew in, was greeted warmly by Mamet, who then proceeded to throw the producer immediately off the set, claiming that all he had agreed was for Linson to ”see” him. What makes the story so gratifying is its complete role reversal. In a profession where screenwriters are often treated as whores, Mamet has managed both to keep his dignity and work regularly. Just last month he rejected studio efforts to cast bankable stars in the film version of his ply, Oleanna, hiring instead colleagues from his stage days. Just how has this one-time Off Broadway playwright managed to accrue that sort of juice? The answer can be glimpsed in A Whore’s Profession, a collection of his essays over the past 20 years. It is best expressed by Mamet with the acronym Kiss (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Unlike most screenwriters, who want to be liked, Mamet has reached the seven-figure, get-out-of-my-face category by simply writing good stories. A firm grounding in theatre helps in this effort, as does a healthy disrespect for producers, critics, political correctness and actors. Most handy, though, is the possession of a temperament utterly allergic to bullshit in any form. The essays dealing with Mamet’s youth show the forging of this temperament. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in suburban Chicago, he had his first taste of drama from the local public radio station, breeding ground of Chicago talent such as Mike Nichols and Studs Terkel, and a place where the announcers had ”the capacity to read a phone number as if they were stating a philosophic proposition”. Chicago’s reputation as a source of no-nonsense writers was burned early into Mamet’s soul, giving him the ground-zero sensibility he has kept alive in artsy New York and dippy Los Angeles. After a short flirtation with acting, Mamet became a playwright, creating the runaway success American Buffalo and winning a Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet’s essays on stagecraft will be of particular interest to luvvies, if only to tell them that they are probably doing it all wrong. For Mamet, ”the model of the perfect play is the dirty joke”, in which the unadorned core of the story is all that matters. He has no time for actors who bring childhood memories to their parts or directors who set Shakespeare in Third World countries. His advice to authors is equally austere ”don’t write stage directions”. Everything that happens on stage should service the idea of the story, its flow and resolution. All else is excess baggage. Mamet brings this no-frills ethos to his screenwriting, as anyone who has seen The Verdict or House Of Games can attest. In the two transcribed masterclasses contained in this collection, he rams home the point that film drama ”should be about only one thing, and that thing should be what the hero is trying to get”. For Mamet, Eisenstein’s theory of montage is the starting point for creating film narrative. With painstaking clarity, he shows how this can happen, making these classes essential reading to anyone interested in the medium. Of course, there is much more here than valuable lessons in dramatic writing. Mamet can be very funny, especially when fulminating against the pervasiveness of canned music in public space, or admitting that, ”I admired Superman: I admire anyone who can make his living in his underwear.” His Cannes memoir and his account of being a ”backstage wife” on the set of a film starring his spouse are perfect pieces of movie-biz satire. But if Mamet is strong as a humorist, he is even better as an angry, not-so-young man. He has no time at all for faddishness, suggesting that trendies might do well to ”think about the way people talk about any performance artist and the way they talk about Cary Grant. And to you lovely enthusiasts who will aver that the purpose of modern art is not to be liked, I respond, ‘oh, grow up’.” Similarly, the ”purpose of video is to hypnotise, to lull, to render information superior to suggestion and celebration”. This would sound like so much fogeyness if it didn’t come from the man whose most recent play was the most controversial and timely of last year. Ultimately, the Mamet who emerges from these pages is a wise and likeable presence, even if you might not want to be named line producer on his next film. Some writers afford themselves the luxury of integrity after years of compromise. With Mamet, you get the feeling that it has been there all along. Screenwriting may be a whore’s profession, but Mamet remains one of the few tarts around who doesn’t have to turn tricks to survive.
