David Mamet interview (1994)

we began with David Mamet the prolific playwright and screenwriter has adapted Oh Liana his controversial 1992 play about sexual politics for the screen why did you write Oh Liana I don't know it's so I was living in Cambridge and Boston and I used to hear these stories about sexual Harris mothers five years ago so-and-so had a brother who got fired because he said blah blah blah so-and-so had a niece and the professor came on to her and she had the blah blah blah and I began to hear a lot of these stories and I so i sat down and started making up a fantasy about a interchange between a young woman wants her grade changed and a professor who wants to get her out of the office so he can go home to see his wife and one thing led to another and the story kind of evolved and became this story about the power struggle between the two him and and did it offend you when people I assumed the controversy and how men and women reacted to it pleased you because you written a play that produced a reaction yeah I think it's a first frightened me because I'd never imagined that kind of reaction to this play and people used to get into literally fistfights with each other in the lobby and screaming matches going home on narrowly couples from early couples that's right yeah and it also they began to label you or somehow reinforce this notion of David Mamet as misogynist collapse some people did but I would assume in everybody that knows you says that's simply not that's an unfair labeling but it seemed to for some to cause them to strike out again I don't know if leave the labeling so unfair I mean I'm fairly sure it's inaccurate yeah well inaccurate is a better word see there are two characters as a man and a woman in the play and each of them has a very firm point of view both of which I believe in and I think the way that the reason that the movie succeeds if it does and I think it does is because each person the man and the woman is saying something absolutely true at every moment and absolutely constructive at most moments in the play and yet at the end of the play they're tearing each other's throats out but you know why they said I mean they felt like that this was clearly a circumstance in which it wasn't that I think the argument has been made by many people and they learned that when they began to criticize it are to be so it became so controversial is that they thought that that that the debate was one-sided because of the way you'd structured the relationship between the two of them now that's not what I heard what what you heard well I heard from most people many people thought that the the balance of power or the balance of rectitude if you will between two protagonists was lopsided but they didn't always think that the same person was on top a lot of people thought that the man was right and the women was wrong and that I'd slanted it that way and a lot of people thought the opposite and that's why the people were slapping each other around in the lobby because they each the audience each thought of the members of the audience vehemently believed that their hero and the play was correct and that the other person's hero was wrong let me take a look this is a clip and you know what we're going to see maybe you can set it up for me this is this is should all kids go to college set the scene up so that will understand who the two characters are and then we can take this is from the film only on it David Mamet both obviously wrote the play wrote the screenplay and is also the director the young woman a young student Carol played by Deborah Eisen stats been trying to get the professor to change her grade and he's been trying to deal with her problems at the same time trying to get out of the office so he can go home and have a private life it's at the end of the interview and he's trying to get it he's trying to get her out of the office trying to give her a few thoughts to live by and and please go home now we've had a nice little chat and that's about the scene that worked and she's not ready to go home here it is roll tape easy ah and so that becomes the incident well yeah that becomes the first incident yeah yeah you wanted to say what in Oh Anna I don't wanna say anything I want to write I wanted to write the play I know a lot of people find it hard to think that it's that that because something seems to contain a message that it's not that it's not that it's not the playwrights intention to send out to send that message but I'm trying to write us write a story to try to follow a provocative grouping of individuals to its logical conclusion to see where that goes but you but you laying on the ground work of one of the hottest sort of social issues of the time you wrote this with 1918-19 was yeah Oh nineteen ninety ninety nine eighty nine eighty somewhere on there behind the unite eight 80s Early 90s you laid it into their own the groundwork on the basis on the foundation of the subject matter of intense at a time of sexual harassment was under great discussion and debate right on campus in the country secondly it was a time of political correctness and all of those issues you didn't want to say something about those issues in terms of how you had your characters engage in a kind of dialogue they engage in I don't think I mean those issues terrify me they because I was rather frightened to even take up my pen about why well because well I think because even a fish wouldn't get in trouble if he kept his mouth shut association it's what they say yes but I think for that perhaps for that reason among others I thought that might be a good idea to to to write to open that can of worms but basically what I wanted to do and all I think'll mainly what I usually want to do just simply tell a story that something is an important topic in our daily newspaper or in our breakfast table discussion does not necessarily means going to make a good play but makes a good plays the creation of interesting well what does make it you're the best person to tell me that what makes a good play I think what makes a good play is um a protagonist who wants something vehemently and it's going to set out to get it well that's Hamlet finding out who killed his father or Oedipus finding out what's what's the cause of the plague on Thebes you know or an aura and a doll's house finding a house you can live as an oppressed woman in a man's world or onna Christie finding out what you can do to get her father to take her back that's what makes us want to come out see the next here the next line on stage you see the next cut in the movie what happens next when we really understand what the character wants and we understand what they're going through to get it that's what keeps us in our seat let me take you back in your life the thing that people notice best about you from a beginning I think was dialogue yeah and was the the silence that you were able to use silence well and it was the clipped dialogue that you captured among the subjects and how you drew on your own experiences did that come from home that that come from a family where there was an emphasis on semantics and dialogue and expression oh yeah yeah my my family have been Jewish for about 4,000 years maybe five fifty seven hundred years and my people tends to place a great deal of emphasis on the ability to express oneself well unto and to parse a book or a sentence or a thought or an interchange into oblivion so that's that's the tradition which I'm very happy to have grown up but your sisters I think Lynne says that it's your home your father was very strict about semantics he was a labor lawyer in Chicago and very strict about it and would insist that all of you kids spoke with clear expression and dramatic and grammatically correct he was pretty great he was great yeah when you look at what what you have become I mean can you trace it back do you see some linkage to your father every day in what way well I wrote that movie Hoffa for Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson my dad was a labor lawyer a one-man labor lawyer and was really a movie about him I didn't know Hoffa but it was about my dad and the way he spoken though he comported himself and he always you always believed in working harder you know I he would come home from work at 8 o'clock at night and wolf down his dinner and be at the dining-room table still working 1 1 o'clock in the morning and he believed that it that he believed there was no problem to which he couldn't surmount in the interest of his client by working harder thinking harder and being more inventive and he used to say for example anytime something terrible would happen he would say ok let's let's stand this honor on its head and say oh it's really to our advantage but that's what they say about you - that you view writing as a craft that you view writing as something you do in the morning if you're in Vermont I guess you go out to a cabin and you're right in longhand at a cold cabin that you see it as going to work and you see it almost in a blue-collar way you know I I hope that that's true and if it is I think it's true because of my my home life and also because that's the Chicago tradition that at least in the theater which is in only ordinary thing about the only world I know anything about uh we had the blue-collar tradition something that you did we got together you had your Theatre Company the organic or the st. Nicholas certain theater st. except what you created yeah was one of the L did or Joey Montaigne was with the organic and you know meshach Taylor and Greg Mosier and Greg Mosier at the Goodman theater and you had your company and you went to work and it was your job to please the audience that was your job if it was a drama that drama had to be interesting that was a comedy it had to be funny period take you back a little bit before that though so you wish your parents were divorced Oh impact on you oh you'll have to ask me when I get over it you still owe well yeah it still affects me is a very traumatic time you know it was the they got divorced in the 50s and I didn't know anybody who knew anybody who'd been divorced and a little owned have it happened to my family so there was a lot of trauma and my he went to live with your mother yeah I went live with my mom with my dad later on for a couple of years and then went to college thinking you'd do what I went to college thinking I'd get out of the house that was I was enough for me it's why I want to get out of the house well wasn't a very happy house because of the divorcer I think and also I really wanted to I didn't know anything about the middle-class life except that I'd had enough of it and so I went to college and a lot of the verbiage in the play and both characters is my working out of the idea of what what constitutes worth the student says I've been told all my life I'm stupid I'm stupid I can't learn I'm stupid I'm stupid and the professor says no you aren't you rather smart as a matter of fact you're just angry I think if I can get you past that point you'll see there's a lot of enjoyment in life which you've heretofore missed now so I'm to a certain extent I'm being the professor comforting myself as the student and the other thing is is true - I'm being the student saying to the professor you can be clearer you have a responsibility to me I'm lost I need your help paternalism is not going to help tourism is not going to help telling me to go and do my homework it's not going to help I need someone to explain to me what's required of me so there again I'm casting myself the writer as the student demanding that of figures and authority this isn't woo I always said nobody with a happy childhood have went into show business and I think that's pretty true that's the nice thing about being a writer is you get to work a lot of things out when you went to college though you want to be an actor I did want to be an actor yeah I'd spent some time as a kid actor in Chicago and do a little bit of television and a little bit of radio and a little bit of a stage work and seem like a lot of fun didn't seem like work what happened I thought that I couldn't act that'll do it every day and yeah I was going to say no it doesn't always do it I never learned I was going to say that I'd be the first one to tell you I couldn't act Billy Mason would actually be the first one to tell you a good night Billy Macy is the star in Oana he knew you had got RDD I was his teacher I went back I want the Goddard College is a student and I came back a couple of years later and taught and he was my student and the guess the late 60s and early 70s you how did the playwriting begin I started a little theater company among my students at Goddard College and eventually moved to Chicago with them and we didn't have any money to pay royalties we just we had no money right and there were there were some plays written which was suitable for a small young company but you had to pay royalties on them and there were many plays written was rasuu double you didn't have to pay royalties on but which was suitable for a 24 character a company of middle-aged people we couldn't do those but it's nothing to do so in our ignorance we started writing place for each other Billings to write plays like I wrote plays we would direct each other and act and we'd all did everything it's not you said I think at some point earlier when you went back to Chicago we discovered that we were I discovered that I was a mediocre actor and a part-time playwright yeah that's right so I became a director of the company and the playwright and uh and at 27 you wrote American Buffalo yeah and you thought it was gonna win a Pulitzer Prize well hey but the story is that you told you'd bet what 5,000 you put $5,000 the banker was at 500 which was I've read two counts oh I can't remember yeah he's either 505 and you said to greg Mosier i'm gonna put this here and and i'll give it to you if i don't win the Pulitzer Prize all right I think I probably do you know 500 or 5,000 looking back was equally equally fantastical amount to me at that yeah anybody didn't get the money or not no but Greg did the planning's it was you know those instances of intercession are so precious you know you young struggling kid and everybody reads your stuff and says no it's no good or yes it's good but I don't want to do it and Greg was then the second-in-command at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago I brought him to play and I said something like that or else please do my play I think it's not without merit and he read it and said okay and and he did it and that's been his attitude ever since for my work both at the Chicago at the Goodman denry is running Lincoln Sunday did that give you some stability to know that there was someone there that you're in for an artist it's it's it's marvelous it's it's the best thing in the world someone to say I believe in you and back it up by staking his reputation on your own and then seven or eight years later you came with Glengarry Glen Ross which won a Pulitzer Prize right yeah hey you were what so you were not more than what 34 35 when you did that I think so yeah what was your persona at the time how did you see yourself oh I don't know you know why is that because so many people right well you do no come on so many people write about you every time I read something about you you know they talk about the Mamet persona and this sense of the a in the beginning they talk about no female characters clearly you later wrote female characters and that's not true by the way always where they wrote about that they said that network yes many people did yeah and they said that and they also made comparisons between you and Hemingway uh-huh in terms of the kinds of male things that you love to do and some sense of gun collecting I have collecting and loving guns and loving poker and a kind of you reject that or when you read those things do you think that they have no meaning or irrelevant or off-base or none of the above oh I don't know I I always loved having where I mean he came from Oak Park which is already ACOG oh and I loved to say it again I loved escaping from a the middle class of course I wasn't escaping from the middle class because we all you know well I could be where we are I know I know I I turned out to be a nice Jewish boy that's what I always was but I hope but it it pleased me to think that I was putting something over in myself you know and living in Vermont and doing things which it seemed were not acceptable behavior for a nice Jewish boy whose family's always had the gene for liberalism spending a lot of time gambling hunting fishing etc as I and and spent a lot of time in pool rooms and enjoy the life there someone said to me even today they said that that you that they believe that recently you have been a since rediscovered your Jewishness do you think that's all I think it's absolutely true you know what happens to our well I went to my niece's Bat Mitzvah and I realized that I hadn't been inside a synagogue in 30 years and I started wondering why and I was chagrined and shocked to find that it had something to do with the sense of not only assimilation ISM but perhaps self-hatred there was nobody's fault but my own and then I thought perhaps I could remedy that you don't do a lot of television so everybody I don't think I haven't seen you on a lot and and everybody when they knew that you were going to come here was curious and had ideas and they wanted to talk to you and one of the things they said is asking why he continues to write for the theater because and I think this was someone who loved the theater very much and they thought you know a lot of people who write for the theater go on to write screenplays and leave the theater but you they have a sense will always come back to the theater and and will continue to write for the theater because I love it I mean so that's what you yeah that's what I do best and I just adore it I mean it's I got it's very hard to be happier than then then sitting in a working with my friends working with my family you're working on a play let me talk about friends and people that you have a relationship with Harold Pinter mm-hmm what's the relationship what's the friendship well Harold Pinter was very close at one time and I think is close again with the so Peter Hall and Sir Peter Hall wrote a diary in which he another Harold Pinter a the fact very favorably and Harold Pinter didn't talk to him for five or six years so if you think I'm gonna say anything what he'll think Chris is that Peter Hall didn't uh he didn't talk to Peter Hall after that diary for five years yeah but there is something about the I were to think about Harold Pinter that appeals to you he's your kind of character well he's other than being a brilliant playwright and and also a Harold Pinter director well when I was just a kid Harold Pinter and and Samuel Beckett were the playwrights of the ìiî I still think so he was always a hero of mine and really was responsible for large extent for me started to write and then he was very was very helpful and generous to me still lives at many points in my career and promoting my work and directing my work did he direct what's he directed in London of Europe he directed oleanna the play was in London in London yeah and in fact was your wife cast in Lusaka there she was in and she was in speed-the-plow in Island Lunda the National Theatre come when you alan dershowitz yeah you live in Cambridge he's a friend yeah he's great I mean he's he was so very helpful with the the pool again with the play Oleanna because there's a lot of legalism involved in the play and I asked him to come over from the law school over to where we rehearsing one a block away and he would sit on rehearsals and give us ideas about the legality of what the woman was saying the legality of the man's position he was very very supportive in fact we put him in a trailer and I said consultant no he's he's talking to the audience in the trailer ah Woody Allen I just only met him once yeah but aren't you doing something with him I wasn't doing yes there's a one-act yeah there was there's an evening of 3 1 X plays it's gonna be done soon I think one by me one by Woody Allen one by Elaine May when you when you look at where you are now and all that you've accomplished is there satisfaction is there a sense of well how do you some sort of sum up where you are it's a midlife I mean you're about you're approaching 50 yes well three years you're 47 I'm supposed to be 47 God willing and about five more shopping weeks yes so how do you feel about about where you are and the body of work that you would is it what you set out to do does it surprise you if you've been able to do so much and that you've been able to express yourself in so many different ways yeah so that kind of shocks me I didn't set out to do so much and I set out to get one play done and then and then do another one and I think I was always some frightened of failure and always always frightened by the specter of poverty and I think I got that very much from my dad who grew up very very poor and had to get out and he just had his wits there in a living for himself and his family and the same was true of me you know I got out of college I don't know yeah and then if somebody came to you and said you go to some faraway land and someone says mister ma'am and I hear you're a famous writer of ours hear that you're a very good writer send me something you've written what would you send them I wouldn't send them nothing are you kidding me why because you wouldn't want to wouldn't want to lower their expectations or you be afraid this and have they paid for it no they haven't paid for oh no no they played I would play I would direct them I the other thing that's interesting about what you write is so much of it is taken from your own experiences I mean you worked in a real estate firm yeah sexual perversity in Chicago you had been there yeah you know I mean Oh Liana you were a college professor and in fact you said that almost every young professor you knew at the time that you were there quoted at least as saying was having a relationship with some young student yeah but you know and that's why I was explosive or frightening for you to deal with the subject matter no no not at all it just seemed it seemed to be such vehement change about in the the issue of sexual harassment that I part of me really didn't want to raise my head up above the foxhole and say what's going on here but just I've come back to this point are yousa prot were you surprised by the controversy it ignited and the conflicts that erupted over it oh yeah I was I was I was shocked as I say I'd never seen reactions like that in the theater but why do you think it was true because night after night and couple by couple the people would split down the middle and it wouldn't always be by sex and it wouldn't always be by age but one of the other would say I think he's right I think she's we see my impression is that most men thought he was right and most women thought the men didn't understand it and that's not in your judgment away what wasn't my experience yeah your experience was it varied from night to night that's right sex - sex that's right that's right because I think I think that the play got on and I think that the movie - gets on a lot of people's skins because because it's well it's like like Shakespeare said you know the plays the thing in which will catch the conscience of the king people suspend their disbelief for a second and say okay I'm going to watch a funny little story and everything will be under my control and then because the because because of the structure of the piece because it moved its moves so fast right and it's so clear what each one wants next you get two-thirds of the way through the play and you think you know what's going on and all of a sudden it takes a turn that you don't want and you find that you've identified with one of the two of the other protagonists and you start feeling like wait wait a second you know uh it gets under the people's skins not because of the issues I think but because of the drama involved in two protagonists take a look at this set this up for me this is John reading where are we now as we watch the evolution of this relationship that we at the end of the first act he says now go home now everything's going to be fine he comes comes back into the office the next week and he finds out that she's filed its charge of sexual harassment and many of the statements which he made which he thought in which perhaps we thought were innocuous are being read back to him in the context of a complaint which could theoretically stave off or deny him his tenure okay rotate here it is did you put a line in your wedding ceremony to your second wife Rebecca that in which you said there is a lot you or she or the two of you chose the story is that there was a line added and we must laugh at each other's jokes one of my rabbi put down yes my rabbi Larry Kushner is a great man and he put that this rabbi Kushner from Philadelphia is not the same notice the rabbi Kushner from sudbury an ass right and he I think he puts that most of his uh did you have to laugh at his jokes yeah fight fight fair and laugh at each other you once said an interesting thing that that the that you could sum up what you knew about male-female relationships at least in the following that this was the key for a man be direct was first second was that men had to realize that women were smarter and that therefore they valued highly concur to see and kindness mm-hmm third was did you remember any of this no I'll I don't you like it so hard believe it so for third was I can't I don't remember what third was and fourth was when it came to the question of who got out of the elevator first you were on your own you had no idea what the rules were this leads into this question where do you think because you have in one way or the other dealt with relationships and whether it's between men and a competition and Glengarry Glen Ross our competition among men for a Cadillac and and other things and and in others there and in sexual perversity we're dealing with some of these kind of done at and and you have always in comment about you there's always been the element of how of the Mamet image which I talked about earlier which you don't reflect on them and you don't seem to accept which is okay I mean you don't have a sense of when you say Mamet what that means to people in terms of image other than just a very skilled playwright essayist now novelist well I try not to think about it you know I think out you really think about them you have no sense of self of who you are in terms of how you perceived by others I suppose I might at any given moment yeah you know like anybody you know the guys in the elevator one time he's gonna think of himself as Galahad you got to think time he's gonna think of self as all wrong here's what's interesting about it because a lot of your friends have commented on it and that's why I'm trying to bring it out of you and I and generally not doing show Harold look is not going to talk to them either but there is some sense of this notion of this maleness and how you see that and and all of that now maybe that's because people read what you write and they will somehow look look at a persona and say well therefore I understand it it's the Hemingway comparison it is in a sense the fact that for a while people did not see female characters that they thought were very strong female characters now you tend to want to debunk all of that yes I guess I'm you know see it's the term Amma do you plead guilty or not guilty see finally it's the worst idea in the world for me to be doing purple Freddy as per to be doing publicity right because as Virginia Woolf and many other writers tell us because it's the last thing in the world that a writer Jenn ever wants to do is to get involved in his or her own ok fairness alright and then I leave I know you've said that no it's a very it's a very very equal exchange by the way and I'm very grateful for you for having me it's absolutely equal exchange I'm I get the opportunity to indulge in self-promotion and you get the absolute right to ask me these questions yes it's a terrible idea for me but you it's a terrible idea for you because what demi now I'm without tell me why it's a terrible idea well somebody so two to elaborate on the question because it's done in print about you all the time so it's a natural thing for me to do but you think I grant you that but it's not for me as David Mamet natural to answer these questions well I don't know the answers to a lot of them also somebody wants another very important thing to me about writing they say steal from anybody but yourself so if the if I starts stealing for myself or imitating myself for thinking about what does that mean rather than looking at the problems on the page and I feel Emmitt yeah and and we and if we look at that whole list of things that I wrote it by that whole list I mean it's an extraordinary body of work I mean you write constantly don't you yeah I mean you why do you feel the urge to write all the time because you have some because it beats thinking beats thinking yeah so it's so much so much gentler than thinking is it easy for you right right sometimes it is sometimes it's what's easiest playwrights at plays essay screenplays now a novel this it's all part of the same well so you know some some aspects like what's what's easier to build a skipper to build a boat in a bottle certain aspects are suitable as gif I think I can't imagine it would be easy to build a boat in a bottle well the other hand up or don't got to put a skiff and hit a glass thing and pull up the masts how do you see this relationship between men and women today you talked about it in sexual in only on it you've just made a film that has to do with the dynamics of the time I think men and women will need each other and I think men and women love each other and I think these are very frustrating times I think that again I mentioned Virginia Woolf as she tells us women have been oppressed for a great deal of history and for them to to claim rights rather than to live in a society with they're being awarded rights is very upsetting to the society as a whole as it should be it's a period that we're all going to have to live through and we will do you believe feminism went too far and what kinds of what you mean by feminism you know I'm not a woman it's not for me to say that any woman has gone has gone too far in the struggle for the women but clearly you have thought about these issues because they're reflected in what you write well Sydney Kingsley wrote a play called detective story great play right because there happens to be a great play about cops and robbers doesn't mean you going to go to Sydney Kingsley and ask him what he thinks about crime control that's true you know he's just telling a story and the same thing with me and uh and Oh Leon I'm just telling a story you're a dreamer oh sure you you bet yeah wouldn't wouldn't have it any other way I don't think I mean I think if you can't if you lose dreams then don't you oh yeah I mean that's sort of the beginning of the end when you lose the capacity but you no longer dream what do you think of this obsession with OJ Simpson well it's it's terrifying I uh gossip I always felt as that is the need to define social norms we need to discover what's correct for the community and so we gossip and also we need to identify ourselves as the good people I think we all we all do Jewish tradition calls at Lashon Hara the evil tongue and says it's a great great great crime in fact the Orthodox Jews won't talk one say anything about anyone else they just won't talk about third parties for fear of engaging in unless on her on evil tongues probably very good idea each the idea that anybody could be a victim and the idea that anybody could be a murderer is a terror it's terrifying idea you know people whom we've elected to have a mythic status the heroes that they that they might be either one of those things is very upsetting don't you think I do think that but I and and that's why we obsessed by it is it you know it is the in comprehensibility of thinking that our mythic heroes could be could be human which of course the human because if they're human what that means is that we're human much as I do but don't you think that's at play here I mean well yeah yeah you know she was even friends have said I mean we've had so much come out about this particular case and and at first the first reaction not among friends of mrs. Simpson that sees mrs. Simpson but the first reaction of friends fellow players was I it's incomprehensible that this man could have done that crime yet on the other hand I mean I also think that God there is a part of me also that believes that I mean when we have seen so much evil in this world that that nothing would surprise us in terms of the capacity of even you well I think that's what tragedy is abroad that's that's why tragedy is cleansing because it confronts us with with our humanity with our capacity for evil and having been confronted by that capacity to have bad done to us and to do bad ourselves we leave feeling chastened and and cleanse this Aristotle would say rather than incorrectly buoyed up by being reassured as melodrama does or is that we that we are not the bad guy melodrama completely differentiates between the good guy and the bad guy and says you have a choice the evil guy in the black hand who is a swine or the angel in the white hat who's a saint which would you rather choose was that I think I'll identify with angel on the white hat and you leave at the end of the melodrama and say well boy I'm so glad that the angel on the white hat one I feel great but that feeling lasts until you get out of the door of the theatre where as tragedy says choose which one you want to be whichever one you choose you're going to be wrong and PS you never had a choice to begin with you're just human and we leave shaken and perhaps better for the experience you know what I'd love to do I want to come and sit in a place in a theatre where they're playing one of your performances let's sit next to you when they do it I mean I don't know what when you come when cryptogram comes over here yeah that's what I would like to do okay well were you track shoes because I do a lot of pacing alright David Mamet's novel the first is the village his film Oh Liana which he directed and it's a pleasure to have him here and there were a lot of things that we didn't talk about and next time we'll pick up on some of those two things we were David great to have you

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Length: 35min 40sec (2140 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2016