I’m currently reading Mr. Mamet’s new(ish) book “on the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business.”
I have this to say about Mamet and his non-dramatic writing style: his true strength as a writer is in making you feel smart. Read his books and—provided you stay awake—you’ll feel like you’re intellectually sacrosanct. He’ll stroke your vocab like a hairdresser strokes your scalp; he’ll gently toss you a vocab word like “chicanery”, knowing that the both of yous will delight in the opportunity to use and understand it.
I’m not too proud to admit I like this sort of thing. In fact, the only reason I’m reading his book is to delight in Mamet’s own chicanery. I don’t plan to gain dazzling insight on the nature, purpose, or practice of the movie business…because that’s not what Mamet does. Mamet does something else, perhaps equally valuable.
Mamet reminds you of what you already know to be true. On stage, screen or page the his bread and butter is not providing new insight, but the old—words I forgot I knew, complexities I forget to observe, dramatic minutia I forget I love.
At least this is what he does for me. Some of the first plays I read were his. Reading him now, I can’t help but find him somehow endearing. He helps me connect with original impulses to write—not through what he says, but how much fun he has in saying it. The old “it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. Or, as Mamet quotes Lorne Michaels:
“A guy comes home from college to find his mother sleeping with his uncle, and there’s a ghost running around. Write it good, it’s Hamlet; write it bad, it’s Gilligan’s Island.”
Truer words never quoted. ‘How’ you do something has everything to do with the nature, purpose, and practice of the movie business…and has everything to do with my keen love for Mamet. Wisdom worth keeping in mind.
