David Mamet

David Alan Mamet (born 30 November 1947) is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director, essayist, and novelist whose work has defined a distinctive strain of American dramatic writing — tough, profane, rhythmically hypnotic, and built on the conviction that language is not a transparent medium of communication but a weapon, a mask, a system of deception and self-deception that reveals character precisely through what it conceals. His dialogue has no equivalent in American theatre: the overlapping speech, the incomplete sentences, the obscenities deployed with the precision of musical notes, the pauses that carry more weight than the words around them.

Early Life and Chicago

Mamet was born in Chicago and raised on the South Side in a Jewish family. His parents divorced when he was young, and his childhood, by his own account, was difficult. He attended Goddard College in Vermont and studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York under Sanford Meisner, whose emphasis on truthful, moment-to-moment behaviour profoundly influenced Mamet’s understanding of performance. He returned to Chicago and began writing plays for small theatres, rapidly developing the voice that would make him famous.

American Buffalo (1975)

Mamet’s breakthrough play takes place in a junk shop where three small-time crooks — Donny, Teach, and the young Bobby — plan a burglary to steal a valuable coin collection. The heist never happens. What the audience witnesses instead is the disintegration of trust, loyalty, and reason under the pressure of greed and paranoia. The play’s power lies entirely in its language — the characters talk compulsively, circling around their intentions, manipulating and being manipulated, their speech patterns revealing the desperation and self-delusion beneath their tough-guy postures.

American Buffalo was Mamet’s first Broadway production and established him as the most exciting new voice in American drama.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1984)

Mamet’s masterpiece — which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — is set in a shabby Chicago real estate office where four salesmen compete to sell worthless Florida land to hapless buyers. The office has posted a sales contest: first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired. The play dramatises the American sales culture as a system of institutionalised deception — the salesmen lie to their clients, to each other, and to themselves, and the language of selling has so thoroughly colonised their speech that they can no longer distinguish between persuasion and truth.

The play was adapted into a celebrated 1992 film starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Kevin Spacey. Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” speech — actually written by Mamet for the film, not present in the play — has entered American popular culture as a sardonic emblem of sales-driven capitalism.

Oleanna (1992)

Mamet’s most controversial play is a two-character drama about a university professor and a female student whose escalating conflict over a course grade becomes a battle about power, sexual harassment, and political correctness. The play was written during the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill hearings and provoked furious debate — audiences divided sharply along gender lines, with men sympathising with the professor and women with the student. Mamet denied that the play took sides, but its structure makes the professor the more sympathetic figure, and the play’s final act of violence against the student disturbed many viewers.

Film Work

Mamet is a distinguished screenwriter and film director. His screenplays include The Verdict (1982, directed by Sidney Lumet), The Untouchables (1987, directed by Brian De Palma), Wag the Dog (1997), and Hannibal (2001). His own films as director include House of Games (1987), a confidence-game thriller; Homicide (1991), about a Jewish detective confronting his identity; The Spanish Prisoner (1997); and Spartan (2004). His films share the verbal precision and moral ambiguity of his plays.

Writing on Writing

Mamet’s books on craft are models of clarity and dogmatism. On Directing Film (1991) argues that film should be composed of uninflected shots arranged in sequence — “the audience will supply meaning.” True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (1997) attacks the Stanislavski method and argues that actors should simply say the lines truthfully. Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (2007) is a witty, jaundiced account of Hollywood. These books are thin, opinionated, and extremely useful.

Political Transformation

Mamet’s political evolution from liberal to conservative — announced publicly in a 2008 Village Voice essay titled “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’” — surprised and dismayed many admirers. He has since written conservative polemics (The Secret Knowledge, 2011) and expressed views that have distanced him from much of the theatrical establishment. This political shift has complicated critical assessment of his work, though the quality of the plays remains undeniable.

Critical Standing

Mamet is, with Sam Shepard and August Wilson, one of the three most important American playwrights of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo are permanent fixtures of the American dramatic canon. His ear for the rhythms of American male speech — the bluster, the profanity, the competitive verbal one-upmanship — is unmatched.

Collecting Mamet

American Buffalo (1977, Grove Press) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1984, Grove Press) in first edition are the most sought-after. House of Games (1987) as a screenplay is collectible. Signed copies exist from readings and theatrical events. Mamet’s limited editions and broadsides are collected by aficionados of modern drama.