David Mamet

In short

Podcast Notes: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Episode Title

David Mamet Episode Description David Mamet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director, discusses his life, career, and artistic philosophy with Rick Rubin. Known for works such as *Sexual Perversity in Chicago*, *American Buffalo*, and *Glengarry Glen Ross*, Mamet shares insights on education, directing, and the nature of storytelling.

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Key Points Discussed

Early Life and Education

Self-Education: Mamet reflects on his lack of formal education, crediting his extensive reading as his true education.
Trauma in School: He recounts being placed in remedial reading classes in Chicago Public Schools, which led him to feel "stupid" despite his self-education.

Thoughts on Education

Critique of Traditional Education: Mamet critiques conventional education systems, emphasizing the importance of real-world learning experiences over standard curricula.
Memoir: He wrote *Some Recollections of St. Ives*, which encapsulates his thoughts on education through a fictional narrative.

Directing Actors

Simplicity of Acting: Mamet asserts that actors inherently understand their roles and that directing is about facilitating their natural performance.
Role of the Director: He emphasizes the director's job in staging and ensuring clear communication, rather than overcomplicating the process.

The Nature of Writing and Storytelling

Playwriting Philosophy: Mamet describes the essence of playwriting as translating thoughts into dialogue that reflects human interaction.
Character Development: He argues that characters are defined by their actions rather than complex backstories, stating, "character is just habitual action."

Insights into Artistic Collaboration

Collaboration with Actors: Mamet mentions that the best performances come when actors bring their own understanding and instinct to the script.
The Importance of Audience: He believes that an audience's emotional investment is crucial and that they are smart enough to grasp the underlying themes of a play.

Reflections on His Works

Inspiration for *Glengarry Glen Ross*: Based on his experiences in a phone room, Mamet emphasizes the power dynamics in sales and the human condition.
Success of Chicago Theater Scene: Mamet discusses the vibrancy of the Chicago theater scene in the '70s, highlighting the camaraderie and lack of commercial pressure.

Philosophical Views on Society and Art

Art as a Higher Purpose: He believes that art serves a purpose beyond entertainment, often addressing deeper societal issues.
Critique of Modern Media: Mamet critiques contemporary television and films for prioritizing sensationalism over meaningful content.

Personal Anecdotes and Projects

Theater Companies: He reflects on the community aspect of theater companies, where everyone was devoted to the craft beyond financial motivations.
Current Projects: Mamet discusses his recent play *Henry Johnson*, its adaptations, and his ongoing creative process.

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Key Takeaways

Education is Self-Directed: True learning comes from personal exploration rather than formal schooling.
Simplicity in Acting: Effective directing lies in trusting the actor's instincts and understanding of the role.
Audience Engagement: The connection between the audience and the performance is vital; they must be engaged for the art to resonate.
Art Should Reflect Reality: Mamet promotes the idea that art should strive to reflect the complexities of human behavior and societal issues, rather than resorting to superficial entertainment.

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Closing Remarks David Mamet's conversation with Rick Rubin offers a compelling view into the mind of a significant figure in American theater. His insights into education, directing, and storytelling reveal a deep commitment to the craft and a critical perspective on the state of modern media and art. The episode not only showcases Mamet's experiences but also invites listeners to reflect on their own perceptions of art, education, and the human experience.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:33Tetragramatant

1:54I think I've been very fortunate because I never got an education so all I did was read all the time. What are your thoughts on education in general? Well, it's interesting that you should say that because for years I wanted to write a book about education, my wife said, please don't. So I did. And I imagined this school, perhaps school in New England. And I wrote the memoirs of a fellow who had been the headmaster for 50 years and who knew the final story. Yes, all fictional. And so I put all my ideas about education into what you called. It's called some recollections of St. Ibs. I'm very, very happy with it.

2:36I'd love to see it. Yeah. Yeah, I spent my life thinking about education because I didn't have any and I went to the Chicago Public Schools. It was very traumatic for me because everyone said I was stupid and they kept putting me in remedial reading classes and never opened a school book. And so I grew up thinking it was really, really stupid. But at the same time, they were putting me in remedial reading classes. There was reading all the time. But I never put the two things together that I was actually getting an education, but I wasn't getting it in the school. You weren't getting their education.

3:12You were educating yourself. So what were they educating me to do? They were asking me, looking back, it would have taken about a thousand of the energy and the psychic reserve to just do the stupid fucking exercises, but it never occurred to me. And I think it didn't occur to me because my main trick was being stupid. That's why I'm going to tell me what I was. And so I was very good at it. Right? You used it to your advantage. It was a world I was comfortable in. So what did you say it gave you freedom? I don't know if it gave me freedom, no, but it was bearable. It was more bearable to think I understand the world I'm stupid.

3:54Rather than I don't understand the world and everybody who's in a position of authority is wrong. So then I spent a lot of time thinking about education and I went to an acting school and I was thinking about the way that education took place because I didn't understand what they were doing and it didn't make any sense to me. And then I started a couple of acting schools that a lot of directing. So I've always been thinking about how people learn how I learn what is education. For example, one of the things you'll see in the book, It's all anecdotal. And the guy shows up and he says he was a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II, and then he was in Menchukuo, and he goes to the prisoner of the Russians.

4:42And he learned Japanese and he learned Russian, and because they let him get some books, he learned Greek and Hebrew and Latin and he shows up. And he says to the guy, I'd like a job at this school teaching languages. And the guy says, what language can you teach? And I think I can teach whatever you want. So the guy says, well, do you have an A degree? I said, I have a degree. But he says, I'll tell you what. He says, the classical languages. Tomorrow morning, he says, you choose Latin a grade. The guy says, okay, great. He says good. He says, give me your worst students at eight o 'clock in the morning.

5:20Just have one stipulation. Don't feed them anything. He says, okay, he says, come back at four o 'clock, they're going to be speaking Greek. So the sheer students come up and they haven't eaten anything and they're sitting there. And the guy's got a big plate of scones. He looks at the scones and he says, food, food, he says in Greek, food, food. And he says in Greek, stand up. He points at the guy, kid stands up. And he says, in Greek you want food, you want food. And he says, in Greek say it, kids says, I want food. Like I said, good, come have a scone. And so the kid sets down and someone else says, I want food.

6:09So the guy says, in Greek, you want food too? And the guy says, say it, I want food too. In Greek. In Greek. And so the kid eats the thing. And so he says to his dear kid, good. Because it says, yeah, good. So at the end of the day, they're speaking Greek. And what he does halfway through the day is he starts writing it down the words in the Greek alphabet or food. He writes down the word for that. Good, he writes down the word for that. Because what the guy figured out is all prisoners must learn to speak the language of their captors immediately. And the word they learn is, they don't eat. so they have to learn to pay strict attention, and the way languages are not taught.

6:52You can study French for five years, no nothing, but if you're there for three weeks, you're gonna speak the language, because the language that you're trying to learn is the company need with gestures, and you understand the gestures, that the person who's speaking the language is trying to communicate with you, trying to help you communicate. And so the guy, the headmaster, says they learned the alphabet, too, It's not hard. He says, every 15 -year -old boy loves codes. It's just a code. So my life as a teacher, and as I suppose the thinker, and certainly as a director, is how to teach. How do we actually learn?

7:35And what's the test? Like we sent kids to college, starting in my generation, and he's like, well, they're going to become more themselves. They're going to be open to the world, or they're going to become exposed to whether, let's bullshit, because there isn't any test. So if the test is, you're going to be able to speak French, you're going to be able to do calculus. That's a test which can be applied to the school, to evaluate the school, whatever is you're going to become more yourself, or you're going to become more open to other blah, blah, blah. The kid realizes that's nonsense. I can go along with the gag, but it's just nonsense.

8:13So how does that apply to the arts? How does that apply to directing? What applies to directing is you have to understand what you're asking the person to do and it has to be something that can be done. The real trick to directing actors is you will not let do anything. The actor understood the script when he read it. There's nothing more to it than that. The actor simply shows up and says the lines with an objective somewhat like that. But he's that all there is to it? Yeah, that's all there is to it. And I've worked with the greatest actors in the world, and whether they're conscious of what they're doing or not, that's what they're doing.

8:52So people say, if you spend a long time directing your movies, I said, I don't spend any time directing my movies. The actors show up, but you know what the script -book is, they read it. I say, you got any questions? No, okay, go. Works just fine. So I realized from working with other directors, myself as a playwright, that most directors have no idea what they're doing. They come out of the English department because the director's job is, in addition to designing the scenery, is to keep the actors from tripping over the scenery and to stage them in such a way to increase the audience's enjoyment through the staging.

9:34For example, if you're the audience, most directors have the actors talking like that to each other. Those guys can't see them, those guys can't see them. Everything should always be in a diagonal, and you can move the actors so that the person talking has the attention of the audience. And if you don't, you're not doing your job. So the job of the director used to be called stage manager. Did the director start as the stage manager? That's what it evolved from? Yeah, and the job of the stage manager was to make sure that no one's going to upstage the star and to move them around. It's a very, very simple job.

10:09And the whole thing changed in the end of the 19th century with the Stanislavski. And he thought that we had to investigate the character and find the inner meaning of the character. There isn't any inner meaning of the character. Just actors saying lines. It's just like, you know, after you listen to Glenn Gould play Bach, everyone else sounds like bullshit, because his unspeakable genius is the best of his ability to play in the music and get in him so far out of the way. So the idea of interpreting music or interpreting. I feel like Glenn Gould interprets Bach because if you listen to other people play Bach, They play it more just the notes, and he's playing the notes, but he seems to be reinterpreting it in a way that others don't.

11:05Well, yeah, when you make the case, yeah, but that's how I understand it. So the job of a director is basically to say, pick it up and knock it off. Right? Because the actors get it. Would you say the words of the play, that's it. Is it all in the words? Well, where else would it be? I'm asking. Well, my question is a rhetorical. Where else would it be? If you pick up a script and shake it upside down, the character's not going to fall out. It's just just words. So people talk about how difficult it is to do shake spirit, quite the opposite. It's just the easy thing in the world. You just say the words?

11:44You say the words. The purpose of the words is to have the speaker affect something in the other person. It's not to communicate ideas, right? So if I'm trying to get something from you, which is what all drama is about, if I'm smart, I'm going to tell you through the best of my ability, what I think is more likely to get a response out of you. Most people say I'm going to get a response out of them. I'm using my words to make them understand what I want out of you. So if you just focus on the character you're playing against and say it to them, that's the actor's job. Yeah, not even if the focus.

12:29Just do it. Listen, it's like I always say people sit and watch on the television show in a bar and somebody comes up and says, what's happening? And the other guy says, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she was just discovered, cheating on her husband. And that's her best friend and she's trying, she's trying to get him to tell her it's okay. That's all you need, right? They aren't going to say, well, as I know, and you don't, because I saw the first hour She had a very difficult childhood and she has all these characteristics, see, for example That's if so if you look at movies and television almost all of it is narration It's people talking about something that happened before you know, geezing.

13:10I know I'm telling us when I was young my kitten got run over by a dumb truck and that the, or we really need to do this gym because as you know, if we don't, the blah, blah people are going to take over the thingy over there. They're explaining to each other. Understanding drum is really understanding what the audience wants, which is actually kind of easy because we were an audience before we were dramatists. Do you write like you talk? I hope so. I had a bit in my book, a recollection of St. Ives, where one guy wants to teach history. He says, here's a good teacher's tree. He says, the best history book in the world is a flea market.

13:54He says, here's where I'm going to take the kids to a flea market. I can give them each a $5 building and say, buy something. And tomorrow, come in and tell me all about it. So they come in and tell me all about it. And he says, OK. He says, then if I say to them, stand up and just tell me about it in your own words. And I say, good, right now write it down, they just learn creative writing. Because that's all creative writing is, right? It's telling it in your own words. So when you're writing a script, do all the characters speak the same way? No, of course not. My mind is a raging fire. Everybody speaks different, you know, because I get the dress up like they do.

14:33So, but if you think about it, when we fantasize as we all do, all the characters in our minds speak differently, don't they? Yes. Same thing. It's just writing down fantasies. When you imagine a character, do you have a person in mind or an actor in mind when you're writing or no? No. Just picking it up. No imagery in your head. No. Tell me what your process, how it actually works. I read it down. I'm making an open, I'm writing it down. And I was thinking about Bach, you know, if you listen about the partators and so forth. As a musician, tell me if I'm wrong, it's obvious that he's just transcribing an improvisation, right?

15:19So it does, he say, oh, duh, duh, duh, duh, this and that. I think all music is, most music is written that way. It all starts as improvisation. It doesn't start theoretically, if that's what you're saying. Right. It's not intellectual. Right, but I'm saying that I don't think he wrote down in sort of going to the treble cleft and then do the bass, bass clip, oh what happens after 16 bars? No, no, no, no, no. Sounds to me like he's sitting down at the piano for it and then writing down what he's playing. And that's your experience of writing, same thing. I think so. I what do I know? Before you start the story, how much of the story do you know?

15:55Sometimes I know a lot and that's wrong and sometimes I know a little I gotta figure it out because at the end it has to be an equation. One thing is, I don't really have to say about modern music because it doesn't even dissolve. Most of it is just, it's a chant where it's the same four bars played over and over and over again. So, okay, you know, it's elevator music, but we miss the, we miss our beloved cycle of fifths. Don't we? We miss our resolution. If there's an extraordinary very resolution of music. It's just like an extraordinary resolution and drama say I never thought of that. But wow, yes, now I see.

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18:13Tell me, would you remember about the idea for House of Games? I was doing a movie for Bob Ravelson and the Jeff Nicholson, Post -Mino Resurings twice. We were shooting in Santa Barbara and I was living over here and I would commute back and forth in my wonderful little 1968 Carmen gear, best Carmen made. And I was listening, speaking of Glenn Gould, to Glenn Gould play the... the C minor Takata and its six notes, right? It's, it's C minor from C to A. That's all that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, so the modulates and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it keeps going on and on and on and on and ways that you just, that are so inevitable and so shocking.

18:59And I thought, wow, I wish I could write like that. So that was kind of my inspiration. The idea for it being about con men? Well, I spent a lot of time in that world by accident growing up in Chicago. I spent a lot of time playing poker with criminals, and they also spent a lot of time working in phone rooms. What's a phone room? The phone room is a boiler room the whole day. You're throwing, for example, a imaginary land in Arizona, which one of the places I was working. And there's 25 guys there to reach on a phone and they're given very bad leads sometimes actually cold calling out of the telephone book And they're trying to set up a date with you.

19:40So how Mr. Rumeha is also Richard Bim yes Thank. Oh, my name is Dirk Bogart and I work with the Glenn Realty company I understand that you were someone in your family put in your name is someone who was interested in making a proper land. Is that true? If that's true, what I'd like to suggest to you, your name has been picked at random out of a pool and the president of our company is going to be in talk just this afternoon. And he'd like to talk to you to get your ideas about how to form this program. What would be a better time for you would be four o 'clock or six o 'clock? And of course, your wife would be with her.

20:17So I did that and I sold carpets over the telephone. on, you had these jobs. Oh, yeah. And it was a really interesting world to me, because the salesman, not the people in the boiler room, but the salesman, they call them sales bombs, right? They, Adam, lived in a hotel. You know, they were, Adam, we're drunk and addicted. And a lot of times they didn't know and didn't care what they were selling. They're just great at selling. And then I started playing poker with a lot of guys who were criminals and hanging out with them and listening to them talk and stuff. How old were you at that time? I don't know, 22, 20 years or so like that.

20:55And what were your thoughts going on at that time? Was it just this is really interesting? Did it feel scary? What were your thoughts? It was just living my life. It was never, I remember I went to this hippie -dippy school over, it wasn't really even a college, but it tended to be. And I went to visit a friend from high school who was at Harvard, this person in your from house. So I went down the camp, where did you want it to horror for a yard? It was one of the most stunning experiences of my life. I looked around, I saw these people my age who had a life and they had support and they were made.

21:35They didn't have to worry about, I always looked them at them out. You know, because I didn't have any career, I didn't have any skills, I had many contacts, but these people were just, they were made. That was it. And it was stunning to me. So, you know, I guess my great motivator has been two things. One of those I've given a gift, so I've been a fool not to use it. And the other was I was always terrified of poverty. Yeah. When did you become aware of the gift? While I woke up when I started writing, and then I wrote these little sketches, used to work at Second City in Chicago. Not on stage, I worked as a bus boy, and I worked as a piano player for the kids' shows.

22:17And I saw the sketches that they were doing in provisional comedy, and then I started reading Pinterest sketches. And I thought, oh, it's the same thing. What they're both doing is writing this tragico cometo blackouts. And then I discovered check off, and that's what he's doing. None of his plays have a plot. They have a setting, and they're all like seven to 12 minute a tragic old, comitico blackout. So I said, well, hell, I can do that. So I did. And one thing led to another, and I started writing plays. And I liked it. Who were your contemporaries at that time? Well, my contemporaries at that time were the people that I was working with in the theater in Chicago among them, William H.

23:03Macy and among them, Melchowicz, a little bit younger than I am, and Darius and Easter, but a little bit younger than I am. And a lot of those guys, they became very well known, Macy among them, Dilly Peterson, you know, who did NCIS or Loner, one of them, whatever the hell he was doing. And Misha Taylor did designing women. And also Warren Casey, who wrote with Jim Jacobs, who were Greece. So we were in a little theater, a size of this, and he was in a garage across the street doing Greece, and then Stuart Gordon was there with the organic theater. And people from New York started coming saying, what's going on here.

23:39How do you think it was different than what was going on in New York? Well, it's completely different because none of us saw a career who's just what we were doing. There was no money. There was no upside. No, there was no upside. I didn't have enough time of our life. And everybody was working a different job and putting the money into the theater companies because why not? You know, it was the Beatles. You know, it was the greatest experience of my life. Yeah, and we were in these rundown neighborhoods, the transition, and the people started coming from the neighborhood, and they'd come up to the street and say, you know, Dave, I saw that play, you did less, it was really good.

24:20And it was so wonderful. It was just like, that's the way you talk to the flumber or the butcher or something like that. Fucking love that. Good job. Yeah, good job. Well done. That's very Chicago, right? Nobody's impressed by much of anything. Yeah. My dad used to say New York's the biggest hicktown in the world, which I think is proved to be true. How else do you think Chicago informed who you are? Well, my parents were first generation who went right off the boat. How did they end up there, do you know? Yes, some of the mammals went to Ellis Island and went to Brooklyn. Some of them went to Montreal and came down through the lakes and ended up in…

24:58But as usual, somebody knew somebody and the lance -man shaft, right, the informal self -help organizations. But they used to say if you can't work in Chicago, you can't work anywhere. So I don't know if that's true or not, but it was then. They did every job in the world because you could always go get another job. But one thing about Chicago was that the American literature of the 20th century all came out of Chicago. Really? Yeah, every bit of it. So that was the tradition I got where that yeah, that's the tradition that I grew up in and I used to go cut school and go to Library in downtown just read and I loved the Chicagoans, you know Willough Care and and Dreiser and Frank Norris and Ben Hecht who wrote the front pages and you know the transporter American play and on and on and on Nullah Larson who were passing and Richard Wright of black and white.

25:57And for example, a B -traven who worked at the jungle now. How many white came out of Chicago for Christ's sake? I didn't know that. Yeah, that's all Chicago. I always hear the expression, the machine politics in Chicago. What does that mean? Well, Chicago was always a machine town. It was run by the dailies and it was a democratic machine town. The question is, you know, it was Joey Montenegg and I say, you don't want to live in a town where you can't fix a parking ticket. Who do you got to talk to around here was always the question. You know, working as a cab driver, you know, we always get shipped down by the cops and it was clear if you worked for anything in the city, you had to kick back part of your salary, right?

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26:36And if you wanted to get the streets cleaned, you had to vote Democratic and blah, blah, blah. I was very clear, but there was nothing hidden about it. So when I grew up, it became, I found that odd that people didn't understand how politics worked, right? that it was a people with a good idea who were going to get taken advantage of where the people got into it for the money. And then it was all about power and that the purpose of the Constitution was to protect us from the government. It was not the job of the government to do good because, you know, I don't know how to do good. I think about it all the time and I'm a huge sinner.

27:17Why would these schmucks who are getting into it to steal have a better idea about how that do good. So it's kind of stunning to me that a lot of people don't, well, some were coming to realize it. What do you know about the Great Chicago Fire? Well, one of the things I know is that because of the Great Chicago Fire, I think it was 1903, 1906, it was impossible to build a theater in Chicago. Couldn't do it. The fire laws were too strict. Then for some reason, in the 70s, the fire laws were relaxed. And because they were relaxed, our little neighborhood, you run around the corner for a ugly field.

27:55These little theaters spraying out, you know, 50 seats that were out of the abandoned car barn, one of them was in a abandoned dairy, one was in a garage. These little theaters spraying out. Folding chairs? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Who was the space? Who was the space? So even today, anyone who grew up in the theater, if you show them a black room, their eyes light up, they said, Well, this is great. I could do anything here. And indeed, you could, because one of the other secrets that we learned was that stage design is very, very difficult. There was a guy called Adapta Opia, a great designer in an eight -twice literature.

28:34He said, the set doesn't make any difference. He said, what makes a difference is the correlation between the stage and the audience. It's an amphitheater, right? I don't know if I... If you look at an amphitheater, what set could you put on the amputeeer to make it better? So is it possible to do a set which is better than a bear stage? Yes, but it's very, very difficult. So my thing has always been if you can do it on a bear stage and keep the audience as attention, it's going to be hard to beat it. In fact, if you can do it right and do it on a radio, you don't need a set. And we had a little theater, the Goodman Theater, I call it Greg Mosher, came in, the Goodman was an old death house in Chicago.

29:18And Greg took it over and turned to do a great theater and hired all of us. And he had a little space, the second space theater, which was I think 80 seats. And it's always true that if you have a theater with a big space and an experimental space, nothing good is happening on the big space, right? It's all happening there. And I had a back wall. I was built in like 1920, a back wall. and it was plaster and over the years they'd painted, they'd put on paint, they'd taken it off, they'd put up a mask, they'd taken it off, they'd put up, up, up, up, up. And we always ended taking the set away because that for some reason was the most magnificent, you know, it was like polygrap, he could paint.

30:02And that was just stunning. Amazing. Yeah. Have any of your works been used as radio plays? Do you know? Sure, I did a bunch of them as radio plays. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, I think a few radio plays last year for the BBC, I think. Fantastic. Yeah. I'd love to hear that. Have you ever done therapy? Yeah, I did. What a waste of time, Jesus Christ. Tell me about it. Well, here's the thing. I've known in various capacities, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. And like any other profession, a few of them were smart, maybe wanted to move wise. But I did a lot of reading about psychoanalysis when I was young, I read Ketpoir, interested in them, they read everything.

30:51And I realized that there is a kind of a cross -pollonization between Stanislavsky and Freud the Coevils, right? And that the quote method, as adopted here in the United States, was taken from the teaching of Stanislavski and practiced by people who all involved in therapy. And they were all communist, so they're all involved in the whole communist Marxist idea of self -evilation and sharing the booby -bobby boo. But I realized that most therapy that I've either participated in or seen those closely participated in was a recitation of grievances. And it's like you said about the monk, right? You say, oh, I'm a bad monk, right?

31:38You're a fucking monk. Yeah, you either are or you're not. Yeah. So the recitation of grievances I saw cross -deck from experiences in the theater, it lead to nothing. I know how this person feels. I think, who cares? The audience don't care. I want you to say this to good -loan. If the plays written well, they'll get the idea. You're just there to get the idea. So I had terrible experiences with psychiatrists and like that before I came to realize that absent the stuff you could get out of either Uncle Joe, don't worry you'll grow out of it. Yeah. Right? Or a good clergy person, you shut up on a bed of the rules.

32:20Yes. Or if you really fucked up some psychological drugs, they got nothing to offer. Here's the thing, if you go into the theater, you have to pay something. You have to. You can't put on a plate for free. Seriously, it could be a nickel, but just like they say it when they choose to do the ascences, you have to put a hat, shekel in the box. Let them put a quarter and that allows them to believe. It triggers them into being able to suspend their disbelief. They're investing in that experience. Exactly. They're investing in the experience. If you don't invest in the experience, you don't believe.

33:03Right? So I have to invest something. But the opposite is true too. When you go to therapy, like that, most of the people, and there are, of course, a few exceptions. You're also investing for the right to believe in something which is not true, which is that complaining or finding the reason that you cheat on your wife is somehow going to free something. It's also, it's just not true. People do not act badly and feel upset because of something they saw in the closet 45 years. It's just not true. So that's what I think about about territory. Your main character in Asa Games was a therapist. Yeah.

33:49Who had written a successful book. Yeah. And there's a scene at the end. I wanted to ask you about. She looks different. She's dressed to the flowers instead of her old uniform. And her friend leaves the table. And she steals a lighter from the next table. What did you mean by it? That's what I meant by it. That throughout the thing, Joey Mantenius, saying the broads bent. If she weren't bent, she wouldn't be going all not this stuff. So she's proving him right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the old joke, right? There's the hypercontract and goes to little kid that taken to the therapist. He says, I determined the root of your son's problem is at least.

34:33So there. Also, we see this whole idea of the primacy of therapy, which is completely self -referential. There's nothing wrong with that. We're also for our financial at times, let's redo a bunch of eogrens over it, because our mind is a monkey mind. But leeches over into identity and politics and the criminal justice system. Oh, I wonder why the guy did that. You see it every day on the news. You look like you're so healthy that you don't watch the news. I'm trying to... I know I should do it. Yeah, I got to stop, but it's just fucking bullshit. But they say, well, I went in and he killed his mother and father.

35:07And one thing what his motives were, well, hey, it's who would know and be so what?

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36:46At any point in your life you're interested in magic. You're like, card tricks, magic? Sure, but I got interested in magic not as a practitioner, but through my associate at the Ricky J, who was the greatest magician, maybe the greatest performer of the 20th century. And I did many, many things with him. How'd you meet him? He was in the park, he was doing Shakespeare in the park. And I saw him performing magic. And I was talking to a Jewel's Fisher, the great lighting designer, he's a great friend of Ricky. And I said, well, I wonder if he'd come over and perform for my 30th, 40th birthday something like that.

37:22I said, you crazy, Ricky doesn't do that. But as we called, Ricky, Ricky comes over and performs, so I fell in love with him. I said, this guy's a great actor. So I did many movies and television shows with him. One of them you might enjoy is I did a funny or die called Lost Masterpieces of Pornography. And he's introducing the Lost Masterpieces of Pornography. And it's Eddie O 'Neill and Kristen Bell in a porn movie from 1935 that takes place in the robing chambers of the Supreme Court. It's called June Crenshaw, Sex Kitten to the Supreme Court, and very keen to introducing it. So we talked all the time about the difference between magic and drama.

38:12And the Aristotelian idea that you have to use the mind to lead people to a conclusion which is both surprising and inevitable. So that drama works the same way as magic essentially? Yeah, absolutely. Tell me about the Phil Spectaproject. You know, I ran into a long -lost relative of mine. There aren't too many mammoths, but there's one in New York who's working at Yashiva University. And she's the granddaughter of my cousin, Eddie DeCop. Eddie Mamadu is a cop for 40 years. And he was there and asked me to speak at Yashiva. and then Eddie's son came over and they started to talk about the history of my family in Poland.

38:53And they said, well, you know, we were actually specters. He said, the mammoths were an offshoot that the whole blah, blah, blah, blah, some field specters, some probably related to field specter. When did you find this out? Two weeks ago. Me, really? Yeah. So anyway, so somebody called me up, who always made barely, you bury levens and called me up, some like that. So you want to do movie about full spectre. And then he took it to HBO and I talked to HBO over there. And I said, yeah, okay, I'd love to do a movie about full spectre and we'll do it with Al and the deal is, you're gonna leave me alone, you know.

39:29I'll do it. Did the best job I can see you with the opening. So they said, okay, the fools.

39:41So anyway, I see you're doing full spectre. I haven't had time of her life. With Beth Middler and she threw her back, or she was like, two weeks into the shooting, heart -breaking, we had this closed down. I asked Helen Mirren earlier if she would do it, she said, I'm busy. And then she said, no, no, no, I'm going on vacation with my husband, I'm beat. And I called her up. She was on vacation, Helen, in Spain with her husband on the Friday. day and she said, oh, be there one day. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Did you write the script? Yeah. And did you ever meet Phil? I didn't meet him, but I, somebody invited me to the one that goes see him, he was in the joint.

40:26And I just said, no, no, no, I'm making up a story. You know what? We cast a good story. And I asked, Al, and Hal said, no, I don't want to be the one who did my own thing. So how did you decide on Al? Well, I love that. I mean, I've worked so often with that. Yeah. And I'm working on a new movie, trying to put together this movie. The movie, and he said, he'd take a part in it if he's very... That'd be great. It's the same old story, but this new movie is another confidence game movie. But these two guys who find this rich Mark, who's a dealer in America, and he's also gay. And so what they want to do is sell them the Abraham Lincoln letter that proves that Abraham Lincoln was gay And they've been waiting for years to find this perfect thing as they go to the forgery.

41:18It's it's pretty cool It sounds great. Yeah, and John Nalke of his city played one of the guys and Went into he was gonna play the other one of the guys So when you're writing a story about a real person in case of Phil Specter How do you research or do you research you just make up from scratch? Yeah? Charles Silverstain was my closest friend. He said, never do research. When you do research, you're just reading bullshit written by somebody that didn't do research. So the problem with biography is, you know, I was thinking a lot about in reading your book, the question is, what do you throw away?

41:52What do you keep? Right? I'm always working with this question. So I always knew that a good writer is going to keep what others throw away, but it was also is going to throw away with what others keep. So looking with a biography, this, all this stuff, it's very difficult because if you're dealing with someone who's putting up the money, they're going to say, where does he chop down the territory? Or where does he bob bob bar, this or that, the next thing. So the problem with writing biographies is to throw this stuff away, to say, what is what's the actual story? Yeah. And then take it from there and let your imagination work.

42:32And when you say story, do you mean story or essence of the character? There isn't any essence of the character. It's just story. Yeah. Aristotle said that. He says, there's no such thing as character. Characters just habitual action. That's all we know about anybody. Anything other than that is narration. That's how we understand kids. All anybody understands. What does the guy do? That's his character. So for the writer and for the actor, both this was just a character. The audience will get the idea. They imagine a character based on what the actor does and the words coming out as well. So the people in the audience imagine a different character depending on who they are.

43:17Would that be accurate? Well, yes, and it's very much like listening to a radio personality. It's an illusion. They think that they imagined something, but they didn't. Because if you ask them, well, okay, describe it. They can't. So it's an illusion. You can leave it out. Because art is all about what can you leave out and it's still there. Do you think of yourself as spiritual in any way? Oh, yeah, sure. Tell me how. Well, I mean, you know, God had a muse God to put me here, you know, and so you're a believer. Oh, yeah. Sure. Do you pray? Sure. How do religion and show business work together?

43:58They don't. But show business is the bastard child of theater, which is of course the bastard child of religion. So it all starts with religion? Sure. It all starts with exactly so, with connections, all metaphysics, right? It's a connection to something beyond our consciousness, which nonetheless we intuit is true, but it's true in a way different than fire burns, but it's true nonetheless. Describe more. I think everybody believes in God. I think we just call it by different names. And some of them actually call it the devil and some of them, and actually is the devil whether they call it that or not.

44:43So if you read the Torah, which I did, it's all in the Torah. What does God want you to do? Do just this love mercy, well, humbling with God. You want some extra tips? Okay, here's 10 commandments. You want some extra tips in addition to that. Okay, here's several Jewish observances. These are all designed to calm our mind such that we're receptive to higher power. That's what they're designed for. Like you're monk, you do them, you're going to get the benefit. If you don't do them, you're going to pay the price. So rational human beings devote so much energy to saying that can't be true. Right?

45:25It's not that God doesn't exist, but He's doing a rotten job. I think I could do a better job than that. Let me make up all these laws and rules and regulations and PSI'm gonna throw out anything that says it's religious because that's irrational. But if you look at human beings, we're all irrational constantly. If you look at what's on the news, which it's absurd and it's evil. So if you don't say God exists, then it's very easy to say, well, obviously, the evil doesn't exist either. But wait a second. And how do I account for the fact that everything's screwed up? It's those guys over there.

46:03Is there any benefit for rationality? Of course. Tell me. Well, to distinguish between this and that, right? If you can't distinguish between this and that, you're a vegetable, right? Is it reasonable to let women get beat to shit? because for someone says that men should be able to compete against them. Is it reasonable? Right? So reason is very, very important. So the heber word for reason is Vina, which means between, I judge between this and between that. I use my reasonable capacity. But the other hand, we have the monkey mind. How do we deal with it? One way we deal with it is to art. For it said, the music is polymorphous perversity right, it affects us in this extraordinary way that feels very much like reasonable propositions, but it's not.

47:01So whoever rises from his prayers, those prayers have been answered. If we rise from experience of art, something beyond ourselves, our prayers have been answered. Right? It's not going to cure a world hunger. Right? We come a little bit less devilishly insane for the four minutes of a song or two hours of of a play. So you're describing it as beyond entertainment. Yes, it has a higher purpose. Yeah. It does for me. Yeah. For me too. Listen, it's easy to entertain people to get their attention through sadism and pornography, which is what most television and movies now are. Right? But it doesn't have any affect other than the moment, other than its capacity to impel addiction, because I mean, you have to do it again.

47:53You have to do it again. You have to do it again. Because yeah, okay, now they finally took off their clothes and they're engaging in XY and Z. Now what? Whether they're going to take off more clothes, but because you can't, what's the next step? Sadism, in effect, snuff films, which is what Luigi Mangione is, and what all the anti -Israel rioting is about. Because we could try the best thing we know how, which is people fucking constantly, and it didn't work. What's next? physical violence and murder. Have you ever been censored? Oh sure, I got blacklisted all the time. Yeah, sure. How? Well, people just lost my number.

48:41Right? They said we can't do his plays because he's or whatever. I don't know what that was. Have any works been banned? I don't know if been banned, but you know they certainly have been so. I had some somebody want to do some place of mine the other year and they went out to all the theaters here at the Mark tape reform and the and the Kirk Douglas and blood they said, no, no, we can't touch him. How is play writing different from other kinds of writing? Finally, play writing is reducing a human directional human interchange into dialogue. That's all it is. So that's It's hard to do. Somebody asked John Barrymore, what are your favorite 10 plays?

49:27He said there aren't 10 good plays. I love John Barrymore. I love him too. Do you remember the first time you saw one of your pieces performed? Yeah, I think it was in Chicago. It's a piece called The Duck Variations. In Chicago, a little theater, like 50 -seat theater. It was great. Yeah. What was the experience? How did it change from the page to the stage? Well, it didn't change much from the page to the stage because the actors were really good. Changes from the page to the stage of the actors were to get a good idea. And Henry found us that they gave him his first Oscar, one of our great actors.

50:11Never got an Oscar, they gave him one for a lifetime achievement award. And he means thanks to I now, right? He said, I want to thank all the directors who cured me of my good ideas. Yeah. Are you ever surprised by what you see on the stage? Oh, yeah, sure. And ever in a good way or only in a bad way? Well, no, no. Many times in a good way, people do something like, my God, that's genius. Like Hemingway, he's writing in, uh, definitely afternoon. And he and a friend are in Barcelona and they're watching. of the great bullfighter, I think it might have been Manolete. And Manolete performs a pass.

50:49The horns of the bull are so close, and Manolete moves so little. And he and his friends look at each other and they just shake their heads like that. How could you do it? How did you do it? So I've had that experience many times watching actors.

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52:45How was it played different than a film? Well, in a film you get the popcorn and it'll play you get to read your program. Beyond that. Well, it's completely different, right? Watching a film is a construction, finally, by the director working as the comp, troller, and as the architect and as the designer. So the French come along with this whole third theory of the fuck that means, of course, who's making the movie, if not the director, except if the director's not making the movie. And then the studio heads are, in which case, one would be better not to have been born. How did directing come into your life?

53:29Well, I started directing because I went to the neighborhood playhouse school in the theater in New York and studied for a year and I had no idea what the teachers were talking about. It didn't make sense and nobody could do it. The idea that you had to find something to substitute for a blah blah blah and that you had relate to your own experience and they had been doing these silly games that made people more self -conscious. And so I saw that and I learned so much watching the actors doing that. I say, no, no, no, this could be better way. And so I wanted to stay in the theater because I loved the theater, loved it.

54:08I felt so at home there, but I couldn't get to be there as an actor. So I became a director of my own little theater companies, and there was nothing for us to do because we couldn't pay royalties. So I said, okay, so I replaced for them to do. And then what was the first film you directed? House of Games. and how did that come about? How did he make the jump? Well, I worked with the Ravelson on Postman, and I followed him around. He said, follow me, wrong, follow me, wrong, follow me, and so I was watching what he was doing. A lot of what I understood, and a lot of what I said, you know, I could probably do it differently.

54:48And then I wrote these two movies for Peter Yates, a great director, Peter Yates. And he was going to direct them, the first one was House of Games, of the last moment, he said, I can't do it, why don't you do it. So I met this wonderful producer on Placeless and Hardcore by Cosmon and he said, yeah, I'll produce it for you. I said, well, I haven't directed a movie before. So it shepherded me through the process. And good experience. It's wonderful. Yeah, absolutely wonderful. What were you doing with Grafton on the Postman movie? I wrote the script. How do you realize you wrote it? Yeah, I wrote it.

55:29And we were shooting at... Typically, when you write a script and someone else directs it, do they want input from you or do they want you to go away? Both. I mean, two mutually exclusive ideas. Ray Felsen wanted me there. He didn't change anything. He would want me there. A lot of people have asked me why I want to be there, but I said, fuck no. And for the most part, I didn't want to be there. Anybody who's on a set who's not essential is a deleterious there. They're dragging it down. You got to be essential. So when I give the people a script, I'm saying as far as I know, this is as good as it can be.

56:04If you shoot this, you paid me and you had my word on it, you kind of go up with a pretty good movie. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. But I got really sick of people taking my, both as a playwright and as a film director, people taking my work in my Sunday standing. That's pretty fucking simple. You know, show up, say the words. How has theatre changed over the course of your life? Theatre? Yeah. What's died, but it's always dying, right? I was very fortunate because they changed the fire laws in Chicago because none of us had anything better to do, or could we imagine anything better to do than putting on the players.

56:48And so there we were, like 19, 20, 23 years old, all of us recognized, although we never said it, that that was the best theater happening in the English -speaking world that night. We're having a time of our life. And it spawned the whole Chicago theatrical experience of Steppenwolf and St. Nicholas and the organic theater and victory gardens and remains. The whole generation of people coming up. And then what happened, of course, is that things died because they're unsuccessful and things died because they're successful. So the neighborhoods became gentrified and went away. And the actors and directors and writers that became successful became gentrified and went away.

57:33And then New York became gentrified and went away because New York was the clearing house for American theater because it had an audience. The audience was mainly middle class and largely Jewish and they knew what they would do and they patronized the theater. So when those people got priced out of existence, Broadway still existed, but who was going to come? Tourists. So because tourists are going to come, you're appealing to a very different clientele. So you have to get something that's going to attract them. You're not going to say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that guy did the designs last year for a fellow.

58:19I'm going to go see him because he's designing. There's a strata this year. So you had to put stars in so the prices went up. And so the advertising budgets go up and so, okay, you know, it's like being the best boatman on the eerie canal. Do you think in the good days in Chicago, in the theater, the fact that they were maybe not high expectations was helpful in it being good? No. What do you think allowed it to be as good as it was? We were on fire. We allowed the Beatles to be as good as they were, right? Yeah. We know it wasn't the humidity in the cellar. No. They're just fucking on fire. They got lucky about each other.

59:04They had all been gifted by God, little bit of symbiosis. Tell me about your Kennedy assassination film project. Oh, I wrote this great Kennedy assassination film that I put every, I was going to direct it and put everybody in, everybody was in that film. Malconvitch was in it. Shia LaBuff was going to play Oswald. Al was in it. It was a dramatic film. Oh, yeah. So who also was in it? Vigor Mortensen was in it. John Travolta was in it. The cast just won, Everton, they all read the script and said, yeah, you bet. Courtney Love was in it. Rebecca Pidge was like, everybody was in the book. Louis C.

59:45K. was going to do a part at one point. And then these guys came out of nowhere. They had a better idea than making a movie. They thought they just do each other. I don't understand. And then they do why? Is there a chance it will happen in the future? I don't know. But it started out because Joey Montenna called, he said there's this kid, he grew up with, called Nikki Sallosi, who was a part of the Giancana crime family. And Giancana was his uncle in Chicago. And Nikki wrote this script about what was happening in Chicago when a corridor when Giancana decided to kill Kennedy. So I read the script, I said, yeah, okay, it was actually terrific.

1:00:30So I got together with Nicky and I said, yeah, this is terrific. I said, I'm going to have to rewrite it. If you want to do that, you know, we'll split everything blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a chore. So I wrote the script and then I gave it to all my friends. I mean, you bet. They said, I'll be in Do It For Nothing. These great cinematographers and designers, you all get into it for nothing. and then, exactly, tell me about this recruiter film. I read this book. It was a compilation of articles by film historians, by cinematographers, and each one takes, looks at this recruiter film. And you know, I spent a lot of time in the cutting room and so forth, and I reading with this saying, they say, Yeah, there's stuff missing.

1:01:18It's just missing. The film disappeared. They took it and they shipped it from Dallas, where there was a codec facility to LA, and then they shipped it back. And then I wrote a wonderful movie for Kate Blanchett. She was gonna do for nothing about the Zepprooter film. And that fell apart, too, unfortunately. Oh, that's a good movie. It's about the guy, and basically it's Greco -Slapco vorka pitch, you did all of the montage and process shots in movies, the trick shots that used to have to be done either in a camera lab. And he dies and he leaves his money to this woman, his granddaughter, who comes to the great house in Pasadena, finds out that he doesn't own a house.

1:02:06There's no money. He's getting $10 ,000 a month from some corporation. So the question is, why did they pay him? And that turns out that he was the guy who fixed up this app, or they found him. Why a book of essays now? Because I was going crazy for, you know, I did this is my third book, this book, third book of kind of political socio -reunations. First one was called, the secret knowledge, second was called, Recessional. And this was the third one. Because, you know, I'm getting old and I don't know if I'm retired or not, but the business has changed. It's more difficult to get stuff made because the people with whom I came up, who was generation old and I, and how are our generation the same as I, and how are our generation younger than I, and so the reaction is who?

1:02:56That's completely understandable. So I was looking around at too much time in my hands, there's something I just, I don't understand what's happening to our society. So the answer is, of course, it's in the Bible. It's always happening to a society. Right? Good as fighting evil and good intentions or fighting concerns for personal security and safety. And the people are turning back on God and they're screaming at each other and shooting each other. In the new book, you compare yourself to Vanna White. Could you explain? Oh, Vanna White, of course. Because Vanna White would come on, she'd just you like this.

1:03:32that was her job, right? And so she did it for years and years and years. I thought, well, yeah, that's basically what I'm doing. I'm just doing it for the refrigerator thing. That's a refrigerator. So that's what the essays were about. You wrote that democracy is an outgrowth of the Torah? Well, sure. The whole idea of the Torah is they came to, I think, kill all the great sage, and they said, can you tell me the whole Torah standing on one foot?" He said, yeah, I stood on one foot. He said, what's hateful to you don't do to your neighbor, and how go study? So the Torah really comes down to that, and one of the differences between Judaism and our cousins, the Christians, is in the understanding of the golden rule.

1:04:21The Christians say, do want others as you would have them do under you, but to the Jews, that's a foreign and incorrect statement because what they would say is I'm not going to do what you would do to me. Do one to others as you would have them do one to you. No, I'm going to turn it around. I'm going to not do to you what I want you to not do it to me. Because that's more probative, right? I mean, who knows? I might be screwed up. I might want you to do this to me. That's not a very good idea. But I certainly know what I don't want you to do to me, right? I don't want you to malign me, hit me, sue me, lie to me, those things.

1:05:05I'm not gonna do that. Tell me about the power of myth. Well, it's all myth, right? Listen, everybody believes in the myth. Part of what happened in the last election is people say, let's call a myth a myth, right, that we shouldn't be jailed for suggesting that something may not be an actual fact, but a myth that we should be able to differentiate between the two and make up our own minds about which is which. So you say, oh, you can't believe in Jesus, that's a myth. Right? Or you can't believe in the fact that the Jewish people have always lived in as well as a myth. But on the other hand, you say, well, we need to apologize to the Mughalm Indians because we're on their line.

1:05:47That's not a myth. That's a fact. And if you say that's a myth, you're evil. Yeah. You compare government to the mafia in the new book. Tell me more about that. I mean, you know, growing up in a machine towel, which is, there's a little mafia tell that the Acardos and Gene Cosworth in line with the dams and with the daily machine, all that. But you say, what does the mafia say? Well, guess what? You have to pay me protection. If you don't, we're going to kill you, the mafia says. The government says, oh, we're going to throw you in jail. Now guess what, you have to buy our products, the mafia.

1:06:25It says you have to buy our light bulbs and you have to buy our electric cars and you have to buy our shower heads. Well, you don't like that. Oh, you're going to go to jail. Guess what? We're going to tell you who you can hire, the mafia says. You're going to hire a mic cousin Vinnie over there. You're going to pay him too much money or else we're going to blow up your dry cleaning establishment. Well, how is that different from affirmative action? I guess what they say. You're going to give me all your savings. I'm going to invest it for you and it's probably not going to be there when you get back.

1:06:55What are you going to do about it? So the constitution and starting the declaration is to protect us against government being oppressive. Not to do good, not to elect people to do good. The difference is the mafia doesn't say I'm going to do good. They just say, do what I'm going to break your kneecaps. So they're similar except the mafia might be more honest or more? Well, yes, they're less critical, certainly. Do it or else. What part of bang, bang, don't you understand? How much do you trust historical accounts? That's a very good question. I guess I don't trust them very much at all, and I tried to read a lot of them, but if you say, where's the information coming from?

1:07:41There were several really good books written about the South and the beginnings of the Civil War at that time. So I really enjoyed reading them. And one of them was Frederick Olmsted, who designed Central Park, was a great designer, and a building designer, and he invented the Red Cross, did all sorts of things. And he wrote a book called A Journey Through the Southern Slaves States in 1855. And what I realized from that was what people were missing in Uncle Tom's cabin is that the real evil is not Simon LaGrie, right? It's the people who said, well, what are you gonna do? You know, yes, there's in my slaves, but I treat them better so that the horror and Frederick Olmstead's account and the horror in Uncle Tom's cabin is the way the good people treat distal slaves.

1:08:35Right, the guy says to Uncle Tom, but at the beginning, you know, you've worked for me your whole life. I'm gonna free you when I die, which is already, If you think what a bullshit, right, people say washing and Jefferson freed the slaves when they died, what's good about that? They rang them dry and said, well, I have no use for you. Fuck it off you go. So the guy runs into difficulties. He says, Tom, you're such a great guy. You basically raised my children. What can I do? I'm going to have to sell you down the river. What can I do? So that's all that expression. Sell you down the river. I never made the connection.

1:09:11Yeah, so you were going to sell you down the river means. Yeah. Tell me about the seven minute rule. For Ricky studied for years and years with two guys, he came out here, spent a week with a guy called Darned Fun and the 70s, who was the greatest stage magician of his day, and with a guy called Charlie Miller, who was a mechanic, which is to say he was achieved at the card table. There's the two greatest card manipulators in history. And so Ricky studied with him for years and years and years and took care of him till he died. And Ricky was going up to the magic castle one day to meet Die and he was late and he comes up and he dies in the parking lot.

1:09:50And he says, Die, I'm so sorry, I'm late, I'm so sorry. And Die says, That's okay, I've been watching the way people put on their coats. Right? Yeah. So, watching the way people behave is fascinating. I was talking to my wife yesterday, went to this restaurant. I said, you know what? I said, if you take two women who are available, where they are hooked up with anybody at those point, then if they're out having lunch, they just do more than people who are attached. And she said, go, that's true. Unconsciously. Did you just notice that? I didn't notice that. I just noticed that I noticed it. In that moment you noticed it.

1:10:31I noticed that I always noticed that you always were conscious of. I did this movie with Shia and he's talking about what's coming out called Henry Johnson right, coming out and he's talking to the kid and he says, well, he says, a woman, you're looking at the street and the woman looks away like that. Why does she do that? This is my wrong, so she can get your attention. The movement gets your attention, right? right? A woman puts her hair back with her adjusters. She doesn't see shoes grazing her breasts. They do it unconsciously. But I realized that all people are reacting unconsciously to each other, but they're completely unconscious of it.

1:11:07Like if you look guys walk down the street, you know, if you think you're more of an alpha male than they, a lot of them to lower their eyes. Interesting. So I noticed that the The question is why is a scene seven to ten minutes long? And the answer is that unconsciously, we humans are programmed to check for danger at certain times and that we make a little check every seven minutes, which is the length of a show and they had commercial seven minutes. Kind of the length of the scene, length of a comedy sketch, length of a board of ill sketch. And as you put three of them together, you make a much larger look at 20 minutes after the hour and then at the 20 minutes to the hour.

1:11:58And the French say, an angel has an angel passes at 20 minutes after the hour and 20 minutes before the hour. What does that mean? The silence, the sense, because people are looking around. And if you go into a theater, most plays go up about seven minutes after the hour and the audience quiet down. unconsciously. They aren't looking at the watches. They're talking. But it's seven minutes after you. They quiet down. So that's the seven minibill. So I was wondering about that because I was wondering what the springbok. The springbok is in a book. The springbok is an African large goat, like a cross between a goat and a giraffe, an antelope.

1:12:37It's an antelope. And they spring up in the air. Don't look around. They're spring up in the air and look around spring up. Like on their behind legs. They jumped. They go right up in the air and they're in flat lands. So they go up in the air to check about what's happening. They're in a big building to check about what's happening. So he said, now we know what the springbok hops, right? But I started saying, when does it hop? When does it hop? So I said, well, obviously, there are springboks that have built in this internal engine, right? And the ones that hit the number correctly are going to breed and the ones that don't hit the number correctly are going to go to the lion so that becomes over time in bread.

1:13:25Do you think the seven -minute rule applies to everything? I don't know, maybe. It might. Yeah, it might. Tell me about Carnival Barkers. Carnival Barkers? Well, Ricky was a Carnival Barber. Was he? Yeah. I loved carnivals, and I was a kid in Chicago. This was a place called Riverview, which was an old carnival, which became this huge amusement park. It was just filthy and full of all sorts of freaks. And they had all these carnival barkers. And the barkers, you would say, like, they're on the inside, folks, they're on the inside. See the world's living him after that. Adam and Eve, brother and sister, man and wife, and one single body exhibited not the a ru -doh vulgar no -no -no, but to show you one of nature's curious mistakes.

1:14:14See the electrode lady, the electrode lady from Johannesburg, South Attica, she and her sister struck by 20 ,000 bolts of electricity. Her sister died and she lived. The doctor said she lived because she was immune to the shock of electricity. Great. Ricky, you still have it as part of his that up the shelter right directed. So the carnival park that the point is to get you inside. Well, it gets you inside to show you the marvels that we're inside. Is there any equivalent to the midway today? I don't know, it's a good question. Might be. I grew up on, there's a space just in the south of the Versailles -Chicago.

1:15:00I hired part, this long, long park, which was the midway for the Columbia Exposition of 1893. And it's still there. And so it's still referred to as the Midway. No people don't realize that. That's why it goes back to the Columbia Exposition. What's signal 25? Signal 25 is people know that the old carnies chant was Hey Rube, which was the carnies would shout. The cops showed up where if the locals were turning on them, they would shout Hey Rube. But that, like most jargon by the time that became widely known, it was superseded by signal 25. But by the time we figure out that was superseded by signal 25, signal 25 has been superseded by something else.

1:15:49What do you believe that most people don't believe? I believe in the devil. What do you believe today that he didn't believe when you were young? I don't believe that most people, including me, are good at heart. And you thought that when you were young? Sure. So red diaper baby. Was there an event that changed that opinion or just a wisdom of time? Live long enough and you get out of bubble. You're going to see a few things. Yes. And on Rebecca West said, nobody of a mature age looking around ever did not say, certainly the world is so evil that it must end soon. So there you are. You mentioned the 12 -step program several times in the book.

1:16:38Yeah. What's your relationship to AA? My grab I used to say it's the only great modern religion. One of the wonderful things about it is that there's no infrastructure. Yeah. Tell me about God. Well, we don't know about God. I mean, that's part of the definition of God, right? That there is a reason that we're here, and my wife's father is a renowned physicist. And we talk a lot. And he's a complete agnostic, right? We get back to the big bang, where that comes from. Well, we don't know. Well, okay. I really described as the first miracle. Well, yeah. And if you look at the ancient wisdom in the Torah, I mean, obviously it's Jewish wisdom, but a lot of it goes back before that.

1:17:28I mean, it comes from the Samarians and who knows where it comes from before that. There's people in two -headed, the growth of life on earth from the sea, right, to the crawling creatures, to the mammals, to man. and they also intuited or observed the growth from the family to the state to despotism and they also intuited the growth of technology to the point where it overrides devotion to God and kills us because the Tower of Babel. So it's extraordinary. It's all it's all in the Torah. It's all there. This is ancient ancient wisdom that people said, oh, why is that? Ain't that funny? Let me figure this out.

1:18:13Would it be helpful for everyone to study the Bible? No. No, be helpful for people to study the Bible if they want to study the Bible. Are you always writing? I think I unfortunately am. You know, I just finished a movie and I just finished this couple of books and I got a couple books more. I got finish. And I'm sure my last thought whenever that's going to be is more way than I'm not done yet, but some health's going to be insured out. Yeah. From the idea to the execution of a project, it's typically happening quickly or might it take a long time? It's as long as it takes. You know, some plays I've worked on for many years, batting my head against the walls.

1:19:00I couldn't figure it out. Some ways I wrote quickly. But I think of the planes Indians had a dance called the Buffalo Dance, but insured they were turning on the Buffalo. And it never failed. Every year when the Buffalo was supposed to return, they did the Buffalo Dance. And the reason it didn't fail is if the Buffalo didn't show up that year, they kept doing the fucking Buffalo Dance until the Buffalo came back. So that's where I think of myself. I'm going to do the Buffalo lowdowns until the buffalo comes back. Are there any things that you have a notion to write but for whatever reason you don't bring yourself to do it?

1:19:41You follow up on all of the inspiration. Is inspiration the right word? I think so. What do I know? The whole thing is a mystery to me. Sandy Kofax wrote from Pamela explaining how to throw a fastball over a hundred miles an hour, right? You should take a look at what if you haven't seen them and he has all sorts of diagrams and angles and that, okay? So it makes sense to him. Yeah. In story structure, is there any benefit to randomness? I always thought of randomness was like, Like, you go to a mentalist, right? You go to a psychic. There's one thing that they'll always say, you know what it is?

1:20:31They'll always say, you know, you have psychic powers too. You felt that haven't you, right? So a lot of people think they have a book in them, or a movie in them, or a poem in them, because they understand you can take random thoughts and put them together, and they sound a little bit different and then human speech was so perhaps the poetry, but that's not what I do for a living. Tell me about campfire songs. Oh, I love campfire songs. Yeah, yeah, we loved singing them songs. And I've been writing a lot of songs later, I've had a lot of them with my wife and she does the music and a lot of my, I love writing songs.

1:21:10One of the songs I wrote was, I was thinking about Frankie and Johnny, which was a campfire song. And thinking, okay, it doesn't make any sense. Where is it Frankie and Johnny? Because a lot of these songs that we, that become part of our consciousness are adopted from the pornographic. For example, people saying it's a long way to tip a rarry, right? But the really song was, that's the wrong way to tickle Mary. right? And people say John Brown's body lies a molding, but what they really saying was John Brown's body is a 14 -inch long dick, right? And so there's thing about Frankie and Johnny and I said, well obviously the lesbians, right?

1:22:00So I rewrote that whole thing of Frankie and Johnny. Are those stories a packer fuller? Those are true. Those are true. Yeah. And like bless them all, bless them all was of course, fuck them all, fuck them all. Really? Yeah. Is there any part of the system that isn't corrupt? Is there any human action which isn't corrupt? You know, they used to say, and from not only two things money can't buy, it's true love and homegrown tomatoes. Where corrupt? I am in Newark, because our mind is corrupt. Da, it says there's in the Bible something that we could be beginning. What's the snake doing there? Tell me the limits of language.

1:22:43How close can you get to saying what you really are experiencing? Or is that not important? I don't know, but I was struck by what you said about it. Even if someone's wrong, that's information, right? So that's how I feel about me. I don't know, I'm really fucking feeling. I know what I'm writing. No one knows anything. Well, as somebody said, how do I know what I think till I heard what I say? Yeah. What is zero point? Well, zero point is something that one of the Russian film theorists, I think, Prodovkin said, to some point where if you have a three -act structure where the action has to stop between the act one and act two and act two and act three, the hero runs out of ideas.

1:23:31That's the zero point. Right? Higher to that, everything in the first act is one scene leading to a second scene which leads to a third, see it all makes sense until they finally run out of ideas. So was the new thing going to come from? Because you're between the inhalations and the exhalations of the Buddha, something has got to emerge which changes the direction that the hero takes. So that's the zero point. So it's very, very helpful concept because both the hero and the writer have to be out of ideas. Yeah. Right because if you know what happens already, once in a while, you sort of the audience.

1:24:11Yeah. Do you think about that when you're writing? Oh, no. You do. Sure. You focus on the structure. Oh, yeah. It's all I focus on. Do you ever write where the first draft is too long? Oh, yeah. I re -write constantly. Because I, you know, every time you write it, you say, that's great. Come back tomorrow, you say it's garbage. And eventually, eventually, eventually, get to something else. You say, okay, now I understand what the project wanted to tell me. Now I've gotten away from my preconceptions. You start with preconceptions and then the project reveals itself. Yeah, it's like this, you know.

1:24:49I can play anything in the world in the key of F, right? I don't give a shit, right? The stars, Bangalow, or, you know, the Mendelssohn E. Flat. But my fingers are always going to go to the where they know the best way to play in the key of F is, right? I'm going to play in F sharp. I got to rethink everything to break past the obvious. Yeah. Because my mind is going to go to the obvious. Yeah. So that's what we do. How did the merchant Marines change you? Oh, it's just in first summer. But I thought it was wonderful because I got to look at a different part of the world that you don't get to see.

1:25:29And what was it like? What did you take away from it? Well, I loved it. You know, I learned and one of the wonderful things was coming back into Chicago down through the Sous Saint Marie. When you look in at Chicago, Chicago is very beautiful. The lake front is very beautiful and you're going from Chicago to East Chicago in the amnesty. It's very, very beautiful and you put on your going ashore clothes. But at a time you walk one mile to the gate of Endland Steel, your stone black covered in foot and head. But I must have been interesting people there. Tell me what you remember about Glen Gary Glen Ross from the original inception.

1:26:12I was working in a in a phone room selling land over to telephone. And at some point I started writing about it. I was at a restaurant and I was listening to somebody at the next booth. You couldn't see where they were talking. I couldn't make up with them talking about it. I thought, wow, that's fascinating. So I wrote one scene about that and another one and another. And so then the whole thing, I said, oh, okay, now how do all these things come together now? But what I loved was the whole idea that people don't recognize because it's being played so well that to being asked to participate in a vocabulary and an organization that they can only understand by listening harder, the opposite is, well, here we are in a laundromat, right?

1:27:02So I was going to carry one of our else. We did in Chicago, which was a wonderful Greg Moshe direct to it. And with the exception of Robert Prosky, no one knew any of those people were. We went to New York and I just kicked everybody's Tushy. How did winning the food surprise change your life? You know, it was pretty great. The American equivalent of being knighted. So it's nice thing to have. Sure, why not? How do you say you learned your craft? The only way you can learn playwriting is through an audience. Anything else is a waste of time. Because you can't fool the audience. The Wilder said, you know, individually, the idiots collected with their genius.

1:27:42Oh, that's great. I never heard that. I've never met a dumb audience. They get it. Yeah, yeah. They paid, they showed up, they get it. They've suspended their disbelief. You always assume they understand what's going on. You never lower the idea for them to get it. Why would I do that? They're going to get it. So much of what we see is done that way. The lowest common denominator. Yeah, it's done by idiots who imagine somebody dumber them themselves. But if they imagine that, there is nobody dumber them themselves. That's great. The verdict you wrote the script, but it was based on a different story.

1:28:17Yes, the story existed. It was based on a book. A guy who was the lawyer for the woman that wrote a book and I wrote the script. How is that process different writing a script based on a book instead of starting from scratch? Well, it's different because you have to throw so much out because people don't know how to read scripts. No, should they? Right? Even most people in the movie does not think they even do read scripts. They read coverage. So if they say he came into the room and you knew immediately he was a doctor because he had that look in his eye. Although you might deny your immediate impressions because of the incredibly expensive Goldboro X watch on us.

1:28:57Well, how you wondered could he put these two things together? They love that shit, right? Yeah. But you can't, how do you film that? It doesn't make any difference. So if you take a book, the first thing you have to do is eviscerate it. You have to say, what is the actual story? So if I say to you, you read that book, what's the story? You say, oh this guy, you know, he, he found a million dollars in the thing and his son stole it from it. And okay, now I can write that story. You don't say, well, you really have to understand the town in which he grew up, right? We're going to start with the description of his parents on how they came to Foc fill in 1902, you know, how he grew up in a dysfunctional family, but yet one day he married the rich woman who gets, so what's the story?

1:29:42What's happening? What's the story? So we know this because if we say, oh, I saw a movie list and I say, what's it about? You tell me the story. Yeah. If you start saying it is as great visual, I mean, it's a clock of a poop. Have you ever seen a great movie that didn't have a great story. I don't think so. No. Here's something I realized. All of us know when the scene were about to see is pointless. How do we know? If we get up to pee? Why do we get up to pee then? If the thing keeps our attention, we don't get up to pee. We know from the first second that nothing's going to happen. So audiences are super, super smart.

1:30:29How do you think your plays differ from the plays that came before you? Milton Friedman says that culture is an absolute inheritance, that the way that we deliver the milk or install the plumbing or train the military is an absolute inheritance that would building on what others have done and the same thing is true in the theater. So I'm building on what others have done, the very fact that the theater exists. And as I say, I got certain inspirations and also I have certain bad examples. I looked at, for example, the place of Eugene O 'Neill and I saw the only thing wrong with them is anyone who ever left one of the kill themselves.

1:31:15You know, Mr. Schubert. You could learn by rejecting things from the past. Sure. So when I still do it today, I do it all the time. I'm looking at a movie. So we're saying, why does this not work or why does this work? Or how would I fix this to make this better? And I used to do that with Shell all the time. We'd say, yeah, I heard this joke, but it doesn't quite work or blah, blah, blah. Or there's this song lyric to blah, blah, blah. How do we fix it? The idea being that these entities exist in a metaphysical world independent of their perception and that we can say, okay, I got to tweak it a little bit.

1:31:52My wife, for example, mother's a very famous yoga instructor. My wife grew up doing yoga. She does a lot of yoga every day. And so he hang out yoga, and so what she learned from her mother, you do yoga? I've done it. Okay. So what she learned from her mother, and what she tries to teach me, you know, lumbarks that I am, is move the hip a quarter of an inch here. All right? Okay. Low -year shoulders a quarter of an inch there. Oh, now it begins to make sense. You keep a diary? I probably do. I have my little workbook, and I got 60 years of them. And I used to write like a 10 -15 page scene every day and write movies, and I also write a lot of why was I born?

1:32:40Why have you deserted me, oh God, after everything I've done for you, and all that kind of stuff to me? Dear diary. I wonder if Jim really likes me. Do you ever look back at them? No. Is the purpose of it? By writing it, you get to release it from your head? Maybe. Yeah. I've got to be some reason if you don't look back to do it. I know. I don't know where this is. I guess I remember I'm done with something because I was just in my stupid head. But my hands are all shot, so it's very hard for me to type and hold this. So I'm just complying. Do you still flip the anvil? Yeah, I've played piano every day, yeah.

1:33:19How's your relationship to writing changed over the course of your life? That's not same. Yeah. How are you most misunderstood? I don't know. My wife said, the other day she was, you know, gave. I think you really don't care about what other people think of you. So, well, that may be true. Maybe true. I'd rather be like the not -like of what the hell. You know, those fucked up as I am. Human be your dreams. I remember them until I forget them. Yes. Give a write them down. No. No. Well, one of the things I learned from dreams and from reading Freud is mainly full of shit. He said he understood the meaning of the interpretation of dreams.

1:34:05Well, he's about 500 ,000 years too late. But one of the things I remember about my dreams that helps in the writing is that It's always the overlooked something that doesn't belong that's going to be the key to understanding of the dream, the drama. What have I left? What have I forgotten? Why did I write there was a dog in scene two and I never came back to the dog? Either the dog was wrong in that place doesn't belong or it needs to pay off over here. Does it always have to make sense what you're writing? Sure. But in life things don't always make sense. Well, yeah, not doing life. I don't know nothing about life.

1:34:47Does the story start at the beginning and work its way to the end or might you start with something and you realize? Oh, this is really the ending. Yeah, well, of course. It could happen anyway. It could happen anyway at all. So the idea is what do I got? Where does it belong? And sometimes it sits on a drawer for 20 years. And sometimes I'm not going to get up until I finish it. Sure. How does a theater company work? Well, the theater company, in its perfect form, you have to be young, right? Because people need to be devoted to the company more than to their families and more than to their other careers.

1:35:22So these companies in which I grew up with were the only really legitimate socialist enterprises that I've ever experienced. Everyone says, our devotion is to the company. We're going to make money and support the company. If I read it, you're going to act in it, if you read it, I'm going to act in it. If someone needs to build a set, you've got to do it because I'm taking the tickets. Marvelous. The nice thing about it as opposed to a commune was that he was never paying for it. Everybody was completely mature and devoted, member of a group. What do you think drew you to the theater in the first place?

1:36:00The girls, certainly. And the fun. Also, you know, people used to say, there is nobody likes a smart alec, nobody likes a smart alec, and that's the first thing that I knew from the grownups said it wasn't true. Because I like smart alecs. I like being a smart alec. So you get to go on stage and be a smart alec and entertain the people. How great. Did you go to the movies a lot when you were a kid? Oh, all the time, yeah. What were things that you remember favorite movies? You were very fortunate in Chicago because on Skid Row on Clark Street there was a Theodical the Clark Theatre and it was Thons and derelicts and almost and it was open 24 hours a day and they changed the double bill every day and the guy who Rannock was a cineophile he was a genius every day.

1:36:51Yeah that's amazing double bill every day so we'd say now we're gonna have a week of Ginny Kegney for. Wow. We're by Saul Bass. Wow. Right. We're now looking at a week in which Saul Polito did the cinematography. That's your whole education. Oh, man. So we all used to go all the time in high school. They couldn't sleep. Your medal might have just gone out and watched the movie. Great. It's magnificent. Great. There are. Any other experiences you can think of like that that you were lucky to experience? Sure. Only my movie. House of Games premiered in Chicago around the corner from there at the Fine Arts Theatre and I was up watching it in the projection room and the guy said, yeah, this is an arc -right projector.

1:37:32We're actually, it's flame going through two blacks of light. Well, the flicker is the last one in America. Wow. And it gave such a magnificent project. So if you go and look at the restorations of black and white phones, for example, they did stagecodes to the arrow and it was completely restored. And you realized what all that with black and white was really about. What I was about was the blacks because they had this nitrate stock, silver nitrate, silver that eventually it all just blew up or just disintegrated. Actually, I'm premiering my new movie at the era. You know about that? No. I did this movie with Evan Johnnecret and Shiloh Buff.

1:38:15And we did it as a play and then as that I shot it as a film called Henry Johnson and premieres at the era theater on 9th of May. Amazing. And it's really good. I think you can also get it online, Henry Johnson, the film, it's on like that. Taking something that starts as a play, how do you reset it in a film? What do you just shoot the play? No, you don't just shoot the play. You got to say, okay, let me start from zero. All I got is for the people to say, one of the people doing, because if I shoot it correctly, you can turn off the sound. Like with any movie, if it's a good movie, you don't need to hear what they say.

1:38:53right? That goes against everything you've said up until this point. Yeah, no, no, the words are important in the theater, towards a much less important movie. Really? Sure, it's about pictures. It's about pictures. Think about it, you know. Guy shows up on St. Jesus' Christmas tonight. I would do anything for a cigarette, you know, yeah, that the the the the the the the the the the speech can go on forever. Right? Guys shows up in a movie, get set up pack of cigarettes, finds it's empty. Right? Which is more effective in the film. Yeah. Yeah. Opening the drawers looking for the match when you realize there are no matches left in the match book.

1:39:34Yeah. So if you think about it, if you start thinking in images, yeah. There's nothing left that I think he tears it up. right? He sees a hat, a cigarette there, a bottle of like, well, almost, he takes it out. And now he doesn't ever match. He opens some, the jewelry is looking for the matches and he sees a little, a little box over there. And he takes the box, but we're all under it. What's in the box? Yeah. This is why I'd actually out of the last tycoon by, uh, I've got this journal that's called, we describe school. Movies made his absolutely right. Is it harder to take something from words to pictures or to take something from pictures to words?

1:40:17The Joel Harder accepted once easier. As somebody said, he might have been cortisol mate, he said, Everything in war is simple, but everything that simple is hard. It's great.

1:41:00The Athenium is a new podcast on the Tecrogramma Tin Network.

1:41:11Do you know about the connection between Charlie Manson and MK Ultra, the US Government's mind control operation? What if everything you thought you knew about the Manson murders was wrong? Join Ayesha Akali for a once in a lifetime in -depth conversation with Tom O 'Neal, author of the Runaway Best Seller Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the secret history of the 60s. In this limited deep dive series, Tom O 'Neal unpacks his 20 -year investigation into the CIA's Mind Control program, linking it to Charles Manson and the disturbing secrets buried in America's history. From missing FBI files to Hollywood cover -ups, government surveillance, LSD, and the dark collapse of the 60s hippie dream.

1:42:01This is the story behind the story. It's not true crime. It's true chaos. Here at On Athenium, the new podcast on the Tetra Grammitten Podcast Network, available wherever you get your podcasts. Truth isn't just stranger than fiction. It's far more dangerous.

1:42:24Coming soon on the Athenian podcast.

From the publisher

David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He first gained acclaim in the 1970s with plays like Sexual Perversity in Chicago, American Buffalo, and later the landmark Glengarry Glen Ross, which earned him both a Pulitzer and a Tony nomination. A founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company, Mamet’s prolific career spans theater, television, film, and essays. Mamet’s most recent play, Henry Johnson, premiered in 2023 and is currently being adapted for the screen.

Starting May 9th, Henry Johnson will be available for rental directly through the film’s website - and will also be screening in theaters across the country, including stops in Dallas (May 6), Santa Monica (May 9), and a weeklong run at Bryn Mawr Film Institute in Pennsylvania (May 9–13).

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