playwright david mamet

A writer known for strAightforwArd brevity gives us just thAt…

Amy Levinson: American buffalo has this uncanny aspect to it wherein it is both completely a play of its time and place and incredibly timely. Can you talk a bit about the spark that lead you to write it and how you see these characters now?

David Mamet: I used to spend a lot of time with hustlers and thieves. A play set among them is, like a play set among the super-rich, in politics, or among Kings and Queens, or in OZ, a device which lets us participate fully. It means “Once upon a time.”

AL: I have heard some say that they put you on a trajectory of writers that reads: Beckett—Pinter—Mamet—LaBute. The idea being that each writer has built upon the specific writers that came before him. Do you think there is validity to this?

DM: there is validity to a whole raft of things.

AL: Whom of your contemporaries inspires you? What is the work you find most exciting?

DM: i adore Doubt. i loved joe gatins’s script for Flight, and Anderson and Coppola’s Moonrise Kingdom.

AL: When you begin work on a play or a film does the idea always come to you in a similar way; do you think of a character, some dialogue, a setting and go from there? And once the idea sets in, what are the first steps you take to make it come to life?

DM: none of your goddamned business.

AL: As a playwright, screenwriter and episodic writer, how do you know in which medium an idea belongs?

DM: i can’t even figure out how to correctly arrange the silverware. And i have a compartmented drawer for that.

very Briefly Noted: AN iNterview with Pulitzer Prize wiNNer dAvid MAMet

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