In the New York Times piece, [Mamet] sounds like another cheap---as in stingy---Republican Randian, full of spite and bile at the ?parasites? clamoring for his money and reserving the threat of going Galt. Randians talk about wealth creators as if they are really that, creators, producing money out of nothing or out of themselves the way artists produce their creations. Of course, the only artists who come close to creating all by themselves are painters and sculptors and so the comparison only works if other people are to the Galts of the world what brushes and hammers and chisels are to painters and sculptors, that is, tools, an idea the Randians have no problem with. But wealth creation is like every human endeavor, a social endeavor and therefore a collaborative one. None of us gets anything done without help. It?s ridiculous to talk otherwise and Mamet is even more ridiculous because he works in one of the most collaborative of human endeavors, the performing arts.
We don?t need more than one word to take care of this.
Actors.
But we can add a few more. Stagehands. Make-up artists. Costume and set designers. Directors. Producers. Old guys named Joe sitting by the stage door.
How rich would David Mamet be if he?d had to make his money off reciting his own plays on street corners?
I'm sure he'd also have a three-card monte game going on the side, but that only brings in so much.
Lance makes a point rarely made and yet so incisive--that Mamet only looks like a serrated stylist because most of his work is in the stodgier medium of the theater.
...his career has depended on his being thought controversial. He?s a good playwright, but he?s not that good. You don?t go to his plays---or his movies---to learn any secrets of the human heart. You don?t go to care about his characters, not deeply at any rate, and if you go to be surprised by the twists and turns of his plots, you can only do it by not just a willing suspension of disbelief but a willful suspension of memory and thought.
Once upon a time you went to be thrilled at the way he played with language, which was like the way a blindfolded juggler played with knives. But after a while, you get it. He can juggle knives without cutting himself. Now how about mixing it up a little, David? How about juggling an orange or two along with the knives? How about juggling more than three knives? And he?s been out-juggled over the last decade or so�by television writers! The Sopranos? David Chase. Deadwood?s David Milch. And, far and away, by David Simon. (What?s with all the Davids?) One episode of The Wire is worth any two or three of Mamet?s plays, and not just for the thrill of the knife-juggling.
And almost any episode of The Larry Sanders Show told you more about the ego maneuverings and dick-status competition in the LA showbiz breviary than the blustering of Speed-the-Plow, that connect-the-dots cartoon.
If David Mamet wants to become Dennis Miller minus the self-conscious, self-applauding laugh, go ahead, be that thing, watch the Tonys from Colonel Kurtz's cave, who cares. He can do with the butt-end of his career whatever he likes. Now that he's done his conversion memoir, the next logical step is a sequel in which he recounts all of the friends and colleagues who turned on him because of his heretical stand, the reproachful silences and invitations unsent, the whole Norman Podhoretz schmear.
[Community Notice: It's the last day of Lance's fundraiser, so why not donate?]
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/06/although-im-favorably-mentioned-a.html
King Abdulla Osama bin Laden Tony Blair Sam Brownback Laura Bush
No comments:
Post a Comment