David Mamet OPO

Screenplay -- The Edge, a movie I can't stop watching because Alec Baldwin is the current golden god of hammy actors. His delivery of "Don't tell me what to do" to Hopkins should be put in the Smithsonian on a loop.

Directing -- State And Main, cause I'm a sucker for movies about making movies + Alec Baldwin is it.

For the record I think Pidgeon is kinda hot... in a weird way.

(will anyone but us defend baldwin here?)

-- chants the unhinged angry mob.

(also !!!)

about hannibal: if the lecter series turns into a string of mamet-scripted travelogues - following HL from locale to locale as he frequents fancy chocolate shops and chooses reputable tailors and redecorates his villas and occasionally disembowels someone - i won't complain

she was charming in the charming state and main

"House of Games" is another one that is pretty good that is not as well known that has a good twisting plot.

Neither of these is as iconic as "Glengary Glenn Ross", but they are well worth watching. I like how The Simpsons created the character ole' Gil based upon Jack Lemmons character in GGR.

mamet is a guilty pleasure for me. i think he's a hack, yet i enjoy his films. and i guess if i enjoy them, then what's wrong with that?
the spanish prisoner i liked cause it's so ridiculous. state and main i thought was lighthearted and amusing; not brilliant or anything but worth my time.
heist was pretty much terrible all over, but it had sam rockwell and gene hackman.

(wasted in buffy btw)

"The end of this is obscenity. Let's really see their genitals, let's really endanger the actor through stunts, let's really set the building on fire. Over the course of a movie, it forces the filmmaker to get more and more bizarre. Over the course of a career, it forces the filmmaker to get more and more outré; over the course of a culture, it forces the culture to degenerate into depravity, which is what we have now."

i don't know enough about Aristotle to understand how he and Eisenstein can be reconciled, but the implication that between them lies everything you need to know about making movies is endlessly entertaining

The thing that irked was the linear nature of the double-crosses, which was also part of hte fun -- one con after another, this trick that trick, the life of a conman. But that was also what made it great, and delivered the fantastic payoff with his wife's betrayal and the degree to which he expected it.

The Mametspeak is cheesy, but it's unique and FUNNY and I dig it. You people are too hip to be happy.

the other half don't have women.

just watched homocide! kept getting interrupted by phone calls so lost some of the buildup.

thought it didn't quite hang together, tho? the dialogue was even more deliberately delivered back in his early films -- not like the scripts were different, more that there was an awareness of the actors that they were hitting marks and repeating dialogue in the back&forth patter -- like one would give half a sentence then there was a beat before the other cut in.

macy and mantegna were perfect in this tho!

ok also can anyone name what playwrights/films actually TRY the cheap mamet knockoff to poor effect?

Boiler Room really wants to be Glengarry Glen Ross.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html

I assume this is being discussed somewhere on ilx? Surely? For me the most shocking thing is not that he has moved right (I thought he did this years ago) but that he thinks that Paul Johnson is a towering intellect.

has he done anything worthwhile in the last 10 years, or since becoming a Zionist tool?

i just saw The Edge after somehow overlooking it for years. pretty dope imo, basically you have Alec Baldwin being a dick, Anthony Hopkins as Bruce Wayne, and a giant grizzly bear as Jaws.

Things Change

otherwise best apprec'd as a playwright.

The Edge: "Why do people die in the woods, Bob?... they die of SHAME"

^^would love to hear dave "the edge" evans say this sometime

Mamet's papers open to researchers. Some great images in the slideshow.