David Mamet

Playwright

David Mamet was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States on November 30th, 1947 and is the Playwright. At the age of 76, David Mamet biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

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Other Names / Nick Names
David Alan Mamet
Date of Birth
November 30, 1947
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Age
76 years old
Zodiac Sign
Sagittarius
Networth
$20 Million
Profession
Actor, Author, Film Director, Film Producer, Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Screenwriter, Theater Director, Writer
Social Media
David Mamet Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 76 years old, David Mamet has this physical status:

Height
168cm
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Salt and Pepper
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Average
Measurements
Not Available
David Mamet Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
Goddard College (BA)
David Mamet Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Rebecca Pidgeon
Children
4; including Zosia and Clara
Dating / Affair
Rebecca Pidgeon, Lindsay Crouse
Parents
Not Available
David Mamet Career

Mamet is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company; he first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross, which received its first Broadway revival in the summer of 2005. His play Race, which opened on Broadway on December 6, 2009 and featured James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas in the cast, received mixed reviews. His play The Anarchist, starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, in her Broadway debut, opened on Broadway on November 13, 2012 in previews and was scheduled to close on December 16, 2012. His 2017 play The Penitent previewed off-Broadway on February 8, 2017.

In 2002, Mamet was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Mamet later received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for Grand Master of American Theater in 2010.

In 2017, Mamet released an online class for writers entitled David Mamet teaches dramatic writing.

In 2019 Mamet returned to the London West End with a new play, Bitter Wheat, at the Garrick Theatre, starring John Malkovich.

Mamet's first film work was as a screenwriter, later directing his own scripts.

According to Joe Mantegna, Mamet worked as a script doctor for the 1978 film Towing.

Mamet's first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, based on James M. Cain's novel. He received an Academy Award nomination one year later for the 1982 legal drama, The Verdict. He also wrote the screenplays for The Untouchables (1987), Hoffa (1992), The Edge (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), Ronin (1998), and Hannibal (2001). He received a second Academy Award nomination for Wag the Dog.

In 1987, Mamet made his film directing debut with his screenplay House of Games, which won Best Film and Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival and the Film of the Year in 1989 from the London Film Critics' Circle Awards. The film starred his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, and many longtime stage associates and friends, including fellow Goddard College graduates. Mamet was quoted as saying, "It was my first film as a director and I needed support, so I stacked the deck." After House of Games, Mamet later wrote and directed two more films focusing on the world of con artists, The Spanish Prisoner (1997) and Heist (2001). Among those films, Heist enjoyed the biggest commercial success.

Other films that Mamet both wrote and directed include: Things Change (1988), Homicide (1991) (nominated for the Palme d'Or at 1991 Cannes Film Festival and won a "Screenwriter of the Year" award for Mamet from the London Film Critics' Circle Awards), Oleanna (1994), The Winslow Boy (1999), State and Main (2000), Spartan (2004), Redbelt (2008), and the 2013 bio-pic TV movie Phil Spector.

A feature-length film, a thriller titled Blackbird, was intended for release in 2015, but is still in development.

When Mamet adapted his play for the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, he wrote an additional part (including the monologue "Coffee's for closers") for Alec Baldwin.

Mamet continues to work with an informal repertory company for his films, including Crouse, William H. Macy, Joe Mantegna, and Rebecca Pidgeon, as well as the aforementioned school friends.

Mamet rewrote the script for Ronin under the pseudonym "Richard Weisz" and turned in an early version of a script for Malcolm X which was rejected by director Spike Lee. Mamet also wrote an unproduced biopic script about Roscoe Arbuckle with Chris Farley intended to portray him. In 2000, Mamet directed a film version of Catastrophe, a one-act play by Samuel Beckett featuring Harold Pinter and John Gielgud (in his final screen performance). In 2008, he wrote and directed the mixed martial arts movie Redbelt, about a martial arts instructor tricked into fighting in a professional bout.

In On Directing Film, Mamet advocates for a method of storytelling based on Eisenstein's montage theory, stating that the story should be told through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. This method relies heavily on the cut between scenes, and Mamet urges directors to eliminate as much narration as possible. Mamet asserts that directors should focus on getting the point of a scene across, rather than simply following a protagonist, or adding visually beautiful or intriguing shots. Films should create order from disorder in search of the objective.

Mamet published the essay collection Writing in Restaurants in 1986, followed by the poetry collection The Hero Pony in 1990. He has also published a series of short plays, monologues and four novels, The Village (1994), The Old Religion (1997), Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources (2000), and Chicago (2018). He has written several non-fiction texts, and children's stories, including True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (1997). In 2004 he published a lauded version of the classical Faust story, Faustus, however, when the play was staged in San Francisco during the spring of 2004, it was not well received by critics. On May 1, 2010, Mamet released a graphic novel The Trials of Roderick Spode (The Human Ant).

Mamet detailed his conversion from modern liberalism to "a reformed liberal" in The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture in 2011. Mamet published Three War Stories, a collection of novellas, in 2013 ; the novel The Diary of a Porn Star by Priscilla Wriston-Ranger: As Told to David Mamet With an Afterword by Mr. Mamet in 2019; and the political commentary Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch in 2022.

Mamet wrote one episode of Hill Street Blues, "A Wasted Weekend", that aired in 1987. His then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, appeared in numerous episodes (including that one) as Officer McBride. Mamet is also the creator, producer and frequent writer of the television series The Unit, where he wrote a well-circulated memo to the writing staff. He directed a third-season episode of The Shield with Shawn Ryan. In 2007, Mamet directed two television commercials for Ford Motor Company. The two 30-second ads featured the Ford Edge and were filmed in Mamet's signature style of fast-paced dialogue and clear, simple imagery. Mamet's sister, Lynn, is a producer and writer for television shows, such as The Unit and Law & Order.

Mamet has contributed several dramas to BBC Radio through Jarvis & Ayres Productions, including an adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross for BBC Radio 3 and new dramas for BBC Radio 4. The comedy Keep Your Pantheon (or On the Whole I'd Rather Be in Mesopotamia) was aired in 2007. The Christopher Boy's Communion was another Jarvis & Ayres production, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on March 8, 2021.

The papers of David Mamet were sold to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and first opened for research in 2009. The growing collection consists mainly of manuscripts and related production materials for most of his plays, films, and other writings, but also includes his personal journals from 1966 to 2005. In 2015, the Ransom Center secured a second major addition to Mamet's papers, including more recent works. Additional materials relating to Mamet and his career can be found in the Ransom Center's collections of Robert De Niro, Mel Gussow, Tom Stoppard, Sam Shepard, Paul Schrader, Don DeLillo, and John Russell Brown.

Mamet's style of writing dialogue, marked by a cynical, street-smart edge, precisely crafted for effect, is so distinctive that it has come to be called Mamet speak. Mamet himself has criticized his (and other writers') tendency to write "pretty" at the expense of sound, logical plots. When asked how he developed his style for writing dialogue, Mamet said, "In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, based solely on our ability to speak the language viciously. That's probably where my ability was honed."

One instance of Mamet's dialogue style can be found in Glengarry Glen Ross, in which two down-on-their-luck real estate salesmen are considering stealing from their employer's office. George Aaronow and Dave Moss equivocate on the meaning of "talk" and "speak", turning language and meaning to deceptive purposes:

Mamet dedicated Glengarry Glen Ross to Harold Pinter, who was instrumental in its being first staged at the Royal National Theatre, (London) in 1983, and whom Mamet has acknowledged as an influence on its success, and on his other work.

Mamet's plays have frequently sparked debate and controversy. Following a 1992 staging of Oleanna, a play in which a college student accuses her professor of trying to rape her, a critic reported that the play divided the audience by gender and recounted that "couples emerged screaming at each other".

In his 2014 book David Mamet and Male Friendship, Arthur Holmberg examined Mamet's portrayal of male friendships, especially focusing on the contradictions and ambiguities of male bonding as dramatized in Mamet's plays and films.

Source

Hollywood actress David Mamet is chastised for going nuclear on its obsession with diversity, which has earned it a deserved spot

www.dailymail.co.uk, December 9, 2023
Hollywood's 'diversity' drive is supposed to offer greater opportunities for ethnic minorities and women, but Joi Harris, a black motorcycle racer, died after it cost her her her life. A stunt rider was required to stand in for African-American actress Zazie Beetz in a scene that involved hurling through Vancouver's streets without a helmet during the filming of 2018's superhero film Deadpool 2. The producers could have used a black man or a white woman sporting make-up, but they did not want to fall foul of tight Tinseltown union diversity laws that mandated that they could only use a black woman.

When appearing alongside Al Pacino in Assassination, Courtney Love will return to the big screen

www.dailymail.co.uk, May 16, 2023
In the forthcoming thriller film Assassination, Courtney Love is expected to return to the big screen after a nearly five-year absence from films. According to Deadline, the 58-year-old performer will appear alongside John Travolta, Al Pacino, Viggo Mortensen, and Shia LaBeouf in the project, which will be seen during the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival. The frontwoman of Hole, who recently commemorated Kurt Cobain's death, will collaborate with director David Mamet and co-scriptwriter Nicholas Celozzi.

Can you solve the ultimate Egghead quiz as quiz queen JUDITH KEPPEL celebrates 20 years

www.dailymail.co.uk, October 21, 2022
For two decades Judith Keppel, a distant cousin of the Queen Consort, has been the nation's Queen of Quizzes, first as the inaugural winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Then as one of the original Eggheads, and then as one of the original Eggheads. Judith answers 60 of her most favorite fiendishly-hard Eggheads questions here. Can you crack them?
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