February 23, 2018

"I never know what I’ll do here when I walk in the door. I get here about 10 and leave late in the afternoon. It’s sort of magical."

"I’ll screw around. I’ll write in my journal. I’ll write letters. I’ll play the piano. Maybe I take a nap. Maybe I wake up at four in the afternoon with all these thoughts and characters in my head and ask myself, ‘Now what’s all this?’ and start to write. I really don’t understand any of it but it sure beats working... I really am so fortunate to have discovered the career that I have.... I was talking with my Broadway producer and he said, ‘Why don’t you write a play about Harvey Weinstein?’ And so I did."

Said David Mamet, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, which describes the "multilevel townhouse that functions as an office that he comes to five or six days a week":
There are guitars on the floor, a piano in the corner, art on the walls, comfortable furniture and, among many talismans of Chicago (old postcards, old button pins), a small framed poster from Riverview, the bygone amusement park.
The house isn't in Chicago. It's in Santa Monica, California.

14 comments:

John Enright said...

Weinstein seems perfect for Mamet. I’m dreading it already. Because I will have to read it or see it.

Mountain Maven said...

An interesting man. A secular Jewish writer who went conservative.

Bay Area Guy said...

". I really don’t understand any of it but it sure beats working... I really am so fortunate to have discovered the career that I have."

Heh -- no shit. Yes, it's fun to have accumulated wealth and/or passive income.

And Mamet is one of the saner Hollywood types - who is no longer a brain-dead liberal

mikee said...

I see a tax writeoff that makes my puny efforts at an expense account seem like a sad, sad joke.

Caroline said...

I can't wait to see Mamet's treatment. It will be suppressed.

MaxedOutMama said...

Aside from the hours, that sounds sort of like an Althousian work program.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Well Weinstein is still alive and litigious.

Won't it have to be have be roman-a-cleffed with a fictional character name and some sort of immunization line like "You know all that stuff they accused Harvey Weinstein of? Well Hardy Steinberg really did all that!"

rcocean said...

Weinstein is the ultimate Man-pig.

Could mamet write a play about him that tells the truth?

Ida know. Doubt it.

More like one of those old 30s Cagney Gangster movies where society was to blame.

madAsHell said...

A multi-floor townhouse in Santa Monica? There is some serious money in writing!!

gpm said...

Riverview had a rich history, and anyone who grew up in Chicago back in the day has memories. The Tribune knows its readers in making such an offhand reference.

Riverview closed in 1967. It had been an "amusement park" (i.e., multiple roller coasters, the "chute the chutes," "parachutes," tilt-a-whirl, and other rides, skeeball, and other trashy "midway" stuff (does that term owe its current, carnival significance to the Columbian Exposition?)) located at Western and Belmont, on the North Branch of the Chicago River (hence the name). So, technically straddling the North and West Sides of Chicago, defined by the branches of the river.

I grew up on the South Side, but the Western Avenue bus on the edge of our neighborhood went to Riverview for, I think, 12 cents (and the 74th/75th Street bus went to Rainbow Beach on Lake Michigan, but that's another story). There was a tradition at my grammar school (nearest thing I've ever had/done to a "senior skip") that the eighth grade class all took off and went to Riverview one day in the spring; ours was the last class that had that opportunity. So, a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds traveling off on their own on a bus about fifteen miles through the middle of the city, then hanging out on their own at an amusement park (we went to Rainbow Beach on our own for the same 12 cents at even younger ages).

Won't get into the reasons why it shut down in 1967.

--gpm

Temujin said...

"As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

Yeah, he could do a great Weinstein dialogue. Mamet is one of the all-timers.

Anonymous White Male said...

Did Mamet ever write anything that didn't have f#ck written every other sentence?

Bilwick said...

"Did Mamet ever write anything that didn't have f#ck written every other sentence?"

Since he's a libertarian now, he may write "F#ck the State" a lot. When I was in college I had a button with that on it.

That reminds me: recently we had a discussion here about an elleged connection between libertarianism and autism. I heard a discussion between Mammet and Dennis Miller, part of which was about how they came to be libertarians. Both of them said that their route was basically the same as my route: reading pro-freedom literature. (Only they started much later in life than I did; and with Mamet and Miller, it started with Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM.) I wonder if their autism developed immediately after they read the book? Reading can be dangerous, kids!

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Hmm, different spammers than I've got, but similar.

My brother is still in professional theater, which I touched briefly as a young man. I haven't asked him about the New Mamet. I don't know if I could bear to hear the conversations in the theater crowd about that.