Mamet, McDonald's, and Hallmark Christmas movies

 Last month, my better half persuaded me to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie with her. I don't remember the title, just that one of the characters was an actress, probably based in New York. Her temporal happiness hinged on her getting a part in "a play by David Mamet."

So my ears perked up immediately. My better half, who has heard me mention Mamet's name hundreds of times over the course of our 10-year relationship, braced herself for my commentary. I kept it brief, wondering which of Mamet's plays this fictional actress was hoping to perform. Since the actress was young and attractive - as all Hallmark protagonists are - I thought the play would be Oleanna, though it could have been some avant garde director doing an all-female version of American Buffalo.

I pondered this for a number of minutes, which stopped me from following the movie's connect-the-dots plot. If memory serves, the actress didn't get the part in the David Mamet play, which prompted her to run back to the small town where she grew up to celebrate Christmas, where she met the handsome son of a wealthy rancher who was having some trouble with a greedy banker, whose heart just might melt if he was exposed to the Christmas spirit...

You get the idea.

It's fashionable for the cultural elite to mock the Hallmark films, to decry them as dull and predictable fare that could only be enjoyed by simpletons. There are no plot twists in a Harlequin film. We don't learn, in the end, that Rosebud is a sled or that Bruce Willis is dead. No, the Hallmark movie doesn't promise us surprises. It doesn't pretend to be a roller coaster. It's always claimed to be a merry-go-round. You get on, you go around for a few minutes, and you get off exactly the same place where you started. You're no better now but you're no worse either.

I don't remember the essay, but David Mamet once wrote that if the purpose of eating is to nourish the body, then it's easy to choose the broccoli over the French fry. The 20th century has turned the act of eating into a form of entertainment. This is certainly true and so McDonald's is to dining what Hallmark is to cinema. You will not be surprised at either establishment. You will get what you came for.

So I won't pooh-pooh the Hallmark movies, all of which give actors and writers and crew members opportunities to work. Hopefully, they will move on to other, and better, things.

Happy birthday, David Mamet

 Shteevie: Happy birthday...

David Mamet: yes... and by means... (pause)
Shteevie: Yes?
David Mamet: Yes, if you will... yes... if you will allow me to accept...
S: Why would I think...
DM: Excuse me...
S: ...you wouldn't accept...
DM: Because... yes... if you will... if you will allow me to say... (pause) I'm sorry, my wife has been out of sorts...
S: Your wife...
DM: Yes... she has been... the birthday cake...
S: I didn't...
DM: Excuse me?
(Pause.)
S: I'm saying I didn't make you a birthday cake? (Pause.) Do you see? Do you see? I don't make cakes. I write letters. And I wrote you a letter...
DM: Yes...
S: ...a long time ago...
DM: Yes. And I owe you an apology.
S: You do?
DM: Yes... do you see? Yes... in Vermont... the stoics... you see? In Vermont.
(Pause.)
S: Ghosts.
DM: YES!!!!
S: The ghosts on the hill...
DM: YES!!!
(Pause.)
S: When I was a boy, I had a dream...
DM: Yes...
S: ...a dream about a bear...
DM: Mm.
S: I had written the bear a letter.
DM: Mm.
S: The bear did not write me back. (Pause.) Do you understand? The bear did not write me back. (Pause.) Do you understand?
DM: Yes.
S: Are you sorry?
DM: No.
S: Oh. (Pause.) Happy birthday, you ^$#($#^*& ^(#@&*%^(!!! 

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Note: He is 74 today!!!

And I finally figured out how to get back into this blog again. Yay!!!!!

The Mamet master class

Yeah, I know I haven't updated this blog in a while. I have a four-year-old who was recently diagnosed with autism. Much of my creative life has been put on hold because of this. I know that sounds like an awful excuse, but when your son shrieks whenever you sit down in front of the computer or if he grabs your pens out of your hands, you pretty much have to make some serious changes to your life.

And now I see that Mamet is teaching a master class on playwrighting. You know, I guess I was cynical at first. My initial thought was that an online course isn't going to teach me much, but that's a lot of bullshit. I'm also a magician and I have learned A LOT from online magic lectures. Why should Mamet's be any different?

So I think I will take the plunge. I realize that David Mamet is one of the most influential people in my life; I've admired and respected him since I acted in two short plays from Goldberg Street in 1992. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I think I'll take it.

Mr. Happiness

I work as a newspaper editor. Sometimes, when I ask a reporter or a correspondent to redo a story, I feel like I might be patronizing them. I'm sure I'm being paranoid. My colleagues are professionals, most of them entirely without ego, and are more concerned (to borrow a thought from the late John F Kennedy) with what they can do for the newspaper rather than what the newspaper can do for them.

But still, I am paranoid. I am one of those people who, if something goes wrong, tends to believe he is, at the very least, partially responsible for it.

So when I tighten up a paragraph or I challenge an adverb or I cut a story by 200 words or if I insist the lede be changed, I can't help but wonder if the reporter says to himself: Who does Shteevie think he is? I'm the one who conducted the interview and spent all sorts of time doing research. How dare he wield his red pen on these words I so lovingly crafted.

Yes, and I am reminded of the story of the reporter and the copy editor who are stranded in the desert. Both of them are delirious from thirst. Eventually, they cross a sand dune and discover a perfect oasis. They run to the water and the copy editor undoes his zipper and urinates in it. Incredulous, the reporter asks: "Why did you do that?" The copy editor's reply: "I'm improving it."

Memo to the reporters I've worked with, work with now, and will work with in the future: I've been in the biz for a long time and I think I'm pretty good at what I do.

Why is that?

David Mamet's one-man play, Mr. Happiness, is about a radio host answering the letters sent to him by his listeners who want help with their personal problems. Mr. Happiness tells his listeners that he's not a doctor nor a priest nor a professor, that many times he is wrong.

He says:

"But in those times when advice I might give - it's only simple common sense - may serve to help you out, you may sit back and say, 'My Golly! You know, it all seems so simple now. What makes that man so smart?' Well, folks, I'm going to tell you. And it's not intelligence . It isn't even insight. It's distance."

To this, I say "Yes! A hundred times yes!"

How many times have you written something you thought was pretty good only to pick it up a couple weeks later and see how much work it needs?

An editor doesn't need that two week lag. He can look at fresh copy and iron out the kinks.


Distance.

The latest addition to my Mamet collection

I have no idea how this collection slipped past my radar screen.

It's yet another collection of essays. I am not sure why it's received the thoroughly unremarkable title Jafsie and John Henry. Perhaps the phrase has sentimental meaning to Mr. Mamet, something that may come clear to me as I peruse this latest batch of offerings. If I was the publisher, I'd probably insist on naming the book for one of the most intriguing essay titles like The Fireman's Child, Poor But Happy or even The New House.

I know enough about publishing to know that authors rarely get the opportunity to pick their own titles. I'm not sure what happened in this case. I have no idea who Jafsie is.

I am angry at myself because this book was published in 1999. I bought his previous essay collection, Make Believe Town, the day it came out in 1997. I drove 125 km to Ottawa to pick up The Secret Knowledge when it came out in 2012. I'm usually pretty in-the-know when it comes to David Mamet's career. For all I know, I think I was the very first person on the Internet to reveal the name of Mr. Mamet's next play - China Doll - which will star Al Pacino. Yeah, I am a Mamet stalker and I google him at least once a week because I always want to know if he's going to be making a guest appearance in my neck of the woods.

But Jafsie and John Henry? It completely slipped past my radar. I discovered it while doing a Mamet search on ebay.

As I've said plenty of times before, I discovered David Mamet through his plays, particularly the short works contained in Goldberg Street. But as I get older, I find myself enjoying his essays more.

In 2014, my new year's resolution was to write a blog post everyday. I solicited titles from my friends and the results can be found at therotatingpineapple.blogspot.com. Sometimes, Mr. Mamet's style crept into my writing (heck, for the month of November, every title was taken from a Mamet play or essay or book.) I don't think writers should be worried about other writers affecting their style. Their own voice will always emerge.

I look forward to reading the essays in Jafsie and John Henry.

New Mamet books on the way

In my never-ending quest to own everything David Mamet has ever written or filmed, I bought two books on Amazon today. One of them is his two-woman play, The Anarchist, which is the Internet gods tell me will arrive sometime around the beginning of spring. I also ordered an essay collection called Jafsie and John Henry: Essays on Hollywood, Bad Boys and Six Hours of Perfect Poker.

On an un-related note, I think I will try to get my magician self hired at the Fourth of July festivities in Cabot, Vermont. According to Mamet's book South of the Northwest Kingdom, it's quite the celebration and I may actually meet him there.

I'll have to keep an eye out for the orange-framed glasses.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago

The 1980s romantic drama About Last Night, which stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore as a twentysomething couple, is based on a David Mamet play called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The producers changed the name. They didn't think the movie-going public would go to a movie called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Sounds too much like a porno.

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The stage version of Sexual Perversity has only four characters. Danny and Deborah are the couple in love. Bernie is Danny's co-worker. Joan is Deborah's roommate who may or may not be a lesbian. Bernie and Joan do their darnedest to keep the happy twosome apart.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a tragedy. It opens with Bernie regaling Danny with a story of a sexual conquest (that's probably not true.) It ends with Danny and Bernie lusting after women as they sit on a beach. Between those two scenes, Danny meets Deborah, falls in love with her, moves in with her, falls out of love with her, and moves out. He comes full circle. He's back at square one. He threw his love away so he could be what? A lone wolf howling at the moon.

This is tragic. In his four-star review of the film, Roger Ebert writes that "when a big new relationship comes into your life, it requires an adjustment of all the other relationships, and a certain amount of discomfort and pain." Perhaps it's the tragedy of our times that few people are willing to accept that.

I have alienated my friends by refusing to accept it. When my best friend got married and moved in with his wife, I was too stubborn (or too stupid) to accept that he was - to borrow a Biblical metaphor - one flesh with his wife. No longer could he go to a movie with me on a whim. I had to call ahead, make plans, see if the wife wanted to come too. The wife wound up resenting me, then hating me. She probably would have torn a strip off me had I not come to my senses and offered her a full-fledged apology.

So few of us are able to deal with change.

-

About Last Night may be a good movie but it's not a good adaptation of Mamet's play and I wouldn't blame him for disowning it. The play ends in tragedy but the film ends on a hopeful note. Deborah and Danny, estranged after a year, bump into each other at a baseball game. The next thing you know, they're running off together. Cue the happy 80s music. Cue the feel good "awwwws." Let's go get wasted.

The moral of Sexual Perversity in Chicago is "Grow up!" The moral of About Last Night is "Love conquers all."

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This one time in Campbellford, Ontario, I was talking to Brenda Finley, a Canadian actress who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and, for a while, was the news anchor for CFAC Television in Calgary. She was in Campbellford because she was doing a one-woman performance of A Christmas Carol at the Westben Theatre, which was owned by her brother, Brian.

I asked Ms. Finley what her favourite stage role was. She said there were two. I can't remember the first but the second was Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

"Were you Deborah?" I asked.

"No, I was the lesbian," she said.

"Is Joan a lesbian?"

"Traditionally, she's portrayed as one."

And we talked about David Mamet for a while.

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When I first read Sexual Perversity in Chicago, it looked familiar. That's because I'd read Bernie's opening speech years earlier in a book of monologues. That monologue describes an encounter Bernie has with a kinky nymphomaniac who wants him to make love to her while she wears a World War I flak suit (whatever that is.)

I tried performing the monologue but it just didn't work. I was 17. I didn't think anyone would believe me when I told them I was having sex with a girl in a hotel room that was on fire. When I was 17, I was a virgin.

Two years later, I'd star in my first Mamet play.