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.

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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.

Meet Al Pacino

I got to meet Al Pacino last night. He was at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa doing a one-night-only event. Dressed entirely in black, he regaled a sold out audience with stories from his acting career. A brief montage of Pacino's film work preceded the great man's entrance and – yes indeed – we gave a standing ovation when the lights came up to show him standing front row centre.

He mentioned David Mamet once and I whooped for joy when he did.

Although he was there, in theory, to talk about his life's work, the majority of his time was spent discussing The Godfather and Scarface. There was nary a mention of Glengarry Glen Ross.

After the show, Mr. Pacino proceeded to a backstage area where he would meet and be photographed with the audience members who had purchased VIP packages. There were about 200 people in that little room and each of them got about five seconds with the man. I got my picture taken with him, which I reproduce below.

I'm the one on the right

Here is a brief transcript of our conversation:

Al: Hi.

Steve: Hi, I'm Steve. I'm a big fan of David Mamet.

Photographer: Okay, look at me please.

Al: I'm working with him on a new play in New York.

Steve: What's it called?

Al: China Doll.

Usher: Okay. you have to go.

Steve: I better go, Al.

Al: Bye.

I was going to ask Mr. Pacino to give me a title for Rotating Pineapple, my sister blog where I write a note a day. I didn't have time to ask, but I'm cheating and using China Doll as my title. You can read it at www.rotatingpineapple.com

In any case, here are a few memorable things that happened at the event:

- One 51-year-old lady told Mr. Pacino that he was the sexiest man alive and would love to tango with him like he did in Scent of a Woman. He said he would try to do that during the meet and greet but, alas, it never happened.

- One man called Pacino the greatest teacher he ever knew. He said that in 1992, he was lying on a mattress in a basement somewhere with hypodermics in his arms, severely underweight, wanting to die. Watching Pacino's performance in Scent of a Woman made him want to live and stop defining himself by his disability. I think that his speech sincerely touched Mr. Pacino and reinforced the notion of the healing power of art.

- After shooting the cemetery scene for The Godfather, a young Pacino happened on his director, Francis Ford Coppola, standing next to a tombstone and weeping. Al asked Francis why he was crying and the answer was that the producers wouldn't allow him to shoot the scene again from another angle. "That's a man I want to work for," Pacino said. "If you can cry because you weren't allowed to shoot another scene, you have passion."

- You know that famous scene toward the end of Scarface where Tony Montana is sitting in a restaurant with his wife and his best friend? He's drunk, probably high, railing against his wife for being unable to bear a child for him? Well... Oliver Stone had written that scene to take place in a restaurant but the producers, fearing cost overruns, elected to shoot it in a nightclub instead. The idea upset Pacino. He met with the producers and persuaded them to shoot in a restaurant because Oliver Stone had written in that way and the scene would be more effective if it took place in a high-end restaurant instead of a club. The producers reluctantly agreed, even though it cost about $100,000 more. "And that's how actors get a reputation for being difficult," he said.

I doubt you're reading this, Mr. Pacino, but if you are, I'd like you to know I enjoyed the evening very much and please say hello to Mr. Mamet for me.

Arrested Development

I wish I could have attended the seminar David Mamet describes in his book The Secret Knowledge in the chapter entitled Arrested Development. In it, Mamet, who conducted the seminar, was talking to a group of twentysomethings about dramatic structure.

The class was trying to write a story together and Mamet suggested Arab terrorists as the villains. This sparked a minor furor in the class as all these young politically correct idealists objected to what they viewed as racist stereotyping.

There was a time in the 70s and 80s when movie producers were reluctant to cast black actors in villainous roles. This policy was probably reversed when the producers realized that this was even more horribly racist - black actors were being denied meaty roles - that of the villain - simply because of melanin. Indeed, political correctness is not always our friend. Sometimes it is our enemy.

To quote Mamet: "Everything, it seemed, was political, and [the students'] job was to inform the ignorant of it. The Ignorant, in this classroom, [was] myself... A young Idealist broadened his thesis, it was not only the responsibility of the dramatist, he taught, to refrain from stereotyping, but to use every aspect of the drama to enforce upon the public a humanitarian view of the world. Homosexuals, for instance, he said, should be seen kissing onstage whenever possible, was it not an outrage that the part of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire was always played by a woman? Why could it not be played by a man?"

I don't know who this young man is but I wish I could get his name so I could make it a point to boycott any play he might write. Later, Mamet demolishes the poor boy by suggesting that "gays are people too" is a boring thesis for a play. The audience is at the theatre to, firstly, be entertained and, secondly, to be enlightened or possibly challenged. They're certainly not there to congratulate a playwright for his non-prejudiced (read: correct) view of humanity.

I'd much rather watch a play by an ardent racist or sexist or homophobe than by one of these hopelessly naive young'uns. At least I would be enraged (or I could amuse myself by watching the audience be enraged) which is always preferable to boredom.

Note-a-day holocaust post

Throughout the month of September, I've been challenging myself to write a mini-essay each day. I enlisted 30 of my friends to help me by assigning each of them a day and having them send me an essay title at midnight.

My Sept. 24 title was a quote from a Polish holocaust survivor: "The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins."

I mention David Mamet's essay, The Jew for Export, in my essay. As such, I think it appropriate to post here.

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The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.
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What in the world can that mean?
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Want to win an Academy Award? No problem. Just make a documentary about the Holocaust. Or a short film about the Holocaust. Or a feature film about the Holocaust.
Or so they say.
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In David Mamet's essay The Jew for Export, he refers to Schindler's List as emotional pornography.

The film works, he says, by allowing the audience to feel superior because, after all, they would never treat the Jews the way the Nazis did. He writes: "Members of the audience learn nothing save the emotional lesson of all melodrama, that they are better than the villain. The very assertion that the film is instructive is harmful."

I saw Schindler's List in theatres in 1993. It's the only time I've witnessed a crowd applaud after a movie. I didn't applaud - not because I didn't appreciate it but because I didn't see the point in applauding an artist who was not there to hear it.

I will say that Schindler's List is not the best modern movie about the Holocaust. I ascribe that honour to Roman Polanski's The Pianist.
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I know next to nothing about the Holocaust save what I see in movies and what some veterans of the Second World War have told me. Every year their number dwindles and I am told that young people today must learn of the Holocaust so that they will not make the same mistake in the future.
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My favourite book about WWII is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is actually about the firebombings in Dresden and aliens from the planet Tralfalmadore.

In chapter one, Vonnegut tells about a discussion he had about his book with Harrison Starr, who was a famous movie director at one point.

Starr asked if it was an anti-war book. Vonnegut replied that it was.

"Do you know what I tell people who are writing anti-war books?" Starr asked.

"No."

"I ask them why they don't write an anti-glacier book instead."

The point is that there will always be wars just as there will always be glaciers. And trying to stop wars is as difficult as stopping glaciers.
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The Holocaust IS going to happen again. That's a fact. It's probably going on right now. As long as there are people who believe different things, we will go to war. We're xenophobic by nature.

As the terminator told a young John Connor, it's in our nature to destroy ourselves.
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There's an old standby among philosophers when it comes to ending an ongoing debate.

How do you know it's over. The discussion has been going for hours - days even - and neither side is willing to capitulate to the other. How can you tell when one side is victorious if no one is willing to surrender?

The answer: Hitler. As soon as someone compares his opponent to the Nazis, he loses.

Hitler, after all, is the 20th century sobriquet of pure evil. Very few will dispute that. Everyone believes he's the devil incarnate - even the world's warlords who even now are butchering innocent people.

They don't believe that they're not as bad as Hitler, they don't believe they're bad at all.
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I find it curious that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago may be the greatest account of suffering ever written, was reluctant to publish his book.

"My obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead."

He must have believed that not humiliating his friends was more important than tribute.
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Is a book a monument? Is a film? A play?

WWII was fought because a German madman insisted on committing genocide.

WWIII will probably be fought over drinking water.

There are those who would say that robbing people of potable water makes us as bad as the Nazis.
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In The Jew for Export, Mamet points out that each of us has the capacity for benevolence and atrocity.
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On Remembrance Day, I will wear a poppy.