The title that David Mamet chose
for his book illustrates his writing style: it mixes a dramatic, arresting and
bizarre metaphor (“Bambi vs. Godzilla”) with long, flowing, more literary
language that shows off his intellect (“On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of
the Movie Business”). As the subtitle suggests, this is a collection of essays
on aspects of
film such as
production, behind-the-scenes power games, esthetics,
screenwriting, criticism. The book consists of eight sections: “The Good People
of Hollywood”; “The Repressive Mechanism”); “The Screenplay” “
Technique”; “Some
Principles”; “Genre”; “Passing Judgment”; “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Although the topic of film production
fascinates me, I would have to give this book only 5 out of 10 points. On the
positive side, his writing style is interesting—unpredictable, vivid, rhythmical,
intense, often entertaining. And sometimes he makes good points. On the
negative side, the unpredictability that makes it surprising and dramatic is part
of a tendency to ramble a little, and sometimes to support the points he makes with
things from out of left field instead of backing them up with logic. This lack of
focus made the book unsatisfying for me. The essays bounce from topic to topic;
they’re all about
movies, but aside from that the subjects are sometimes only
loosely related.
Mamet has a real no-
bulls***
attitude—sometimes with the emphasis on “attitude.” He really wants you to know
how no-bulls*** he is. In “The Script”
he
writes: “Helpful hints to the filmmaker and the viewer: The
compliments—‘What visuals!’ ‘What craft!’ ‘What use of the camera!’ and ‘What
technique!’—all mean ‘the script stinks.’” (Personally, I think this is partly
true—those other things are often used to distract from a bad script—but partly
false, in that good movies are often praised for their technique, use of the camera,
etc. But Mamet tends to present his views as absolute and unqualified truths.) Later
he writes: “… ‘interesting,’ ‘meaningful,’ ‘revelatory of character,’ ‘deeply
felt,’ and so on; all of these are synonyms for ‘it stinks in ice.’” But the
biggest example of his no-bulls*** attitude may be: “I need not believe the
drivel that is spoken around me—I feel lighter already—such wistful submission
has only ever earned me increased grief, and I am free to speak my own.
I can say whatever I want, as per the sibyl of the party. I need not tell the
transparent lie to avoid the wretched dinner and so on….I just can’t take it
anymore, and I will, like Ayn Rand’s Atlas, shrug the now intolerable burden.”
In “Advice to the Editor,” he analyzes
The Lady Eve, “a perfect movie,” in order to reveal what he believes
makes good scripts work, what all good scripts need. In the middle of this, discussing
how harmful it is to deviate from the principles of pure scriptwriting to please
one’s Hollywood superiors, he writes:
“Samson (from the Hebrew for sun)
eventually gives in to Delilah (from the Aramaic for night) ’cause he
just can’t stand her noodging.
“He winds up eyeless in Gaza, and
we all might just take a lesson from it. He got what he wanted (a little
nookie), and he overpaid for it.
“One maysimilarly manipulate the
story, but the deviation from the essential—what does the hero want, what
prevents him from getting it?—renders the writer no different from, indeed, an
adjunct (read: whore) to, the forces of commoditization.”
The passage above illustrates both
what is good and what is bad about his writing. The Samson metaphor is
arresting and surprising, therefore interesting. No one but Mamet would have
written this passage. However, it also comes out of left field, jumping from
the technique of scriptwriting to the Bible and back. He’s trying to make a
point, but as far as I can tell the two subjects are only tenuously connected,
even metaphorically. The metaphor gets your attention, all right, and shows how
passionately Mamet feels about the subject, but does little to persuade the
reader, or even make it clear why he feels so passionately. Mamet does this a
lot.
This passage is also another
example of his no-bulls*** attitude (“He got what he wanted (a little nookie),
and he overpaid for it”), “read: whore.” And as he often does, he combines the
colloquial (“noodging,” “’cause,” “nookie”) with the learned (a Biblical
metaphor; the linguistic derivations of Samson and Delilah’s names).
Sometimes, on the other hand, he
writes a chapter that makes a good, clear argument. “The Script” gave me a better
understanding of the straightforward principles of good screenwriting, as he
sees them, which are as logical and incontrovertible as those of carpentry. “Women,
Writing For” expresses Mamet’s controversial views on the portrayal of women
clearly; everything in that chapter contributes to his case, every detail he
gives illustrates it. (Although he still manages to imply that everyone who
disagrees is deluded or insincere or both.) In “Good in the Room: Auditions and
the Fallacy of Testing,” he avoids overheated, left-field metaphors, and makes
a logical argument about why auditions are counterproductive to good casting of
actors.
So I couldn’t recommend this book
to readers, but I wouldn’t tell them to avoid it either.
More reviews about the Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business