Search results for ""author david mamet""

Mike Hodge—veteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune medium fry—probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. But then maybe the guys who killed Annie Walsh shouldn’t have messed with Mike Hodge… In Chicago, David Mamet has created a bracing, kaleidoscopic page-turner that roars through the Windy City’s underground on its way to a thunderclap of a conclusion. Here is not only his first novel in more than two decades, but the book he has been building up to for his whole career. Mixing some of his most brilliant fictional creations with actual figures of the era (among them Al Capone), suffused with trademark “Mamet Speak,” richness of voice, pace and brio, and exploring--as no writer can--questions of honor, deceit, revenge and devotion, Chicago is that rarest of literary creations: a book that combines spectacular elegance of craft with a kinetic wallop as fierce as the February wind gusting off Lake Michigan.

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A Whore's Profession brings together, for the first time, David Mamet's acclaimed volumes of notes and essays, including, The Cabin, Writing in Restaurants, Some Freaks and On Directing Film. Poignant, intimate, insightful and witty by turns, these writings are an essential accompaniment for David Mamet's plays, and an education for anyone interested in theatre, film, and writing. In these wise, revealing, and endlessly amusing pieces, David Mamet touches upon many aspects of his life as a writer. In Writing in Restaurants he reflects modestly on his career, while Some Freaks discourses loudly and entertainingly on aspects of contemporary culture - like the movies, Disneyland and on being a tourist. On Directing Film shows his ebullient and practical approach to his own film-making. Central to these essays is Mamet's own work as a writer, and it is in The Cabin that Mamet comes closest to defining himself. Included are autobiographical vignettes from childhood and youth describing the gamut of human emotion, from childhood fear to adult nostalgia in the re-creation of the past.

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"The finest American playwright of his generation" (Sunday Times) Glen Garry Glen Ross (also made in to a film starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) "his superb play about real estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition" (New Society); in Prairie du Chien a railway carriage speeding through the Wisconsin night is the setting for a violent story of obsessive jealousy, murder and suicide, told within shooting distance of a card-hustler and his victim. "A short poignant study in violence and the twin drives of love and money, told with hypnotic power thorugh a travelling raconteur" (City Limits); The Shawl shows a clairvoyant wondering whether to cheat a bereaved woman of her inheritance and "confirms Mamet's place as about the best living writer of vivid American dialogue" (Daily Telegraph). Set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood, Speed-the-Plow sees two old-time movie collaborators manipulate the aspirations of a young woman who will do anything to attain her dream of success "a brilliant black comedy, a dazzling dissection of Hollywood cupidity." (Newsweek)

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In this title. a group of ruthless real estate salesmen try to sell worthless land in Florida to innocent buyers.

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If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, 'many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical'. As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: in Theatre, the acclaimed author of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed the Plow, calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, actors are either good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without the interference of a director, however well-intentioned. Issue plays, political correctness, method actors, impossible directions, Stanislavksy, and elitists all fall under Mamet's critical gaze. To students, teacher, and directors, who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful of change, Theatre throws down a gauntlet that challenges everyone to do better, including Mamet himself.From iconic and idiosyncratic director and playwright David Mamet, a mischievous manifesto designed to defrock the high priests and challenge the holy bibles of the theatre world.

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Duck Variations: "A brilliant little play...about two old men sitting on a park bench discussing ducks" (Guardian); Sexual Perversity in Chicago, bar-room banter and sexual exploits in Mamet's home town "sweet sad understanding and utterly believable" (Chicago Daily News); Squirrels is a sequence of philosophising between a younger writer, an older writer and a cleaning lady which "memorably captures the agony of the creative process" (Daily Telegraph); American Buffalo, one of Mamet's most famous plays, is set in a junk shop where Three small-time crooks plot to carry out the midnight robbery of a coin collection - in the hours leading up to the heist, friendship becomes the victim in a conflict between loyalty and business. The Water Engine is "a propulsive, kaleidoscopic nightmare" and Mr Happiness is a short ironic monologue by a Radio DJ commenting on the letters from his listeners.

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With the signature literary swagger that has made him the most original voice of American stage and screen, David Mamet's essays touch on his most intimate interests and obsessions. From his lifelong mania for poker and its labyrinthine psychology to sharp sallies on movie-making gibberish and the meaning of macho, Jafsie and John Henry is knit together by Mamet's unique perspective and inimitably spare wit.

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Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains the necessity, purpose and demands of drama. A celebration of the ties that bind art to life, Three Uses of the Knife is an enthralling read for anyone who has sat anxiously waiting for the lights to go up on Act 1. In three tightly woven essays of characteristic force and resonance, Mamet speaks about the connection of art to life, language to power, imagination to survival, public spectacle to private script. Self-assured and filled with autobiographical touches Three Uses of the Knife is a call to art and arms, a manifesto that reminds us of the singular power of the theatre to keep us sane, whole and human.

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Mamet's ground-breaking and controversial play on the male-female power struggle, annotated with an introduction, notes and commentary. "An ear for reproducing everyday language has long been David Mamet's hallmark and he has now employed it to skewer the dogmatic, puritannical streak which has become commonplace on and off the campus. With Oleanna he continues an exploration of male-female conflicts begun with Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974. Oleanna cogently demonstrates that when free thought and dialogue are imperilled, nobody wins." (Michael Wise, Independent) In Oleanna "John and Carol go to it with hand-to hand combat that amounts to a primal struggle for power. As usual with Mamet, the vehicle for that combat is crackling, highly distilled dialogue unencumbered by literary frills or phony theatrical ones." (Frank Rich, International Herald Tribune)

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Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet shares scandalous and laugh-out-loud tales from his four decades in Hollywood where he worked with some of the biggest names in movies.David Mamet went to Hollywood on top—a super successful playwright summoned west in 1980 to write a vehicle for Jack Nicholson. He arrived just in time to meet the luminaries of old Hollywood and revel in the friendship of giants like Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Bob Evans, and Sue Mengers. Over the next forty years, Mamet wrote dozens of scripts, was fired off dozens of movies, and directed eleven himself. In Everywhere an Oink Oink, he revels of the taut and gag-filled professionalism of the film set. He depicts the ever-fickle studios and producers who piece by piece eat the artist alive. And he ponders the art of filmmaking and the genius of those who made our finest movies. With the bravado and flair of Mamet’s best theatrical work, this memoir describes a world gone by, some of our most beloved film stars with their hair down, and how it all got washed away by digital media and the woke brigade. The book is illustrated throughout with three-dozen of Mamet’s pungent cartoons and caricatures.

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The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director and teacher has written a blunt, unsparingly honest guide to acting. In True and False David Mamet overturns conventional opinion and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. He leaves no aspect of acting untouched: how to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright; the right way to undertake auditions and the proper approach to agents and the business in general. True and False slaughters a wide range of sacred cows and yet offers an invaluable guide to the acting profession.

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A student edition of Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play First staged in Britain in 1983, Glengarry Glen Ross is the tale of four real-estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and was made into a film, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, in 1992. "The finest American playwright of his generation" Sunday Times "A chillingly funny indictment of a world in which you are what you sell" Guardian "Nobody alive writes better American...Here at last, carving characters out of language, is a play with real muscle" Observer "David Mamet, screenwriter of The Verdict and The Postman Always Rings Twice, is alongside Sam Shepard and Michael Weller, one of the most distinctive voices on the contemporary American stage" Michael Coveney, Financial Times

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!“Savagery appeased can only grow. Once you give in to it, it must escalate, like a fire searching for air.”The man who won the Pulitzer Prize for GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, who wrote the classic films THE VERDICT and WAG THE DOG sounds his alarm about the Visigoths at our gates.In RECESSIONAL he calls out, skewers, mocks, and, most importantly, dissects the virus of conformity which is now an existential threat to the West.A broad-ranging journey through history, the Bible, and literature, RECESSIONAL examines how politics and cultural attitudes about rebellion have shifted in the United States in the last generation. By screaming down freedom of thought and expression, Mamet explains, we kill invention and democracy – the foundations of security and growth.A wickedly funny, wistful and wry appeal to the free-thinking citizen, RECESSIONAL is a vital warning that if we don’t confront the cultural thuggery now, the commissars and their dupes will transform the Land of the Free into the dictatorship at which they aim.

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“When you hear thunder without rain–it is the buffalo approaching.” This line from a Yoruba hunting poem conveys the magnificent power of the African buffalo, also called “God’s cattle.” Hunter and writer Thomas McIntyre has pursued this special animal for the last forty years, and he now shares his expertise in Thunder Without Rain. McIntyre's topics are wide-ranging, from the various species of the African buffalo and their territories to the cultural importance of buffalo and its place among wild bovids. Other material he covers includes: African, European, and American methods for hunting buffalo Historical explorers as buffalo hunters Great buffalo hunters, including Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Ruark, Craig Boddington, and Robert Jones Ernest Hemingway’s writing on buffalo Correct cartridges for hunting African buffalo And finally, what makes buffalo so dangerous—and so sought after★ After exploring all topics related to the African buffalo, including hunts of his own, McIntyre ends with the fate of modern buffalo hunting, now often guided and for a high price, and the sustainability of this practice. In Thunder Without Rain, McIntyre confronts his obsession with African buffalo and brings the reader along for a fascinating journey.

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