David Mamet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Mamet 2008

David Alan Mamet (born November 30, 1947 in Chicago , Illinois ) is an American playwright , screenwriter , film director , producer , poet and writer . He is considered a prolific writer whose style is often compared to that of Harold Pinter .

Life

Mamet grew up in a Jewish family in a suburb of Chicago, but his childhood was overshadowed by his parents' divorce, an experience that he later incorporated into his work. After graduating from college , he attended drama school in New York , where he made contact with fellow actors William H. Macy , Joe Mantegna , Lindsay Crouse , and Ricky Jay and founded the St. Nicholas Company . He often worked with these actors later in his films.

In the early 1970s he tried to gain a foothold as a theater actor, but initially had to put up with odd jobs before he began to write plays. His unusual linguistic style, characterized by fast dialogues interspersed with strong expressions, is known to this day as "Mametspeak". According to his own statement , this vocabulary has its origin in the raw everyday language of his parents. In terms of content, his pieces deal with the brutalisation and cultural decline of society.

In New York in the mid-1970s, he found a way - away from Broadway - to have his pieces performed, where they developed into successes relatively quickly and earned him various critical awards. This success brought him to the attention of Hollywood , and he received his first scriptwriting assignments. His first film script, the adaptation of James M. Cain's novel When the Postman Rings Twice , was made into a film by Bob Rafelson in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in the lead roles. A year later, his screenplay for The Verdict was nominated for an Oscar .

But Mamet continued to write very successful plays. The drama Glengarry Glen Ross was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and four Tony Awards in 1984. For the later filming with Jack Lemmon , Al Pacino , Ed Harris , Alan Arkin and others. a. he also wrote the script.

He made his debut as a film director in 1987 with the gangster thriller House of Games . The main role of the psychologist Margaret, who is slowly sinking into the gambling environment, was taken over by his ex-wife, the actress Lindsay Crouse. Since then he has been sitting on the director's chair again and again, but his main focus is on writing scripts. He is also often employed as a "script doctor" to rewrite or improve existing scripts (for example, he worked on the scripts for Jimmy Hoffa and Hannibal ).

Mamet writes essays , books and articles in which he takes a critical look at the film industry and the often unimaginative "production process" of films. His main criticism is directed against film producers and studio managers who, in his opinion, fill the "most useless" professions. He is also a sharp critic of the method acting technique , which he describes in his book Right and Wrong as “painting by numbers”, which does not help actors to represent their characters naturally.

He does not limit his writing activity to a specific genre or a particular medium , as he says he gets bored easily. He has now published a children's book and a collection of poems and is working on lyrics with his wife, Scottish actress and singer Rebecca Pidgeon .

Mamet has been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with success since 2001 and has been able to convince both his daughter and the rabbi of his Jewish community to practice this martial art. In 2008, Mamet reported in a newspaper essay about his change of heart from a “brain-dead left” to a contemporary with a differentiated worldview.

In February 2018 it was announced that Mamet had written a piece about Harvey Weinstein .

Mamet lives with his wife and children temporarily on his farm in Vermont or in a house in Cambridge , but mostly in Santa Monica , California . One of his daughters is the actress and singer Zosia Mamet from the HBO series Girls .

Works

Movies

Direction and script:

Script:

Literary source:

Plays

  • 1970: Lakeboat
  • 1972: The Duck Variations (Duck Variations)
  • 1974: Sexual Perversity in Chicago
  • 1974: Squirrels
  • 1975: American Buffalo
  • 1976: Reunion
  • 1976: The Water Engine
  • 1977: A Life in the Theater (Life in the Theater)
  • 1979: The Woods
  • 1980: Lakeboat
  • 1982: Edmond
  • 1983: The Frog Prince
  • 1984: Glengarry Glen Ross (hillside sea view)
  • 1985: The Shawl (The scarf)
  • 1988: Speed-the-Plow (The Favor of the Hour)
  • 1989: Bobby Gould In Hell (Bobby Gould in Hell)
  • 1992: Oleanna
  • 1995: The Cryptogram (the cryptogram)
  • 2001: Boston Marriage (The Sisters of Boston, see also Boston Marriage )
  • 2004: Faustus (The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus)
  • 2005: Romance (Romance)
  • 2008: November
  • 2009: Race
  • 2011: The Anarchist (The anarchist)

Books

Awards

Pulitzer Prize

Oscar

  • 1998 - Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Wag the Dog
  • 1988 - Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Verdict - The Truth and Nothing But Truth

BAFTA

  • 1999 - Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Wag the Dog - When the Tail Wags the Dog

Cannes International Film Festival

Mostra

  • 1987 - Golden Osella (best screenplay) and Pasinetti (best film) for House of Games

Memberships

He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1994 .

Web links

Commons : David Mamet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Time Magazine , May 19, 2008, Joel Stein: Jujitsu with Mamet ; P.56.
  2. ↑ FAZ.net of April 20, 2008 the German translation
  3. ↑ Essay by Mamet, Why I am no Longer a 'Brain-dead Liberal', VILLAGE VOICE, March 11, 2008
  4. ↑ US playwright Mamet has finished piece about Weinstein , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on February 23, 2018
  5. ↑ Women in prison, men in a cage in FAZ from December 4, 2012, page 31
  6. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Mamet, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mamet, David Alan (full name); Weisz, Richard (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter, playwright, film director, writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago