Everywhere an Oink Oink

September 18, 2023
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Mamet (Recessional) documents his four decades working “bit by bit, much like a Missionary among cannibals” in Hollywood in this acerbic and entertaining series of anecdotes and sketches accentuated by his bitingly witty cartoons. Arriving in 1980 as a hotshot playwright commissioned to write a screenplay for Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Mamet witnessed the entertainment industry evolve from “an adventure” (“any next moment” could bring “love, sex, money, fame, artistic challenge, or an encounter with the highwaymen”) into a business ravaged by “corporate degeneracy” and policed by “Diversity Commissars.” Interspersed throughout are accounts of meeting such greats as Billy Wilder, Sue Mengers, and Bob Evans, as well as contemporary stars including Alec Baldwin, Denzel Washington, and Steve Martin. Elsewhere, Mamet dissects the inner workings of the movie biz, from on-set politics (“Executives have no place.... They don’t know what they’re looking at”) to the ills of filmmaking by committee, which “carries and transmits the age-old immutable lessons of bureaucratic survival.” The in-depth commentary on the nuts and bolts of screenwriting are among the most insightful (and least cynical) parts of the book (“the dialogue is of as little concern to a skilled screenwriter as the paint is to the mechanic. When the machine is correctly assembled, the thing can be painted whatever damn color pleases the money guy”). Cineastes will find this irresistible. Illus.