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.
“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.
A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicago-a city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known better-by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross.
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. Then, again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh have known better than to trifle with Mike Hodge.
In Chicago, David Mamet has created a bracing, kaleidoscopic tale 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 to for his whole career. Mixing some of his most brilliant fictional creations with actual figures of the era, suffused with trademark "Mamet Speak," richness of voice, pace, and brio, and exploring-as no other 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.
David Mamet’s gift for storytelling and forging poetry from both the plain-spoken and profane turns an ill-conceived scheme to steal a rare coin into a triumph of dramatic art. In a junk shop, three men of different generations plan their heist. But their fates, like the nickel’s worn image of the beleaguered buffalo, may have been sealed long ago. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production starring Rich Hutchman as Donny DuBrow, Josh Stamberg as Walter Cole (Teacher), and Maurice Williams as Bobby. Directed by Brian Kite and recorded before an audience by L.A. Theatre Works.
For the past thirty years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system.
But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart. He realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview. In 2008 he wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal,'" in which he methodically eviscerated liberal beliefs. Now he goes much deeper, employing his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political and cultural issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming.
Mamet pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, he will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.
In this classic of Chekhov’s canon, an overbearing professor pays a visit to his country estate, where Sonya and Vanya, his daughter and former brother-in-law, have slaved to maintain his wealth. But Vanya is enchanted by the professor’s new wife, while Sonya has fallen for the town’s melancholy doctor.
Includes a conversation with Rosamund Bartlett, author of “Chekhov: Scenes from a Life.”
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance starring:
Josh Radnor as Astrov
Stacy Keach as Vanya
Holley Fain as Yelena
Anna Mathias as Marina
Jennifer Bassey as Mariya
JD Cullum as Telegin
Martin Jarvis as Professor Serebryakov Devon Sorvari as Sonya
Directed by Rosalind Ayres. Recorded by L.A. Theatre Works before a live audience.
A group of low-ranking real-estate salesmen are trying to survive in a cut-throat office culture. But when two of them devise a plot to redress the company’s wrongs, the resulting turmoil increases the pressure to unbearable levels.
A 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama.
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:
Joe Mantegna as Ricky Roma
Gordon Clapp as David Moss
Kyle Colerider-Krugh as Detective Baylen
Richard Dreyfuss as Shelly Levine
John Getz as James Lingk
Richard Schiff as George Aaronow
Josh Stamberg as John Williamson
Directed by Eric Simonson. Recorded by L.A. Theatre Works before a live audience.
Three one-act plays from David Mamet, one of the master stage writers of our time:
The Shawl - A clairvoyant is in the process of swindling an unsuspecting woman on the basis of clever guess work and speculation. But it appears the clairvoyant has special powers that even he may not be aware of.
Reunion - After years of separation, Reunion follows the painful and deliberate efforts of a divorced and recovering alcoholic father, Bernie, and his daughter Carol to work their way back to early bonds of affection.
Bobby Gould in Hell - In this comic mediation on the nature of good and evil, Bobby Gould (from Mamet’s celebrated Speed the Plow) is interrogated by a pair of devils to decide his faith.
L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performances featuring Gus Buktenica, Dale Calandia, Marilou Henner, John Mahoney, Neil Pepe, Rebecca Pidgeon, Marc Vann and Dan LaMorte.
In this outrageous new comedy, playwright David Mamet skewers everything from sexuality to the justice system to world peace. In a world where nothing is as it seems, prepare to be offended! Fred Willard and Ed Begley Jr. star in this over-the-top comedy.
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Gordon Clapp, Noah Bean, Steven Goldstein, Rod McLachlan and Rob Nagle.
Jaded Hollywood producer Bobby Gould has spent a career reaping what others sow, until the night he’s forced to choose between his loyal friend’s sure-fire hit and a beautiful girl’s art-house project. During a wicked evening of seduction and manipulation, Bobby discovers that the power he exerts is more elusive than it seems.
An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Jeff Goldblum, Adam Arkin and Dina Waters.
