If you don’t know David Mamet, he’s one of those ’60s/’70s era intellectual New York based playwrights who’s too clever by half. After years of being feted by the establishment, he was wooed to Hollywood with the promise of money and prestige. He has spent the entirety of his career since talking about how much better he is than to toil in such a shallow and vapid industry.

That sounds incredibly bitchy, but it’s also kind of his personal brand. Like his other non- fiction books on his life and times as a scriptwriter and director, his turn of phrase is so lofty and impenetrable at times I didn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

But if you’re interested in the movie business and have enjoyed the rash of celebrity memoirs that came out of the pandemic that actually name names while they dismember the way the industry’s treated them, it’s well worth your time.

The book is arranged into chapters and the chapters into vignettes or scenes, but it’s for no real reason – the chapter names don’t really mean anything and Mamet chops and changes topics so much it’s more a free-flowing stream of consciousness. But it’s an eviscerating and sometimes very funny read about show business.

Reviewed by Drew Turney

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Mamet’s numerous plays include Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award), American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow, Boston Marriage, November, Race, and The Anarchist. He wrote the screenplays for such films as The Verdict, The Untouchables, Ronin, and Wag the Dog, and has twice been nominated for an Academy Award. He has written and directed ten films, including Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, House of Games, Spartan, and Redbelt. In addition, he wrote the novels The Village, The Old Religion, Wilson, The Diary of a Porn Star, Chicago, and many books of nonfiction, including Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood; Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business; Theatre; Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama; and two New York Times bestsellers The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture and Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch. His HBO film Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, aired in 2013 and earned him two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing. He was co-creator and executive producer of the CBS television show The Unit and is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company.