March 12, 2008 1:51

That's Why They Call It MONEY

Posted by Ana Marie Cox | Comments (34) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

David Mamet writes about becoming a conservative, with surprisingly little attention paid to how his place in the world -- as opposed to his thinking -- may have changed over the years. He actually makes the argument that his thinking hasn't changed at all, he's just stopped fooling himself that his views were compatible with liberalism... Stopped conning himself if you will. He further asserts that plays are made better if they lack a director; just like how societies are made better without government! This is something only a writer could say. I asked a theater person friend what happens if you remove a director from a play, and he said, "you are left with a passel of self-absorbed actors run amok." Not a bad description of what happens without a government in place, as well.

It's all rather twisted. I'm looking forward to the third act, when it turns out that Bush was in on it all along and that Rebecca Pidgeon just painted all of the red states to look like lead.

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Reader Comments (34)

Elvis Elvisberg

I wish the essay were a little more focused. It's interesting to read about how people come to reexamine their prejudices and come to new conclusions. But this is pretty scattered. "But I digress" could have been the headline. It's an entry in the Rod Dreher/David Horowitz genre-- "I used to be have poorly considered liberal ideas, but now I have poorly considered conservative ideas! Boy, was I dumb!"

There aren't as many of these conversion stories going the other way, I don't think, but they'll start popping up as the country continues to recoil from the Bush-Rove-DeLay GOP.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | March 12, 2008 1:59 PM

Mike M.:

Actually, Mamet's theory about plays being better without directors is kind of part of his theatrical style when he directs. The director just kind fo serves to keep the actors faithful to the text and to stop them from adding on a bunch of emotional...

...you don't really care about this, do you?

Okay... he has a point on the theatre thing but it's unimportant and he's wrong on everything else.

So he gets second prize. A set of steak knives.

Posted by Mike M. | March 12, 2008 2:09 PM

Jim, Foolish Literalist:

I couldn't get through it, between his "but I digress" and my own "Holy crap he's gonna ramble on for five pages?", but hasn't Mamet been in the Dennis Miller camp for a long time now? Roughly definded as: "9/11 really scared me so let's bomb some people and suddenly pretend to agree with Bush on everything else so that I don't sound like a bed-wetting coward."

Posted by Jim, Foolish Literalist | March 12, 2008 2:32 PM

Paul Dirks

I can't get the essay to open, but I will mention that unless it allows for the degree to which the "liberal" and "conservative" labels are moving targets that share little of the meanings they held a mere 30 years ago, then it's probably thoroughly incoherent.

"We're from the government and we're here to help"

That people don't seem to realize that the NSA and the EPA are exactly equally "the government" never ceases to amaze.

Posted by Paul Dirks | March 12, 2008 2:36 PM

Cookie Puss

They need to throw another load of hemp into the generator over at the Village Voice, their website appears to be down.

Posted by Cookie Puss | March 12, 2008 2:39 PM

jayackroyd

I just saw this play by Charles Mee last night.

They had Q&A with Mee, cast and director afterwards.

He's idiosyncratic, playwright-wise. He says that he picks a director, and then hands him the script, and then shows up when an audience does, at the first preview usually.

He told a story about being at Brown last week, to see a friend of his daughters put on a play of his. The director (the friend) had cut a lot of text and added a bunch of his own. Mee said he enjoyed it very much.

The director's role in his plays is to find a way to implement the stuff he puts in there, as best he can.

This:

[Deafening music.
Benny is engulfed by a projection of the amusement park's midway
and, at the same moment,
a boat enters.]

Is not a terribly clear stage direction.

The director said he mostly tried to implement what was called for, but couldn't always.

That said, I agree that when people get rich, they generally come to see the world differently.

Posted by jayackroyd | March 12, 2008 2:49 PM

Comment: The Movie:

Mamet has always been a pretty conservative, crewcut-wearing, Hollywood-hating, military-obsessed guy. I think people assume that because he's a bespectacled nebbish writer that he's automatically a liberal.In actuality, he's a nutcase.

Posted by Comment: The Movie | March 12, 2008 2:49 PM

Diogenes:

Angry Mamet, like an old man sending back soup in a deli.

The lame NPR jab was the tip-off. His rabbi makes him realize that Israel just wants peace, and Presto, he's a conservative. "Settlements schmettlements! Switch over to that Limbaugh with the big schmaltzy punim!"

Then he tells us JFK=GWB. Wow! I haven't heard a comparison so blithely uninformed since Dan Quayle was at the podium.

Oh well, now he can have lunch with his new pals Podhoretz, Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith. Look for some changes in the usual Mamet dialog styles. Expect a lot of "moreover's" and "at this juncture's".

And just imagine the poor bastard stuck with directing his next work. Oy!

Posted by Diogenes | March 12, 2008 2:49 PM

superterrificdelegate:

By the time I got down to the bottom of page 1 there was enough straw in his straw man arguments to ensure the doom of many little pigs.

Posted by superterrificdelegate | March 12, 2008 2:50 PM

jayackroyd

Ah, but I forgot to say, that because when we get rich, we see things differently is the source of much of the criticism of the Beltway media.

Tim Russert in Imus' private jet. David Broder leaving his country estate to have chicken with the little people at the annual church social. Andrea Mitchell married to Alan Greenspan. The insidiousness of wealth, the way it pushes you to the right, is what many of us think makes the Village largely what it is.

Sally Quinn's salons are corrosive, as are tux-wearing journalists at the White House Correspondents dinner.

Posted by jayackroyd | March 12, 2008 2:58 PM

J.J.

They need to throw another load of hemp into the generator over at the Village Voice, their website appears to be down.

I hate to generalize, but every time I read something like "As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart..." I know what's coming. Look, guy, I know you had plenty of late night Trustifarian-type conversations while passing the bowl in college, but...

Posted by J.J. | March 12, 2008 3:00 PM

smedley:

Thomas Sowell? He thinks Thomas Sowell is brilliant? Are you f'ing kidding me? The Thomas Sowell who recently tried to dismiss the "driving while black" phenomenon by excusing about a dozen times he was stopped by police for no apparent reason?

Posted by smedley | March 12, 2008 3:03 PM

Derek:

I take it Mamet doesn't know that the separation of powers is a Liberal idea or that Sowell has never written a single book on philosophy. It seems that his move to the other side puts him in closer contact with his real self.

Posted by Derek | March 12, 2008 3:03 PM

THEO:

I suspect conservatives cheer that headline, then have to Google "David Mamet" to figure out who the hell he is.

Enjoy the rest of your time on Broadway and in Hollywood, Dave - however short.

Posted by THEO | March 12, 2008 3:46 PM

shan13:

Mamet:

Love your work- and your essay.

Posted by shan13 | March 12, 2008 3:48 PM

Derek:

Mamet ought to dedicate the rest of his life to insuring that short essays on economics, published in the Wall Street Journal, replace all those long boring texts on epistemology, ethics and logic now taught in philosophy courses.

Posted by Derek | March 12, 2008 4:20 PM

Rose:

This is great news. Now I can stop apologizing for finding his work incredibly overrated.

Posted by Rose | March 12, 2008 4:37 PM

suzyqueue:

"I asked a theater person friend what happens if you remove a director from a play, and he said, "you are left with a passel of self-absorbed actors run amok." Not a bad description of what happens without a government in place, as well."

Or a David Mamet play.

Posted by suzyqueue | March 12, 2008 10:41 PM

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