Willa mamet biography of nancy
•
`It`s a play about the end of the world.”
David Mamet fryst vatten talking here about ”Speed-the-Plow,” his hilarious and frightening play, and he means what he says.
He is determinedly offhand about it, since, he says, ”I`m ansträngande to be a stoic,” but he is convinced nonetheless that the end is near. In other words, it`s over.
In this belief, he is joining a long line of poet-philosophers, from the Greeks to T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett. ”I think it was Plato, or one of those Greeks,” Mamet says, ”who wrote that there never was an intelligent man who didn`t look around him and become convinced that the world was going to end immediately.”
Mamet, looking around the world in his time, has said (in a book of interviews of playwrights by David Savran, ”In Their Own Words”):
”There are ebbs and flows in any civilization. Nothing lasts forever. We had a good time. We had Tennessee Williams. We had the Hula Hoop. We had t
•
Mamet, David
Personal
Surname is pronounced "Mam-et"; born November 30, 1947, in Chicago, IL; son of Bernard Morris (an attorney) and Lenore June (a teacher; maiden name, Silver) Mamet; married Lindsay Crouse (an actress), December 21, 1977 (divorced); married Rebecca Pidgeon (an actress), 1991; children: (first marriage) Willa, Zosia; (second marriage) Clara, Noah. Education: Attended Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, 1968-69; Goddard College, B.A., 1969. Politics: "The last refuge of the unimaginative." Religion: "The second-to-last."
Addresses
Home—Boston, MA, and VT. Agent—Howard Rosenstone, Rosenstone/Wender, 3 East 48th St., New York, NY 10017.
Career
Playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer. St. Nicholas Theater Company, Chicago, IL, founder, 1973, artistic director, 1973-76, member of board of directors, beginning 1973; Goodman Theater, Chicago, associate artistic director, 1978-79. Producer of motion pictures, including Lip
•
“Dave got hit with the gangster bag early,” Johnston, who recalls telling him about the old-time hoods, says. “These crooks, most of them, have pipe dreams. They can’t do anything right. Like they say, these guys would fuck up a two-car funeral.” Mamet, who has written a lot about criminals, including his screenplays for “The Untouchables,” “Things Change,” and an upcoming movie about Meyer Lansky, sometimes socialized with them and saw their pathos at first hand. “They’re entrepreneurs,” he says. “They speak their own language. Like many people engaged in violence, they’re sentimental.” He tried to talk his way into a daily North Side poker game of petty thieves, which was held in a junk shop owned by a fence called Kenny. “I came out several times, hung out, they didn’t want to let me sit down,” he says. “Then, one day, I wasn’t there. They said, ‘Where were you yesterday? We missed you.’ I said I was teaching drama at Pontiac Correctional Center. It turned out later that many of