David Mamet is a leading American playwright whose spare, gritty, often scatological work reflects the rhythms of Harold Pinter and the tough attitudes of his native Chicago. Noted for his strong male characters and their macho posturings, Mamet's knack for creating low-key yet highly charged verbal confrontations in a male-dominated world has consistently made his work fodder for discussion and deconstruction. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he enjoyed a number of stage successes like "American Buffalo" (1975-76), the story of three small time con men, and "A Life in the Theatre" (1977), which explored the relationship between two actors, one old, the other young. He made an impressive film debut with his first produced screenplay "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981), adapted from the novel by James M Cain and directed by Bob Rafelson. Despite his prolific output for the cinema, Mamet has also continued to write regularly for the stage, winning OBIE Awards for "Edmond" (1982-83) and "The Cryptogram" (1994-95) and returning to Broadway in 1997 with "The Old Neighborhood.”
His meticulously crafted script for Sidney Lumet's "The Verdict" (1982) starred Paul Newman as a Boston lawyer on the skids and earned Mamet an Academy Award nomination. He scripted Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables" (1987), a blockbuster update of the well-remembered TV series, and made his directorial debut helming his own script "House of Games" (1987), an engrossing study of confidence trickery starring his then-wife Lindsay Crouse and Joe Mantegna. He also wrote and directed the whimsical comedy "Things Change" (1989), teaming Mantegna and Don Ameche, and the uneven but occasionally gripping police thriller "Homicide" (1991), also starring Mantegna.
Mamet has seen two of his plays filmed for PBS' "Great Performances,” "A Life in the Theatre" (1979) and his adaptation of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" (1991), both directed by longtime friend Gregory Mosher. He made his debut as executive producer for an HBO Showcase presentation of "Lip Service", his friend William H Macy's directorial debut, and also served as executive producer for the TNT movie version of "A Life in the Theatre", again directed by Mosher. Mamet adapted for "TNT Screenworks" his early play "The Water Engine" (1992) and played a small role in it, wrote the Showtime short "Texan", directed by Treat Williams, and helmed the HBO Special "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants" (1996), which he had directed for the stage two years earlier.
Mamet has transformed his plays to features with varying results. He adapted his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross", a visceral look inside a gritty Chicago real estate office, into an acclaimed 1992 film directed by James Foley and starring Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon. Louis Malle used Mamet's translation of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" to great effect in "Vanya on 42nd Street" (1994), reuniting the "My Dinner With Andre" team, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, as members of a company rehearsing the play-within-the-movie. The screen version of "Oleanna" (1994), which Mamet also directed and featured his wife Rebecca Pidgeon and William H Macy, suffered from too much staginess and dramatic obviousness. Michael Corrente's "American Buffalo" (1996) was also hampered by a similar fate, despite the presence of Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz in pivotal roles.
Mamet had another banner year in 1997, and though American audiences could not see Adrian Lyne's "Lolita,” which Mamet helped rewrite, there was no shortage of him on the big screen. His scripts powered two major releases, Lee Tamahori's adventure thriller "The Edge", pitting Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin against the Arctic wilds and a hungry bear, and Barry Levinson's star-studded "Wag the Dog,” a comedy-drama about politics placing Hollywood firmly in bed with Washington. With "The Spanish Prisoner” (1998), Mamet finally delivered on his promise as a director. Adapted from his 1985 stage play, this independent sleight-of-hand thriller echoed the tone of his earlier "House of Games" and kept audiences off-balance throughout with its devilishly clever series of reversals, though some thought it may have been too similar to his previous film. He followed up the next year with “The Winslow Boy” (1999), an unlikely G-rated addition to Mamet’s oeuvre based on the real-life story of a young naval cadet (Guy Edwards) who unexpectedly returns home from the academy after being accused of stealing a five schilling postal order. Convinced of their boy’s innocence, the Winslows persuade England’s leading attorney (Jeremy Northam) to take on the case amidst a growing national frenzy that exacts a heavy price upon the family. Little seen by audiences because of limited release, “The Winslow Boy” nonetheless enjoyed a small degree of critical kudos.
Also in 1999, Mamet penned the script for HBO’s “Lansky,” a gangster biopic about the life and times of Meyer Lansky, who rose up from the streets of New York City to become one of the most notorious—and celebrated—mafia kingpins. He next wrote and directed “State and Main” (2000), a biting and often hilarious satire depicting a Hollywood takeover of a small New England town by a film crew run out of a neighboring community because of the star’s predilection for under-aged girls. Mamet’s well-known distaste for Hollywood was on full display in his characterizations of a practically callous director (William H. Macy), a devious and aggressive producer (David Paymer) and a self-absorbed star (Alec Baldwin). After adapting his 1970 play “Lakeboat,” a semi-autobiographical drama about a young Ivy League student who spends a summer as a cook aboard a steamboat populated by men whose subculture and ways of living are completely foreign, Mamet wrote and directed “Heist” (2001), a crime thriller about a crime team’s spiraling demise after a botched robbery.
Mamet has over the years done his share of big budget movies, despite his distaste for Hollywood, as evidenced when he shared co-writing credit with Steven Zaillian on “Hannibal” (2001), sequel to the Oscar-winning “Silence of the Lambs” (1991). Mamet then returned to the stage in 2001 with “Boston Marriage,” a drawing room comedy about the clandestine relationship between two well-to-do society women. Returning to film, Mamet wrote and directed “Spartan” (2003), a low-key political thriller about a stalwart Secret Service agent (Val Kilmer) who tries to find the kidnapped daughter of a high-ranking official.
Mamet produced three more plays—“Dr. Faustus” (2004), “Romance” (2005) and “The Voysey Inheritance” (2005)—as he made a rare foray into television when he directed an episode of “The Shield” (FX, 2001- ). He approached executive producer Shawn Ryan with the idea of creating a series around a special forces unit, inspired by Mamet’s reading of Eric Haney’s 2002 nonfiction book, Inside Delta Force. With Ryan’s less abrasive approach to handling studio executives, the two pitched the networks their idea. After ABC and NBC passed, CBS took up the cause. Starring Dennis Haysbert, Robert Patrick and Regina Taylor, “The Unit” showed the inside lives of the members of a fictional special forces team that is routinely uprooted from their comfortable—and often troubled—domestic lives to handle a vast array of geopolitical crises. Though ratings were substandard, the network nonetheless renewed the midseason entry for the 2006-2007 season.
In addition to his stage and film work, Mamet published a number of books, including several volumes of essays, two novels and a book of poems.