David Mamet

Calling on his unique perspective as playwright, screenwriter, and director of his own critically acclaimed movies, House of Games and Things Change, David Mamet illuminates how a film comes to be. He looks at every aspect of directing?from script to cutting room?to show the many tasks directors undertake in reaching their prime objective: presenting a story that will be understood by the audience and has the power to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time. Based on a series of classes Mamet taught at Columbia University's film school, On Directing Film will be enjoyed not only by students but by anyone interested in an overview of the craft of filmmaking.

On Directing Film

First staged in Britain in 1983, 'Glengarry Glen Ross' is the tale of four real-estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and was made into a film, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, in 1992.

Glengarry Glen Ross

A male college professor uses an interview with one of his female students to take advantage of her

Oleanna

A group of ruthless real estate salesmen try to sell worthless land in Florida to innocent buyers

A Play

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross addresses key political issues from religion and political correctness to taxes and global warming while denouncing current administrative agendas and explaining why he has abandoned his liberal views. 40,000 first printing.

On the Dismantling of American Culture

The Secret Knowledge

Argues that the techniques taught in acting school, in particular the famous Stansilavsky Method, mislead aspiring actors and suggests ways for performers to remain true to the chararacters they represent. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

True and False

On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

Three Uses of the Knife

Dramatizes the deal making that goes on behind the scenes in the movie industry

Speed-the-plow

Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains the necessity, purpose and demands of drama. A celebration of the ties that bind art to life, Three Uses of the Knife is an enthralling read for anyone who has sat anxiously waiting for the lights to go up on Act 1. In three tightly woven essays of characteristic force and resonance, Mamet speaks about the connection of art to life, language to power, imagination to survival, public spectacle to private script. Self-assured and filled with autobiographical touches Three Uses of the Knife is a call to art and arms, a manifesto that reminds us of the singular power of the theatre to keep us sane, whole and human.

Three Uses Of The Knife

An explosive new drama from one of our most acclaimed playwrights.

Race

Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews (Jewish Encounters)

The Wicked Son

The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of the Free Lunch

Recessional

Two neighborhood punks and the owner of a junk shop plot to burglarize a coin collector's apartment. They fail because of inertia, ineptitude and mutual distrust, but remain bound together by their helpless frustration. 2 acts, 3 men, 1 interior.

American Buffalo

The playwright writes about himself, the theater, acting, movies, poker playing, middle-class fashion, advertising, and other topics

Writing in Restaurants

Anton Chekhov

Mamet discusses the real theme of Chekhov's play and presents his own version of the story in which a Russian aristocratic family is forced to sell its estate to the son of a peasant

The Cherry Orchard

Three Uses Of The Knife. Methuen Drama. 2007.

Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, David Mamet's scalding comedy is about small-time, cutthroat real esate salesmen trying to grind out a living by pushing plots of land on reluctant buyers in a never-ending scramble for their fair share of the American dream. Here is Mamet at his very best, writing with brutal power about the tough life of tough characters who cajole, connive, wheedle, and wheel and deal for a piece of the action -- where closing a sale can mean a brand new cadillac but losing one can mean losing it all. This masterpiece of American drama is now a major motion picture starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Alex Baldwain, Jonathan Pryce, Ed Harris, and Kevin Spacey.

A Play by 

The Old Neighborhood

Cómo la cultura woke nos empobrece intelectualmente y amenaza la democracia Cada vez son más las voces que se alzan contra la insaciable tiranía de la corrección política. David Mamet, uno de los autores más importantes de las últimas décadas en Estados Unidos, expresa en estas páginas su hartazgo con la pendiente resbaladiza de la cultura de la cancelación y con la asfixiante atmósfera del neopuritanismo. En Himno de retirada, el dramaturgo critica, se burla y disecciona el virus de la ideología de género, la Racial Theory y el resto de ideas que plantean una amenaza existencial para Occidente. En esta recopilación de ensayos, Mamet proclama un canto fúnebre por el librepensador en un momento en que las universidades, los medios y la política se han infestado de este moralismo pacato e intransigente. En estas páginas se examina el descenso de Estado Unidos a los infiernos de la barbarie en los últimos años, auspiciado por la censura de la libertad de expresión en pos de evitar la ofensa a colectivos minoritarios. Mamet advierte de que la proliferación de literatura moralizante y adoctrinadora está creando entre las nuevas generaciones una mentalidad dogmática que impide asumir el carácter disruptivo, provocador, conflictivo e incómodo que ha caracterizado a la producción cultural bajo la civilización occidental. La cultura de nuestro tiempo ha consagrado la idea de que la moralidad de las personas está determinada por su condición étnica, sexual o socioeconómica, en lugar de por sus elecciones éticas. Por eso, esta apelación irónica, melancólica y mordaz a enfrentarnos al matonismo cultural es un soplo de libertad en una época en la que el emotivismo está destruyendo la posibilidad del debate racional.

La muerte de la libertad de expresión y por qué nos saldrá cara

Himno de retirada

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.

David Mamet

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