When you have been around Hollywood as long as acclaimed screenwriter David Mamet has, you develop a sixth sense for BS, as Mamet explains in his new memoir “Everywhere An Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood” (Simon and Schuster).
“In Hollywood,” he writes, “everyone is flogging nonsense.”
But even though Mamet’s enjoyed a 50-year writing career, with countless awards and nominations, it’s still not always easy to sort truth from fiction.
“Billy Friedkin told me he’d improvised the car chase in ‘The French Connection’. Mike Nichols told me that Ingrid Bergman was a Jew and Gloria Steinem a CIA spy.
“James Jones’s widow, Gloria, told me she was the leg stand-in for Marilyn Monroe.
“Mary Steenburgen told me she never slept with Jack Nicholson on ‘Goin’ South’.
“I believed them all.”
Few people escape with any real credit in “Everywhere An Oink Oink” and chief among Mamet’s targets are movie producers.
“[If] Washington is Hollywood for ugly people,” writes Mamet. “Producing is Hollywood for ugly people.
“There is no day-to-day satisfaction in production, for producers, like their kind in Washington, produce nothing.”
Often, though, it’s the producers who appear to have no regard for Mamet’s work.
When he showed his script for the film “Oleanna” to Samuel Goldwyn Jr., for example, the producer was less than impressed.
“The enormous respect I have for your talent does not permit me to do anything but puke over this piece of s–t,” he told Mamet.
Mamet wasn’t surprised.
“Their reactions, over two score years, to craft and art (my own, most importantly) are like mine to their industry duplicity and ignorance: I just don’t get it,” he writes.
Agents, meanwhile, are recognized for their pointlessness.
“The truth is, if you’re hot you don’t need an agent,” he writes, “and if you’re not, the agent doesn’t need you.”
Studio executives don’t fare much better.
“[They] are not The Audience, but a Committee of the Concerned,” he reflects.
Over time, however, Mamet learned not to give a damn what others in the industry think of his work.
In 1989, he was hired to rewrite the script for the movie “We’re No Angels.”
In his new version, Mamet had Robert De Niro and Sean Penn listed to play escaped convicts and was told that the Irishman Neil Jordan, who had risen to prominence with his film “The Crying Game,” was going to direct the film.
The script written, Jordan flew from Ireland to meet Mamet in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss the project.
“We were introduced, and Neil said, ‘I have some questions about your script’” he writes.
“I riposted ‘Then why don’t you go f–k yourself’.
“And got up and left.”
While Jordan still used Mamet’s script and the film was released, the encounter typified some of the battles Mamet had to fight for his work to remain the way he intended.
It’s much like he wrote in his play “Speed The Plow” when he said: “Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting f—-d,” he writes.
Mamet learnt the hard way.
On one occasion, the actor Denzel Washington pulled out of a project to star in the paramilitary thriller “Spartan” because Mamet had said he would welcome ideas about his script for the movie.
“I was then no longer a filmmaker but a dread sycophant, to whom he, rightly, shouldn’t trust his time,” he writes.
After a successful career writing stage plays such as “The Duck Variations,” “American Buffalo” and “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” Mamet moved into movies with his first produced screenplay being 1981’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” starting Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Later, he would also write “The Verdict” in 1982, “The Untouchables” in 1987 and 1997’s “Wag The Dog.” He also directed films including “House of Games” (1987) and “Heist” (2001), starring Gene Hackman.
“I began my career in Hollywood at the top,” he writes. “[But] As I was a noted and successful playwright, my entry was a demotion.”
But as Mamet explains, relationships in Hollywood are fickle.
He was once “phone pals” with legendary director Stanley Kubrick for the briefest of times, for instance. “He called me from his home in England. We spoke for two afternoons, mostly about guns,” he recalls.
“He was a competitive pistol shot; I was too. I of course wanted to steer the conversation to film gossip, but firearms, like aviation and sexual dish among their aficionados, trump all.”
For every project that gets the green light, there are scores that never see the light of day and even acclaimed writers and directors like David Mamet suffer from rejection.
One of his projects, a comedy called “Joan of Bark,” had Will Ferrell earmarked to play the part of a man who goes to France to claim a tapestry of Joan of Arc’s dog, Woofy.
“It sat around fermenting at Sony for several years. It’s still there,” he writes.
“What a loss.”
Sometimes, though, Mamet’s was his own worst enemy.
Not only did he turn down the chance to write Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” but he rejected Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ too.
He also missed out on a hugely prestigious award from a leading international film festival for his film “House of Games” because he couldn’t find the time to travel to Europe to collect his accolade. “No Dave, no prize,” he writes.
“The stupidest thing I’ve ever done in the film biz.”
Though Mamet still uses a typewriter to write (“When one finishes typing a computer page, it just goes away”), Hollywood itself has changed beyond all recognition in the decades that Mamet has been working there.
And he doesn’t like it.
“The movie biz of my time was an adventure – the culture was raunchy, ribald, and energizing; it held the promise of any next moment bringing love, sex, money, fame or artistic challenge,” he writes.
“The culture of Hollywood today resembles that of my youth as little as a PTA meeting calls to mind a fire in a whorehouse,” he writes. “Simultaneous with a raid.”
In “Everywhere An Oink Oink” Mamet also namechecks just about everyone who has ever been anything in Hollywood, scrutinizing every last detail, from the abnormally large head of Bette Davis to the ears of Clark Gable and the “attractive prognathism” of Burt Lancaster.
He also recalls some of the screen idols he has encountered, with some introductions more memorable than others.
During pre-production of “The Verdict,” for example, he met the star Paul Newman for the first time at the office of director Sidney Lumet.
“I said, ‘Hello’.
“He replied, ‘I just got laid’.”
