Eric Bogosian
Boring Movies and a Defense of Mamet
January 14, 1998.
A lot has been going on since Thailand. Here are some reports and thoughts on most of it:
Last month the Blackbird CD of "Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead" was recorded at the Knitting Factory. As usual at the "Knit" the shows were brimming with energy. We're listening and editing now and the CD should be ready for use by the Spring...
Very active theater season here in New York. There isn't time to see everything but I'd recommend Goosepimples at the New Group if you want to see superb ensemble acting. Also, if you're wealthy, drop by and see The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet. This "play" consists of three one-acts, two of which are excellent. (More about Mamet below.) I have not been able to get tickets, but "Ragtime" sounds like it will be MAJOR. I saw "Lion King" and although the story and music are so-so, Julie Taymor's direction and artistry is so fantastic, she brings art to a normally kitschy scene. Finally, (how do I know so much about musicals?!), although I've never been a big Paul Simon fan, I heard two songs from the CD and had to go see Capeman. I don't want to review the show here since they are still working on it, and that's what previews are for. But let's just say I was amazed.
Also a set of one-acts is touring with the Acting Company. The show is called Love's Fire and it just closed in Minneapolis. The show is a collection of one-acts by various playwrights (including myself) based on Shakespeare's sonnets directed by Mark Lamos. Of course, my ten-minute play alone is worth the price of admission, whatever that is. Next month on the 20th I'll be blasting around at Performance Space 122. Sort of a benefit. I perform and they'll keep the money. All new stuff.
Boring Movies
Acting in movies is getting incredibly boring. It's all sort of "look-at-me" 'tude, which at first is slightly interesting, but wears off fast. Lots of promise, little delivery. The women aren't really sexy in any deep way (get some French flicks from the early Sixties to see sexy.) The bad guys are all played by movie stars now, so you know they're really good guys deep down. I mean, they've spent their whole career getting folks to fall in love with them and now they want to be bad guys? Sure, it pays and it's where the real acting is. So let the real actors do it. The heroes are the same people in every movie, so it's like you're watching the same movie over and over again. Harrison Ford or John Travolta, it's your choice. Yawn. The new young'uns are interesting for two minutes then they get signed by CAA and start making zillions and doing boring drugs and they get boring. The most interesting thing an actor/star can do is be incredibly selfish and die of an overdose. More yawns.
I'm not a "method" type actor. I don't believe you can learn acting. But you can get centered and to that degree, and whatever the fuck they were doing up at the Actor's Studio in the old days has paid off for a number of actors including DeNiro, Keitel and Pacino. But they're getting old. The best of the new guys on the block are hardly concentrating. Show up, learn the lines, have lunch with your agent on the set, hang out in your trailer all day listening to "Marilyn Manson", eventually get rushed through your scenes because the movie is over-budget and behind schedule. And one more piece of boring-ness is released.
Meanwhile back in theaterland, excitement reigns supreme. Because if you can't hack it with an audience, your ass is grass. The actor must concentrate. No choice. And very few prima donnas. They're all out in LA getting rich making boring movies.
Is the real sign of a "successful" actor the pay check? Do we all aspire to sit at the gaming tables in Vegas, Bruce Willis by our side, blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's some kind of experience, I won't argue. Probably similar to revisiting that great birthday party you had when you were six. What Willis does on screen is very special. What he gets out of it, I don't know. Lots of people think he's cool and he's got more money than God.
But, and I know this will sound unbelievable, I doubt whether creative happiness lies in that direction. The cast of "Griller" have been rehearsing their asses off, working very hard. Now they're in front of audiences and they're flying. I think they're happy. Maybe they'd rather be superstars with bad drug habits and fucked-up marriages, isolated because they can never show their face in a public place. Maybe that's better. But I don't think so.
In Defense of Mamet
In New York this fall we were barraged by an onslaught of David Mamet-hype. Large pieces in the New Yorker and the New York Times about his achievements and his deep and pithy life.
I don't need to be convinced that Mamet is heavy-weight. It's there in the writing.
And yet, there is so much focus on the PAIN of his childhood or the TWENTY-TWO plays he's written, you'd think that's what his art is about. Hell, I know a guy who has written FIFTY PLAYS and his dad used to use his head for batting practice. But that doesn't make his plays worth shit.
Mamet's lifework has been an extremely focused attempt to achieve, while being super-aware of what he is doing. This is what happens in his plays. His plays are honest because they are models of his life.
Even when his characters stumble through what they have to say, they are verbal. And by being verbal they attempt to make rationalizations for, or excuse, their behavior. And isn't this what David Mamet is doing in these puff pieces? He rises to the bait when asked about his work in Hollywood. "It's the big table," he says. What the hell does that mean? That he only does it for the lowest of reasons? He's being ironic, right?
He takes an ironic tone with the interviewer when told a visit is imminent ("Goody gumdrops!") because he doesn't want to do the interview. He's doing the interview because he wants to publicize his new play, his baby, he wants it to succeed. He desires its success, he's trying to manipulate the future by doing interviews with pundits from the New Yorker and the Times. And he hates himself for doing it. So he strikes an ironic stance.
David Mamet extends himself with his writing, he puts himself out there. He puts everything he's got in his plays. As careful as he is, (and I think he is very careful), he can't hide the exertion he makes. The act of play writing (despite what he has said in earlier interviews) is existential for him. He defines himself with them. They are his finest hour. As he says about play writing "What else is there to do?" But he is no Beckett, hidden away with his bottle, a genius anguishing. He is an aware "player." His relationship to Hollywood is revealing not because he can achieve success there, but because he bothers to do it in the first place. Who is he trying to impress? Does he need the money?
But he is aware of his appetite and thus he has stuck it in his plays, notably "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed the Plow." Here the characters are driven by their desires and hate themselves for being so driven.
Mamet is a great playwright because he can and has invented himself with words. He has extended himself out from his lonely place with words. And because his writing is so fine, he has collected us, strangers, audience, together and invented us as well, invented our imagination. I don't give a shit if his dad beat him black and blue and he's written five hundred screenplays. That doesn't make him a better writer. What he's written tells us who he is.
