Book Review: In Print

Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

by David Mamet

Pantheon, 272 pp., $22

This from the man who gave us "Always be closing":

"Who, then, will I class against him? What shibboleth, you wonder, will I list to augment your umbrage?"

Really, Mr. Mamet? Have you no pithier way of precursing a "feh" feeling for Laurence Olivier and the uncommon claim that Tony Curtis is the better actor? Because with language like that, you're not closing, or convincing, anybody.

The modus operandi of the Glengarry Glen Ross scenarist – exhilarating and rat-a-tat-tat profane – do not appear to carry over to Mamet in the hat of critical theorist/Hollywood memoirist in this new collection. In 40-plus essays, Mamet offers sound, practical advice and deeply felt, typically contrarian opinion, but he buries both in an avalanche of verbiage. There's egghead, and then there's just plain obtuse; he dunks the reader's head in the latter, with infrequent yanks back up for sputterings of fresh air and clear, concise thought. (Curiously, it takes him only four words to articulate his position on critics: "Critics are the plague." Indeed.)

Would the whole of the thing were as tightly written. Mamet has a lot to say in this decidedly un-dishy hodgepodge of set recollection, genre exploration, and screenwriting how-tos. Topics include the ascension of the Ashkenazi Jew to the top of the Hollywood food chain and the tracing of the lineage of American film noir to the British war picture. Perhaps best of the bunch is the penultimate "Two Great American Documents; Or, in the Wake of the Oscars," a larky little compare-and-contrast between Antioch College's highly unequivocal, almost embarrassingly enthusiastic Sexual Offense Prevention Policy ("the spirit [of this policy] is about a fully affirmative YES. Not an ambiguous yes, or a well-not-really-but-OK-I-guess yes. … This is about YES, UM HUM, ABSOLUTELY YAHOO YES!") and the Academy's 2003 pussyfooting memorandum on Oscar campaigning.

Throughout is Mamet's contention that art exists not to inform, educate, or foment social revolution (already covered in earlier works like Three Uses of the Knife). Better put – in one of his more lucid statements: "For movies do not exist to make us better, but to give us a thrill or chill on Wednesday night when we are out with our best gal." No thrills or chills here, just some pretty good stories from an incorrigible grump, if you don't mind sloughing through an awful lot of gasbaggery to get to them.