Mr. Mamet Will Have the Twizzlers

January 30th, 2006General3 comments

So there’s a new David Mamet play at the Geffen, written and directed by Mamet himself. I’ve been hanging out a lot at the Ralph’s next door hoping to spot him buying snacks during rehearsal breaks.

Wouldn’t it be really, really cool to see David Mamet, writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, buying hot pockets?

“Hmmm, should I have the ham and cheese hot pockets or the beef taco?.. Ah, I ate twenty ham and cheeses last week at that American drama panel. I’d better go with the — OOH, STEAK FAJITA!”

Then imagine the Puliter Prize winner trying to find the microwave in the newly expanded, multi-million dollar Geffen theater:

“Hey Gilbert, where’s the microwave in this mother?”

Gilbert Cates, former president of the DGA, former dean of the UCLA School of film and television, Producing Director at the Geffen: “It’s in the staff room, third door on the left. But, uh, it’s kind of dirty… Let me get some Windex.”

Wouldn’t it be great to see Sam Shepard snacking on a box of Nerds? Would he hit the grape first and then the cherry, or would he mix it up? Would he allow the flavors to come to conflicting blows like the brothers in True West?

“Whenever I play a distressed U.S. Army Colonel sending his men to their deaths, I like to relax between takes with a packet of crunchy, tangy Nerds candy. Num num num!”

I want to see these guys being human. To eat what we eat, do what we do.

I want to see Edward Albee driving an Altima.

I had another book buying binge this weekend. I got the paperback of Collapse and White Teeth by Zadie Smith (thanks Yumi). Right now I’m finishing Blink.

I think my brain does better at all tasks when it’s being fed books. I think a writer should primarily be a reader. I don’t know who said that first but I believe in it.

I actually like reading scripts better than seeing plays, and reading screenplays is a vastly different mental activity for me than watching a movie. A screenwriter especially should primarily be a reader and not just a movie lover.

Words on a page just activate for me, like the scrubbing bubbles in the bathroom cleaner commercial. Each one is like a little spell, and reading or saying the word invokes all these ideas and conjoined memories. I just really love words.

And Twix.