Salon | David Mamet

THE SALON INTERVIEW_DAVID MAMET_PAGE 2 OF 3
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Why is a movie like this that feeds into the audience's need to feel good about itself pernicious?
I thought it was especially pernicious in the case of "Schindler's List" because, as a Jew, I don't like the fact of the Jewish people being exploited, whether in the name of good or ill. For example, everything that has been said about Diana, including this, is gossip. The people who showed pictures of her embracing X, Y, Z and the people who wrote that the pictures were bad and this comment I'm making are all gossip and exploitative about something that's nobody's business. They're all exploitative about that dead person. Just so, attempts to picture Jews going to the gas chambers are exploitative, even if they're done for the best reasons in the world.
The only response is silence?
I think so.
Is that the only legitimate response to someone else's grief?
Absolutely so. It's in the Talmud that you're not supposed to say anything when someone is in mourning. What's there to say?
Is the reaction of false grief to Diana's death the same as the public response to the Oklahoma City bombing?
I think so. It's obviously the release of some great, widespread social need. What that need is, I'm certainly not equipped to say.
What do you think the media's role has been in Diana's death?
Anyone who deals with the public, myself no less than Diana, is involved in a process in which each party is going to utilize each other for something. Somebody wants their product broadcast, whether for emotional or personal or commercial reasons. And the journalist wants to have something which is newsworthy. So there's a very intricate and delicate interchange between the celebrity and the press. It's possible for either one of them to misuse it. It's very, very difficult for it to be used in a reputable fashion, to engage in the process in a way that is not going to be exploitative.
To serve the purpose of understanding something about human nature?
Not necessarily that, but even to legitimately publicize a film. To do so, one has to walk a fine line between telling the truth and telling those things which are appropriate to the specific medium. I like to talk and I taught college for too many years. It would be very easy for me to veer off and start talking about the metaphysical underpinnings of film, or of my film, or about Stanislavsky. I'm trying to take my cow to market here.
I don't mind learning something about metaphysics and Stanislavsky.
I hope I have the strength to refrain. It's very easy for the person being interviewed to warp the process toward some inappropriate, ulterior ends.
What's an example?
To try to defend one's self. To try to explain one's personal life. To do anything other than explain why the public might enjoy the film. It happens all the time where, given the extraordinarily complimentary flattery and heady lure of "a public wanting to know," one becomes, as I'm becoming now, disquisitive. I think it's very flattering. One might want to, as we see many celebrities do, justify or explain a life of theirs that is not related to the specific problem, or to exploit the process in a way that draws interest to some wider problem: a social good, or a perceived social good.
You mean a celebrity criticizing nuclear power?
Yeah, or saving the whales. The other side of the equation is something we've seen in a rather stark way with Diana: The media saying, this person belongs to me and everything they do is mine and I'm not ever going to let them alone.
Somewhere, you wrote about the mass media, including the computer industry, conspiring to pervert our need for community. That the dream of having all this information at our fingertips to make us godlike is really doing the opposite and making us forget our humanity. Could you elaborate on that?
It's not really that they're conspiring to, but they might as well be. If you sit down in front of the television with 700 channels, there's probably something on those channels that's going to interest you. It's a very good way to get stupid very quickly.
There's nothing you get from television? The information is just a delusion?
I absolutely think so. If there's any information, it's purely accidental. Furthermore, I don't think there is any information to be gotten from television. I think it's an illusion. It's an interesting narcotic.
Even documentaries or historical programs?
No, it's television.
What about the Internet and the promise of all this information becoming available?
I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure it's worse.
I also wanted to ask you about pornography and why it seems to be on the rise in mainstream films.
That's true. It's on the rise because it doesn't work. It's like the defense department. If you have this fiction of wanting to become the principal power of world domination, no amount of arms is going to work. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, believing that arms are going to make you safe. It's like buying a car to make you beautiful. It doesn't work. So next year, you buy another car and hope that's going to work. It doesn't.
What's the connection between those examples and pornography?
The relationship is that it might seem provocative and fulfilling to see a moment of pornography in a feature film, but it's not. And because it's not, we have to have two moments of pornography. Because that's not fulfilling, we have to have another moment. It's really the compulsion to repeat, to come back to that thing that didn't work previously, because we're addicted to it. A good example is cigarettes. One keeps smoking because it seems like a good idea, but as soon as you light up, you say, "Oh my God, what have I done?"
That's what you mean when you say audiences need to see gratuitous sex in films?
I don't think they need to see it; I think they're habituated to it. Most of the time sex scenes in movies are like the plastic frogman in breakfast cereals. They're put in to fool the audience that what they're getting is a better product.
Some producers think they need to have sex scenes.
That's why they call them producers. It's a fairly ironic name.
How?
I don't think I'll say more on that subject.
Have you had any pleasant experiences in Hollywood?
I love working with Art Linson, who's been kicked out of every studio. He's now ensconced at Fox. I had a great experience with Bob Rafaelson with my script for "The Postman Always Rings Twice." He was my rabbi out there for a while, really adopted me, showed me the ropes, or turned me on to the life, as it were. I had a great experience with Sidney Lumet.
What about with "Lolita?"
I had a wonderful time writing it.
But in terms of the reaction in the U.S.?
They didn't end up using my script. They kicked me off the movie and ended up hiring somebody else. I haven't seen the finished movie.
Why did they hire someone else to write it?
For the same reason the moron threw the alarm clock out the window -- to see time fly.
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