David Mamet

"The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of the Free Lunch"--

Speed-the-Plow is an exhilaratingly sharp, comical, disturbing play about the power of money and sex in Hollywood, and how they corrupt two movie producers. Speed-the-Plow opened at Lincoln Center to sold-out seats, rave reviews and much fanfare in March 1988 starring Madonna, Joe Mantegna, and Ron Silver and later moved to and had a long-standing run on Broadway.

American Buffalo, which won both the Drama Critics Circle Award for the best American play and the Obie Award, is considered a classic of the American theater. Now from Gregory Mosher, the producer of the original stage production, comes a stunning screen adaptation, directed by Michael Corrente and starring Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, and Sean Nelson. A classic tragedy, American Buffalo is the story of three men struggling in the pursuit of their...

The Woods, described by the Chicago Daily News as a beautifully conceived love story," is a modern dramatic parable in which a young man and woman who spend a night in his family's cabin experience passion, then disillusionment, but are in the end reconciled by mutual need. In Lakeboat, eight crew members aboard a merchant ship exchange their wild fantasies about sex, gambling, and violence. In Edmond, a man set morally adrift leaves an unfulfilling...

In 1913, a young woman was found murdered in the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta. The investigation focused on the Jewish manager of the factory, Leo Frank, who was subsequently forced to stand trial for the crime he didn't commit and railroaded to a life sentence in prison. Shortly after being incarcerated, he was abducted from his cell and lynched in front of a gleeful mob. In vividly re-imagining these horrifying events, Pulitzer Prize–winning...

If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, "many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical." As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: in Theatre, the acclaimed author of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed the Plow calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, either actors are good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without...

With this screenplay, David Mamet gives the traditional prison-break story his special blend of gripping suspense, slapdash buffoonery, and ingenious plotting. Bob, a vicious killer, cheats the electric chair by shooting his way out of the penitentiary, forcing two reluctant convicts to come along. Desperately dodging the cops, Ned and Jim reach a river that runs along the Canadian border. The bridge across it becomes their only hope of reaching safety,...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross, here is a collection of thirty-two one act plays and short dramatic pieces that David Mamet himself considers to be some of the best writing he has ever done. In this single volume are all seven plays that make up Vermont Sketches, which Frank Rich of The New York Times has called "remarkable... as terrifying as a stranglehold." Here also are the six plays that The Blue Hour, The Spanish...

Best known for his precision-blade language and hot-button subject matter, David Mamet shows off a lighter side with his equally dexterous screwball comedy Keep Your Pantheon. Featuring an over-the-hill acting guru who lusts after both his toga-clad protégé Philius and a spot in the Sicilian Cork Festival, Mamet's play returns to the roots of comedy, paying homage to the Roman playwright Plautus, whose works also inspired Shakespeare's The Comedy...