David Mamet is a genius. Take this speech in American Buffalo:
It comes at the end of a failed enterprise. A day when three small-time crooks inject purpose into their life by planning to steal an American Buffalo, a rare-ish coin. Its value comes from nothing at all except rarity; a collector bought one from them at a knock-down price. The three come to feel that he took advantage of them, that the buffalo is theirs by right. Out of indignation they create meaning. Out of meaning, they develop a project. There is now in their lives excitement, virtue, the promise of glory, cooperation, adventure.The American dream is reborn.
Then the illusion of it hits. Teach's speech is as weary and heavy as MacBeth's "Tomorrow" soliloquy.
(Unfortunately, the moment is not that well captured in the Dustin Hoffman film. As Mamet made clear in an answer to a question in his BBC lecture tonight, plays should be reproducible on radio, and films are the antithesis of this -- if the can be reproduced on radio, they are bad films. "Buffalo" is a real play. It needs the intimacy of radio or a small theatre.)
There are other great moments like this in Mamet. Glengary Glenross has a few and makes a much better film than Buffalo. Watch this clip and think of how subprime happened.
But however subtle a world he constructs in his drama, it fails disappointingly to translate to the lecture. Culture evolves, and leave it to the market of ideas ... free speech good ... Blues is poetry ... political correctness is un-American ... democracy is bloodless change of power ... the genius of America is Liberty ... small government good. All this is arguable, by others sometimes fascinatingly so (Nozick? Mill?) .
But if you are going to devote an hour to Mamet---and I recommend it---read Buffalo and skip the banalities of his BBC lecture.
