Caricature of playwright David Mamet © Zach Trenholm (website, drawing demonstration) from "David Mamet's New Political Play: The playwright discusses his campaign comedy opening on Broadway and his writing process," by Robert J. Hughs, Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2008 from which comes my Quote o' the Day...
WSJ: Do you find a difference between working on Broadway versus in Hollywood?
Mamet: The main difference is that in New York they treat the writer like a human being, and in Hollywood they treat him like a discarded, diseased whore. Other than that, it's very similar.
Rehearsals began at the end of November for Mamet's new comedy of the same name starring Nathan Lane as a president whose popularity rating is, as Mamet put it, according to BarbaraHoffman of the New York Post,
lower than Gandhi's cholesterol.
Boris Katchka in his New York Magazine interview on the play of January 10,2008 describes Lane's character, Charles H.P. Smith, as
a cash-poor incumbent on the verge of losing reelection...in a venal class all his own, deploring the job as “too much stress, too little opportunity for theft,” and lighting on the annual Thanksgiving-turkey pardon as a potential fund-raising scheme.Knowing Mamet's mastery of dialogue, this may have more substance than the actual primary coverage.
See also:
- Interview aired on August 24, 2007 by Charlie Rose
- Salon Profile of September 11, 2001 by Paul A. Toth
- Salon Interview from October 24, 1997 by Richard Covington.
- December 4, 1984 Interview by Matthew Roudane
- 1984 Interview by Hank Nuwer
Going to the National Theatre on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District of Columbia with my parents, I remember the Hirschfeld covers for Playbill (archive from NYT). Five years ago on January 20, Hirschfeld died in his sleep at the age of 99. I think San Franciso illustratorTrenholm, whose work is featured above, may be his heir. Take a look at his depictions of Stallone, Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Vonnegut (my post on Vonnegut is here.)
