Good Dog

So I’m stepping aside from writing about theatre to write an appreciation of my Mom’s sweet dog Sadie, who passed away a couple of days ago. This won’t be a regular occurrence but she wasn’t a regular dog.

Sadie was a hound of unknown pedigree, but was immediately recognizable to anyone who’s ever seen one of James Thurber’s cartoons. She was the living embodiment of one of his many sad-eyed hounds, dogs that seem not just melancholy but beset by deep insecurities. Sadie’s constant demeanor was morose even when she was joyous and her tail was doing circles like a helicopter propeller.

Mom brought Sadie home from the Juneau pound almost ten years ago. I remember my sister saying that she really couldn’t understand my Mom’s choice—the dog was already grown, not much of a “looker,” and at that time anyway was given to heavy bouts of enthusiastic, and none-too-fragrant, panting. But when Mom brought her down to her book store, Sadie headed right to a back corner, curled up, and lay there through the long afternoon as various customers came in and enthused over her.

Sadie had, like Gertrude Stein (whom she somewhat resembled), a deep but passive love of company. She would look up when you came in the room, perhaps give a few thumps of her tail, and then wait to see what you were going to do. If that was skritching her ears and giving her some belly pats, she would lay back and give you a grateful look that made you feel like you weren’t just petting a dog, you were performing a useful community service.

Sadie wasn’t what I would have called a “fun” dog. On walks she could be awful, tugging on her leash, or when released, disappearing on lengthy secret missions. Walks with Mom would often include a long bout of her calling her name while we would periodically hear her romping about in the underbrush.

But Sadie was a dog with soul. I remember Mom saying when she got her that the vet had said she’d had puppies when she was younger—fate of said puppies unknown. It was easy to believe. Sadie seemed to carry some sad wisdom always about with her, even if it was just the burden of a tough past and the knowledge that in the present she had it good.

And she did have it good. Mom tends to spoil her pets—not to the point where they’re intolerable, but certainly to where they’re well aware that they have a good life. The dog got more than her share of table scraps and treats. Mom and Sadie used to do morning yoga together, Mom curling herself up with her feet in the air and the dog nibbling the treats that her mistress had placed between her toes.

When I last saw Sadie she was depressed about Mom’s absence—Mom was off on her annual book-buying and cartographer conference trip to England and the Continent, while I looked after the house and dog, and went through the vast number of books I have stored in her basement. Yet after a few days Sadie cheered up to the point where she would actually play with me in a melancholy sort of way—she’s bring me one of her stuffed animals, I’d throw it, and she’d look at me reproachfully, as if to say “is that how you treat my toys?”

This last week Sadie got out of Mom’s house late at night and went rummaging. Unfortunately the poor old girl ended up with a fatal case of garbage gut—she’d never been the most discriminating of dogs—and though she received surgery she didn’t survive it. Though she was getting stiff and was easily satisfied with a short walk and a full dog bowl twice a day, she still had a few good years left, and it’s very sad to lose her. She lived an odd and seemingly melancholy life. But she had the pleasure of being loved by a lot of people—and that’s a considerable accomplishment for a lifetime.

Hmmmm to Persephone

From--"New World Under"

PLUTO

She was happy. I was happy. But up above, things got bad.

CERES

My daughter is dead!

PROSERPINA

Relax, Mom. I'm not dead.

CERES

She is dead!

PLUTO

Try yelling up through a well.

PROSERPINA

I'm not dead!

CERES

Gods! She has been buried alive.

PROSERPINA

That's more accurate.

CERES

And I will save her.

PROSERPINA

She will, too.

PLUTO

She won't. She can wail and scream and stomp around up there....

CERES

I will wail and scream and stomp!

PLUTO

But she can't come down here without a visa.

PROSERPINA

I wouldn't bet against my mother.

CERES

Knock knock!

PLUTO

I'll get it.

CERES (entering)

Abductor!

PLUTO

How did you get here?

CERES

I wailed and screamed and stomped and the earth turned gray and cold and they filled out a visa right quick, I can tell you.

Fairy tales and mythologies derive part of their great power to enthrall us because while they seem to make sense, there's always a lovely element of the irrational that is hidden there somewhere. Why "three" wishes?" Why does the Giant always announce his presence with "Fee, fi, fo, fum?" Why is it that of the three Gorgons only Medusa is mortal, and what do the other two do after she gets her head lopped off?

Since human nature also carries a lovely hidden element of the irrational (perhaps most strongly when are we trying to be our "most rational") there seems to be a correlation between these stories and our psychology. To understand people, it's worthwhile to try and understand our myths.

The myth of Persephone (the Roman's Proserpina) is one that I thought I understood. It's a very old story; the first time it shows up in Greek literature is Hesiod's Theogony, a work that predates the 5th century Greek renaissance by a couple of hundred years. It's also one of those myths that seems a straightforward pre-scientific attempt to explain natural phenomenon.

Persephone, daughter of the Goddess Demeter (the Roman's Ceres, "Mother Nature"), is abducted by Hades (Pluto), god of the Underworld, who's fallen in love with her beauty. Demeter goes on a "hunger strike" until her daughter is returned, and the world suffers death and cold. Persephone is returned, but she's eaten food of the Underworld, some seeds of a pomegranate. As a result, it's determined that she must stay for part of the year with Hades. During this time without her daughter, Demeter mourns, the world grows cold and plants wither and die, and we have winter. Then she returns, Demeter's joyful, it's Spring, and the cycle begins again.

All pretty straightforward, right?

But...as I looked at the myth again a couple of nights ago, I found myself with some questions, particularly about Persephone. In the myth as told, she's merely an object of desire to both her mother and her lover, neither of whom seem to have much interest in her own will. She's just a child placed in a time share scheme between two feuding adults. (In fact in some versions, she also has to continue to serve part of the year as Zeus's handmaiden--and we all know what HE's like with the help!)

But what about what she wants? Being Mommy's little baby gets old when you're a teenager. And while upstairs you're a minor goddess who helps out with the family business, downstairs you're the Queen of the Underworld. It's not the simple choice it first appears.

So I decided to ask these questions in a 10-minute play, "New World Under," and I was surprised by some of the answers. (I was also surprised to complete it and find it fits snugly in the Arcana cycle as the "Death" card.)

"New World Under" had its premiere this weekend at Tacoma's Doubleshot 24 Hour Play Festival. Thanks to my director Abby Dylan, and my actors James Tweedale, Ann Flanagan and Shawn Baker for bringing it all to life (and death) in front of its first audience. And thanks to NPA and especially Bryan Willis for setting up the whole event.

I like this one. With a little luck, you'll be seeing more of it.

Shepard Country

I’ve missed Sam Shepard.

Back when I was in my early ’20s and still in college I acted in a pair of Shepard one acts, Action and Red Cross. Both were from his gonzo years, when he’d write impossibly uncommerical plays that would be performed in weird little fringe venues—the sort of venues that I’ve grown to know and love here in Seattle. The plays were crazy in the best and most theatrical of ways. In Action for example, a collection of strange refugees from some catastrophe make some sort of life for themselves, trying and failing to communicate with each other in a series of interlocking monologues. At one weird juncture I would instruct a fellow survivor how to clean a fish that had come up in the bucket from the well. I remember wishing I could write dialogue this beautiful, despite how ugly and strange the world of the plays.

Later I went on to direct a production of True West at my home town community theatre—and since only one male actor came to the audition (and then backed out), it was cast with my cousin playing Lee, me playing Austin and our aunt playing our Mom. Despite the incestuous casting it was a hit in small town Alaska. I think a lot of people who came to saw it, who had ended up in this weird isolated island town instead of choosing to move there, understood the character of the dangerous grifter Lee better than I did.

Now Collektor Productions has staged Shepard’s play A Lie of the Mind in ACT's Bullit Cabaret, his mid-career epic from 1985, right at the height of Shepardmania (just after True West and his bravura performance as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff). I can’t in all honesty say it’s my favorite of his works—its length and the repetition of thematic elements work against it. At times it comes dangerously close to self-parody. (Can't anyone in this play remember anything about anything?) But it sure is great to get a passport back to the strange world of Sam Shepard, if just for an evening.

I wonder if the reason that his plays have lost some traction with our zeitgeist is that his characters always seem to partly inhabit the irrational world of symbol—the sheaves of corn brought in throughout Buried Child, the Father’s ghost in Fool for Love, and virtually everybody and everything in earlier plays like Tooth of Crime or Angel City, which take place in landscapes constructed entirely of symbols. Back in the ’70s and ’80s it was hip and enjoyable to deconstruct uniquely American symbols like cowboys, farmhouses and honky-tonk bars, to take them back from the ad campaigns, country western songs and half-baked "American mythology" and make something new.

But for the last decade we’ve watched a corrupt series of politicians use one symbol of "American mythology" after another in a largely successful attempt to gain our support for their klepocratic economic practices and two longstanding wars, one of which we were lied into. So when a character like Ray Tagavilla’s Jake wraps a flag around himself in A Lie of the Mind and sets out on a journey across state lines, it seems less resonant, more dingy somehow.

The other issue, perhaps, is that in the last decade the gulf between the people that Shepard writes about—the grifters, the dispossessed, the uneducated, the poor—and the people who go to theatre has become wider than ever. We have lost faith and covenant with these people and they with us. Let’s face it: the people who live in the trailer parks, isolated farm houses and dingy motel rooms of his imagination look an awful lot like the people who voted for George W. Bush not once but twice. (That is, if they voted at all.) Shepard cares enough about these people to elevate their language to poetry. But what writer today believes in turning the stage over to the wisdom and beauty of the poor white hick? “Curse of the Starving Class,” indeed.

Still, it sure was a blast going back to Shepherd Country for an evening. The show’s cast attack the material with fervor and conviction, and I’m reminded of just what delicious parts he writes for both men and women. The term “aria” is overused when discussing all sorts of plays, because it often means that the writer has stopped the play so that one of his characters can go all poetical on us. But Shepard’s characters sing out in beautiful language because they’ve climbed as far as prose will take them. Even though I find “Lie’s” extra running time diffuses Shepard’s material instead of elevating it, it is still a wonder to hear a speech about a man’s shirt like Aimee Bruneau’s Beth delivers, where the act of putting back on a borrowed shirt becomes an astonishing riff on the weight of the masculine persona.

So cheers to director Rob West and all of the actors of Collektor for revisiting Shepard. It would be grand if it kicked off a revival or two. Believe it or not, Shepard’s written no fewer than 10 plays since Lie of the Mind back in 1985—and some of them, including Simpatico and God of Hell, are pretty good. (As far as I know, only one, God of Hell, has received a local production.) Let’s see what that rangy old guy’s been doing in the last twenty years, Seattle.

(This is not a Gregory Award. It is a very big trophy though.)

Back in April, something brought the Gregory Awards to my attention—I think it was the annual call for nominations.

I’ve attended the awards a couple of times in the past, but this year, my thoughts went something like this: “why the hell should I care? This is precisely the sort of thing that I’m never nominated for, and I’m tired of toiling away like an unappreciated ant in the world of Seattle theatre while being asked yet again to celebrate my more illustrious peers. Besides, awards like this mean absolutely nothing.”

Then last month I learned I was nominated in the 2010-2011 Playwrights Category.

“On the other hand,” I said to myself, “the Gregory Awards are an important way for Seattle’s theatre artists to recognize excellence in their ranks. It’s good to have events like this when we can come together as a community and celebrate our achievements.”

“And you know? It’s an honor to just be nominated.”

Okay, I’m being facetious. Really though, it IS an honor to be nominated. I can’t really speak to the work of Scotto Moore or Kelleen Conway Blanchard (the People’s Choice and Member’s Voice Nominees, respectively); to my regret I haven’t seen any of Scotto’s work and not enough of Kelleen’s to form an opinion. But the three other playwrights who were initially nominated with me, Elizabeth Kenny, Neil Ferron and Yussef El Guindi are all real talents.

I was fortunate to check out Kenny’s Sick on its closing weekend, and was delighted by its innovative narrative structure, where her autobiographical story of medication-induced mental illness was repeatedly yanked back to a linear form by her collaborator Tina Kunz. It perfectly mirrored the infinite parsing of a mind struggling in the shifting realms of schizophrenia. Neil was a student of mine, believe it or not, a couple years back in my 10 Minute Play Class at Freehold. His work wasn’t that of a student. Instead it was an undeniably mature voice that was already grappling with sophisticated technical issues of form and voice, and I looked forward to every exercise he turned in.

And then there’s Yussef El Guindi. We’ve worked together on several projects over the years, and were both members of a long-running playreading group. In the last decade it has been a sincere pleasure to see a man whose work I have respected and admired for such a long time being given the attention he deserves. He also happens to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, even though his self-deprecation often reaches comic proportions. (At the opening night of Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World, he told me at intermission that he thought that the show was off and the audience seemed distant and not very involved. After the show received a rapturous standing ovation, I told him that these were precisely the words I would have used to describe the audience.)

Awards, like critical reviews and productions, are arbitrary. We all know this. And individually, by themselves, they really don’t matter. But in my case, I’m sincerely grateful for being included this year, because as a theatre artist I’ve often felt outside of the main theatre community, and this is a reminder that I’m not. I couldn’t ask for better company in this year’s Gregory Awards—and that’s not even mentioning all my friends nominated in other categories, like Charles Leggett (Best Actor) and Billie Wildrick (Best Actress). It’ll be a real pleasure to put on a tie on October 17^th and head down to ACT to share in the pride of working with great artists in a great theatre town.

Regarding 9/11/01

So today I hope is not about "remembering 9/11," but the letting go of such memories. This is not to say that a tragedy doesn't deserve mourning, but in the last ten years we've seen this particular event used for a whole series of very bad decisions by our leaders that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with it.

Like every playwright I know, I took a crack at a 9/11/01 piece. It was staged at Babylon's "9 Holes" short play pieces in 2003. Here it is, a monologue entitled "After/Before."

(Sound of a door slamming. Then Julia begins speaking.)

JULIA

I’ve been going through a bad patch lately. I’ve been wanting to sleep past the point where I can actually sleep. Maybe being cryogenically frozen for a couple of years or so. Like a bag of frozen peas shoved to the back of a grocery store freezer.

I’ve had time on my hands, On my feet, my back, my belly, my head. Manacled in minutes, shut up in hours, and walled up in Castle Time, where the only sound is the tick-tock of the guard’s walk.

I needed to kill time. To slaughter it. To waste it.

So I borrowed a friend’s TV.

I’m really a radio kind of person. I don’t own a TV. Haven’t for years. So at the time I didn’t see it.

I heard it. NPR. I loves me my NPR. Doesn’t matter how bad things get. “As the earth spins out of control and towards the heart of the sun, commentator Bailey White has some thoughts about how the unseasonable weather is affecting her tomatoes.”

So I heard everything.

But I didn’t see anything.

I didn’t want to see anything.

It was good to not see. Really. Some people say, “I had to watch.” But I didn’t. I felt like that’s what was expected of me.

Like that was the whole point of it, to make us watch.

A friend said, “I had to watch. Because my imagination would have made it much worse.” Not me. I pictured them as simply…gone. There one minute, the next not. I’ve got a tidy imagination.

And I had no real connection, you know? Been to New York twice, never fell in love with the skyline, never paid to go up the elevator and take a look. I had no friends working there. I knew no one on any of the planes.

It pissed me off how immediately everyone wanted a piece of the experience. Hungry to link themselves, somehow, to what had happened. They knew someone, they’d had their picture taken there, they’d almost been on that flight. Like some Media Event, like the new Star Wars installment, that they HAD to be a part of, waited in line for days to see it, could recite lines from it, had the action figures.

Not me. I thought it was bad and sad but I didn’t want it in my life. So no thank you. I had permanently abstained from a viewing.

And our leaders! Like they care. Like that little tinhorn dictator in the White House gave a damn about janitors or firemen or even stockbrokers. Like he thought anything at the time except “Jesus Christ! They’re coming after me next!”

So I borrowed this TV for the weekend. Because TV is a great waste of time. And sometimes that’s exactly what you want. Another friend loaned me a couple of bags of videos. She records TV somewhat randomly. Which is great. Tapes with labels like “Tuesday” or “Pizza Guy Episode!” or “Law and Order and Will and Grace.” I came straight home from work, made up some Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and got ready to spend the next three days in sweet oblivion.

I put an unmarked tape in the machine. But nothing happened. So I pressed the remote.

On the tape was smoke, and fire. Billowing clouds, but all cascading inwards, like being sucked up by a vast dragon’s mouth. Then, as I watched, I could see debris falling into the smoke, flying into it. Then more and more falling into the space, growing into a shape, dark and filled with fire. Then finally it was whole, and I could see the people flying up, into the sky, as if on wires.

I had hit rewind. By mistake.

I was watching it all go up again. Rising from the pillars of smoke, glass and metal and concrete shooting back to reattach itself to the sides of the buildings. Little figures flying up like souls called by the Rapture.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. It was a voyage back to innocence.

Okay, that’s bullshit. We weren’t “innocent.” We were naïve and complacent. We were the strongest, most powerful, DUMBEST nation in the world, and that includes the Australians so that’s saying quite a lot.

Nothing of consequence changed because of these events, only that everyone liked to say that everything had changed. And also the Republicans get away with all sorts of crap because they’ve got another monster to scare us, and the Democrats’ new tactic is shutting up and letting them do whatever they want.

But still, it was hypnotic. Watching it. Build themselves up. Construct themselves into a boring pair of office buildings out of fire and pain and smoke.

Up it goes. And up. And up. Reclaimed by the ordinariness of a typical Tuesday. Vanishing like a nightmare into blue sky and morning.

And Kennedy’s head snaps forward, expelling the bullet. And the battlefields of Europe and Asia are vast maternity wards for boys about to be sent home, the Great Wars becoming vague grumblings. Every vast mistake we’ve ever made is a peace born from chaotic and inexplicable implosions of blood and matter and clouds of smoke. The history of the human race reveals itself as sensible, but only when, only when, only when we run the tape backwards.

There are still villains in this revisionist history. Lincoln wakes up while watching a play and goes out to start a war that enslaves a race. But even this story ends happily, as hundreds of years later benevolent sea captains take the chains off and pack ex-slaves into their ships to sail to Africa, picking up some sick passengers mid-journey from the middle of the ocean.

We have a glorious future behind us. We will save the whales and the rainforests and the passenger pigeon and the dodo. We’ll ban the bomb, and the gun, and eventually even the sword and shield, in our race towards smaller wars. Countries will become quaint and charming, languages more diverse and richer, and we’ll finally get rid of TV, movies, and the novel and get back to poetry and drama. We will all adopt, voluntarily, the simple living movement. People will be gracious on a grand scale to each other, settling border disputes, leaving whole continents rather than disturb the indigenous people, and eventually the Romans will build up the Temple as a gift to the Jews and the Chinese, confident and industrious as ever, will dismantle the Great Wall. We will head back towards one race, one language, one country. Eden.

But I don’t need to see all of this. All I want to see is the towers go up again.

And for you to unslam that door and walk back in.

(the doorslam sfx from the beginning is played again, backwards.)

THE END

Thrillsville 2011

Tonight's the first public reading of my new play "The Sound in the Next Room" down in the PONCHO space at the Seattle Rep, as part of Northwest Playwrights Alliance monthly reading series. It's a comedy thriller, this draft anyway: some co-workers take an out-of-town trip for a "Mystery Weekend," and then discover that their own secrets might turn out to be not only dangerous but deadly.

It's envisioned as a fun light entertainment.

And it only took me eight years to write.

Usually I write quickly. Working as a journalist, I've had a lot of experience with deadlines, and believe that there's a valuable heat added to your writing when you're up against the clock. A good number of my shorter plays were written overnight, for 14/48, Doubleshot or other short plays festivals. Even when a play of mine has had a long development period--"Sherlock Holmes/Christmas Carol" had two and a half years of drafts and improvements--I usually write the initial draft in a few weeks, not months.

So what's up with this one?

To be honest, I forgot about it.

2003 was one of those times when I was up to my elbows in theater. Productions, scripts, parties--somewhere in there I was dating an actress. I was also time and again running into actresses who I had big talent crushes on. There were four that I particularly wanted to work with, and so as a playwright, I came up with a cunning plan: I'd write a play and have them read it for me.

The plan worked. All four participated in three developmental readings, and since I'd chosen four women who were not only talented but whip-smart, the post-reading discussions were invaluable. I really felt like things were humming along.

But theatre is always of the moment, and the moment when these four women were available went away. Two left Seattle, and the other two went on to other projects. I shelved the play and headed on to other shows as well.

Then earlier this year I noticed the play sitting on my computer. I had remembered it as being about 18 pages long but promising. So when I took a look, I was surprised to find 73 pages that seemed better than promising. This play looked almost done.

Well, it wasn't.

When I started work trying to finish the play, I found myself arguing with the playwright. Because the guy who wrote plays back in 2003 doesn't really write like me. He was way more wordy, pop-culture centered, and his plotting was clever but a little dull.

(I know I'm being hard on him. Whatever. He can take it.)

I just read a piece in Salon about "continuators," those writers hired by estates to continue the adventures of James Bond or Jason Bourne or some other valuable post-mortem franchise. That's what I feel like that in completing this play. A lot of what I was trying to do with the original script is now lost to me. And the world's moved on: thankfully there's even greater acceptance of open lesbian relationships now than there was back in 2003, and sadly all my jokes about "Stella Got Her Groove Back" are no longer funny--though maybe they never really were.

It's been a rough process. Sometimes I've cursed my younger self for leaving so many problems--unexamined motivations, plot snafus, jokes that almost but don't quite work (the worst kinds of jokes, really). But he didn't know any better.

The one thing that's been working for me in the last week has been the actresses I'm working with this time. It's rare that one EVER gets one's "dream cast," but that's what has happened. Frankly, any director in town would probably give their right arm to work with actors like Jesse Notehelfer, Susy Schneider, Nikki Visel, and Billie Wildrick--let alone all four. And the best part is that they're also all whip-crack smart, and their feedback has improved the script exponentially.

At this point my thriller is just missing one thing: thrills. That's generally provided by an audience. We'll see what the folks who come along tonight to the Rep (7:00 PM) feel like contributing.

Exit David Mamet, Stage FAR Right

Remember David Mamet, America's greatest playwright? The guy who dominated the stages of the 1980s with plays like "American Buffalo," "Glengarry Glen Ross," and "A Life in the Theatre" and who wrote such wonderfully intricate screenplays as "House of Games" and "The Spanish Prisoner?"

Of course I'm really not talking about the man who wrote the largely unfunny satire "November," the oh-for-cripes-sake-stop-being-so-obvious social screed "Race," or the mediocre films "State and Main" and "Redbelt." That guy is clearly just trying to ape the brilliant dialogue and dramatic construction of the younger, more talented and much more subtle playwright who shares his name.

Great playwrights write bad plays. Every would-be Shakespeare has a "Two Noble Kinsmen" or "Henry VIII" in his past or in his future. And while the decline of a brilliant talent is a sad thing, it's the way the world often works. Success breeds success, but it also breeds complacency and intellectual arrogance.

But the saddest thing about David Mamet is that it's also bred intellectual vacuity.

If you doubt me, check out this article in The Weekly Standard subtitled "A Playwright's Progress."

Yes, that Weekly Standard. The Conservative mainstay who's calling the lackluster Republican presidential field "formidable" and continues to champion the Paul Ryan "Kill Medicare" Budget even as every Republican up for reelection flees from a vote on it.

And the "progress" they celebrate is the descent of a once whip-smart social critic and superbly gifted artist into the sort of conservative bobble-head who says things like this:

“...I saw the liberals hated George Bush. It was vicious. And I thought about it, and I didn’t get it. He was no worse than the others, was he? And I’d ask my liberal friends, ‘Well, why do you hate him?’ They’d all say: ‘He lied about WMD.’ Okay. You love Kennedy. Kennedy didn’t write Profiles in Courage—he lied about that. ‘Bush is in bed with the Saudis!’ Okay, Kennedy was in bed with the mafia.”

Or on where he gets his political opinions: '“I drive around and listen to the talk show guys,” he said. 'Beck, Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved."'

Like many overprivileged Republican white guys, the roots of Mamet's conversion are apparently a strange mix of fuzzily-perceived larger social issues (the 2007 Writer's Strike) and the petty and personal (an ordinance in his privileged Santa Monica neighborhood to keep hedges trimmed low enough so that neighbors could see each other's properties). Somehow this all has been brewed into the sort of potent conservative elixir that turns a man's mind to mush.

When I read this article (and depressing as it is, it's worth the read), I remembered an American Theatre profile of Mamet in the '80s, around the time of "Glengarry Glen Ross." The interviewer's question was something like "why do you just write about white men?" To me Mamet's answer was brilliant. He said that he found the American white male fascinating because he was going insane. He'd gone from this position of unthinking power and prestige into a tailspin because it was all going away, and the more he realized this, the crazier he got.

Poor David Mamet. How ironic that he should age into the same crazy white guy syndrome that as a younger, more talented and thoughtful man, he was so astute at portraying on stage.