This is the fourth in a series of reflections about David Mamet's controversial yet influential book, ten years after its initial publication. Click here for the previous installment.
Autumn quarter begins this week at Ohio State, which means I will once again find myself buried under stacks of books and journal articles. Time, then, to wrap up my review of True and False so I can focus on reading and writing about things that have little, if anything, to do with theatre... When I left off, I think I was somewhere around the "Auditions" chapter, which means that I will attempt to breeze through the last eighty pages of the book by picking out some of the passages that I found most interesting, especially now that I'm re-reading the book at 29 rather than the impressionable age of 19.
Mamet reveals a pretty strong anti-authoritarian streak during his examination of the audition process, much of which is surely a product of his Boomer-generation skepticism of the establishment. Having already dismantled our trust in schools and the education model, he now sets his sights on "the talent agent, the casting agent, the producer." Many are themselves failed actors who "seek the real or imagined security of a hierarchical system."
I remember the last couple of paragraphs in this chapter greatly helped to convince me that, upon graduating from USC, it was in my best interest to move back to Slow-lumbus and blaze my own trail (p. 50).
Keep your wits about you. It is not necessary to barter your talent, your self-esteem, and your youth for the chance of pleasing your inferiors. It is more frightening but it is not less productive to go your own way, to form your own theatre company, to write and stage your own plays, and to make your own films. You have an enormously greater chance of eventually presenting yourself to, and eventually appealing to, an audience by striking out on your own, by making your own plays and films, than by submitting to the industrial model of the school and studio.
Damn. That still gives me chills.
But it may not be mere skepticism of authority, but outright hostility that Mamet holds toward those who choose the hierarchical system (p. 110).
If you decide to be an actor, stick to your decision. The folks you meet in supposed positions of authority - critics, teachers, casting directors - will, in the main, be your intellectual and moral inferiors. They will lack your imagination, which is why they became bureaucrats rather than artists; and they will lack your fortitude, having elected institutional support over a life of self-reliance... There is nothing contemptible in the effort to learn and to practice the art of the actor - irrespective of the success of such efforts.Here I think he treads dangerously close to sanctimonious narcissism, the last resort of uncompromising iconoclasts who would rather reject the system than engage with it. I frequently find myself going through a similar cycle, getting swept up in the romance and allure of the Bohemian lifestyle, then rejecting it upon further consideration of all the consequences. Like The Narrator when he finally realizes Tyler Durden's ultimate plan for Project Mayhem - I find it just too radical for my own comfort level.
Continued in part 5...
Comments (1)
I agree with your last point, except I'd point out (as someone who has worked extensively with casting directors, met agents and the like) one obvious nugget.
He is, for the most part, right in his assessment in that last quote. I think bringing morality into it is a dangerous thing (morals?) but I'd agree with him that generally, those folks ain't in it cause they're good at the other stuff. They're in it because they're not.
Most people got into casting and representation (on lower levels) because they couldn't do the other thing . . . that is especially true in casting and teaching, I've found.
The problem isn't the point he makes, but the harshness with which he states it . . . and he neglects to mention this caveat . . . that for every ten or twenty shitty casting directors out there, there will be one who "gets" it. There is, and a person should have an eye out for them.
He also should have said that even a shitty casting director can be a learning experience for an actor, and can help an actor's career.
I don't think the same can be said for a shitty teachers, or a shitty agent . . . but perhaps.
Just my two cents.
Posted by Joshua James | September 22, 2007 2:34 PM
Posted on September 22, 2007 14:34