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David Mamet’s Unlikely
Martial Arts Movie
AVID
MAMET, the Pulitzer
prizewinning author/playwright, announced in March that he’s
switched political alliances and is no longer "a brain dead
liberal."
The author of
such plays as Sexual Perversity in Chicago (l974), Glengarry
Glen Ross, which brought him the Pulitzer in l984, Speed-the-Plow
(l987), and the writer-director of movies including House of
Games, ( l987), Homicide (l991), and Spartan (
2004), has now written and directed Redbelt.
It is his
tenth film as writer-director. The subject—martial arts—is not
the kind of topic that one would normally identify with this most
urbane writer who revels in convoluted plotlines, and his trademark
rhythmic dialogue which has him frequently labeled "the
American Harold Pinter."
David Mamet and martial arts expert Randy Couture who has a
small part
in Redbelt. |
"I would
characterize Redbelt as neither as martial arts nor an action
film," he insists. "It’s a fight film, which is a very
different genre. A fight film is a film about a fighter rather than
a film about action."
He pauses,
"or maybe it’s a kind of American Samurai film."
Like countless
characters in his plays and movies, Mamet can be quite slippery,
saying one thing but meaning something completely different.
In person he’s
softly spoken and easygoing. He ambles into a Four Seasons Hotel
suite in Los Angeles in a black beret, a loose navy shirt worn over
blue jeans with heavy brown work-shoes.
He sports a
salt and pepper beard, sips hot tea and when asked why Redbelt
is so radically different from the usual Mamet fare, points out,
"Well, William Wyler made all sorts of different films.
He made a western, God forgive him. Billy Wilder made all
sorts of things. That’s the fun of it. You don’t want to make
the same film all the time."
Redbelt
certainly proves the point. It is a film that Mamet admits owes its
roots to many of those classic old film noir boxing movies like Champion(
1949) and The Harder They Fall (l956).
Mamet, it
turns out, is a jiu-jitsu blue belt and he recalls, "I decided
fairly early in my jiu-jitsu experience that that world was
fascinating because it cut across many different strata of society.
The guys you train might be bouncers, cops, SWAT or Navy SEALS. Some
would be stuntmen or regular guys wanting to learn self-defense. So
I wanted to write a story about those guys and fighters but it took
me a while to figure out exactly what that story was."
In Redbelt
the gladiator is Mike Terry, (played by British actor Chiwetel
Ejiofor) who is a much respected jiu-jitsu teacher personifying
the Samurai code while running a Los Angeles self-defense academy.
David Mamet and Chiwetel Ejiofor |
He is one of
the best in the business but, alas, unexpected financial problems
force him—as a last resort—to try to pay his debts by stepping
back into the prize-fight arena.
Ejiofor, best
known for diverse roles in British films like Dirty Pretty Things
(2002) and Kinky Boots(2005) is surrounded by a stellar cast
of Mamet newcomers including Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer,
and Tim Allen. Mamet has also hired some of his familiar
repertory players including Rebecca Pidgeon, his wife of l7
years, Joe Mantegna and Ricky Jay.
Mamet became
an instant force in the theater of the seventies with a trio of
off-Broadway plays, The Duck Variation, Sexual Perversity in
Chicago and American Buffalo.
But Hollywood
has never been quite comfortable with the maverick Southern
California based auteur who grew up in Chicago and is never
reluctant to bite the movie hand that feeds him. And one suspects
the discomfort is mutual.
With a long
time, solid reputation as a political liberal, Mamet admits that his
Village Voice ‘recanting’ column in March was
greeted with considerable flak by some of his long time buddies.
In it he
reconsiders his opinion of President Bush: "An impartial review
revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal,
considered a monster—were little different from those of a
president whom I revered.
"Bush got
us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida;
Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left
hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied
about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a
book written by Ted Sorensen. Bush was in bed with the Saudis.
Kennedy with the Mafia."
From there he
gets to the point of declaring, "A free market understanding of
the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that
idealistic vision I called liberalism."
"The
article had the title ‘Political Stability,’" Mamet notes.
"Imagine my surprise to pick up the column and find they’d
re-titled it: ‘Why I’m No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal.’ I was
a little bit upset, but they did publish the article and that was
nice of them."
On the
theatrical front Mamet says he’s pleased by Broadway audiences’
reaction to his latest political play November, which opened
last December, starring Nathan Lane as a cynical and corrupt
incumbent U.S. president on the edge of being kicked out of office
and his day-to-day conflict with his lesbian, left-leaning
speechwriter.
"They’re
breaking house records," he says proudly, "and I’m very
happy with the production." He can’t resist adding, "Of
course there are still some seats available."
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