Latest news with #Mamet
Express Tribune
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Shia LaBeouf accused of swearing at Fox News host Jesse Watters during past airport lounge encounter
Actor Shia LaBeouf has been accused by Fox News host Jesse Watters of using offensive language during a past encounter at an airport. The incident was revisited by Watters during a recent segment of his show, Jesse Watters Primetime, in conversation with filmmaker David Mamet. Mamet, who is directing LaBeouf in the upcoming film Henry Johnson, was speaking about the project when Watters changed the topic to recount an alleged confrontation. 'Well, Shia LaBeouf told me to go eff myself at a Delta lounge at the airport a couple years ago,' Watters told Mamet, adding, 'So tell him I said 'Hi.' Will you do that for me?' Mamet laughed but did not commit to relaying the message. Watters previously described the same encounter in 2019 while guest-hosting The Ingraham Angle. At the time, he claimed the actor had insulted him in front of his family at the Delta Sky lounge, saying, 'The actor Shia LeBeouf or whatever his name is—I think it was him, it looked exactly like him—I walk by and he calls me 'trash' right in front of my kids, you know?' Watters stated he chose not to react at the time. LaBeouf has not responded publicly to the claims, and there has been no official statement addressing the alleged incident. Mamet, while engaged in the conversation, did not comment on further specifics of the encounter.
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
David Mamet abruptly exits contentious Sam Fragoso interview
When host Sam Fragoso pressed Mamet on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, led by supporters of the president, the playwright offered an empathetic view, saying: "I think that Donald Trump said to those people, 'Go protest peacefully and patriotically,' and some of them were doing that. Some of them were rioting." When Fragoso countered that such a view was more "generous" than Mamet's approach to protestors demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 or the war in Gaza, Mamet grew agitated. "Why do you have me here today?" he said. "It seems to me that what we're talking about here is a little bit more toward an inquisition rather than a dialogue." Fragoso, seemingly trying to temper the conversation, said he was "genuinely curious" about Mamet's viewpoints. Still, the writer took specific offense to the reference to anti-war protests on college campuses. "Twenty months prior to my birth, they were throwing Jewish kids into the ovens. So American Jews of the midcentury, our main tactic of accommodation was to keep our heads down and work harder and try to be liked," he said, referencing the Holocaust. What does it mean for something to be is antisemitic? How the age-old hatred manifests "You know what, I'm not going to debate the Columbia riots with you. Ask me something else," Mamet said. Despite his request to reorient the conversation, the two had seemingly hit a point of no return, with Mamet circling back to what he saw as the antisemitism running rampant throughout the protests. Protests against the war in Gaza, which spread across college campuses but found a locus at New York's Columbia University, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitic tropes and encouraging violence against Jews. Proponents of the protests argued they were merely centered on a critique of the state of Israel and U.S. support of it, not the Jewish people writ large. Sam Fragoso, David Mamet spar over a punching joke The two then veered into a back-and-forth about a quip from Mamet that Fragoso looked like he had never been punched in the face. While both men maintained even tones of voice, the acrimony between them was clear with Mamet calling Fragoso "squishy" (a reference to the host's feelings-forward approach) and Fragoso seeming disappointed with the turn the conversation had taken. "I'm a Jew," Mamet said. "The River to the Sea means kill all the Jews. Support the antifada means kill all the Jews." Those phrases, used among student protestors to voice support for a liberated Palestinian people, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as manifestations of hate. "For you to say, on the other hand, there may be some people out there that were involved in peaceful protest is (a) loathesome piece of antisemitism," Mamet said. "You don't know what ... you're talking about. Thank you for talking to me." He then got up, leaving Fragoso alone at the interview table looking a bit exasperated and confused, before he turned to the camera and said: "And that was David Mamet." Their exchange reflects a larger fault line in the American and Jewish populace, as the war in Gaza stretches into its second year, and warnings of widespread famine in the area grow louder. While some agree with early views of student protestors that Israel is carrying out a campaign of cruelty and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, others insist Hamas, the militant group in control of the region, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the war, is solely responsible for the suffering.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
David Mamet storms out of interview over 'inquisition' on his conservative views
Playwright and author David Mamet stormed out of an interview after a conversation around his rightward political shift turned contentious. Mamet, the Tony and Pulitzer-winning mind behind plays like "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow," appeared on the "Talk Easy" podcast Sunday, Aug. 3, to discuss his expansive canon of work and his recent embrace of President Donald Trump. When host Sam Fragoso pressed Mamet on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, led by supporters of the president, the playwright offered an empathetic view, saying: "I think that Donald Trump said to those people, 'Go protest peacefully and patriotically,' and some of them were doing that. Some of them were rioting." When Fragoso countered that such a view was more "generous" than Mamet's approach to protestors demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 or the war in Gaza, Mamet grew agitated. "Why do you have me here today?" he said. "It seems to me that what we're talking about here is a little bit more toward an inquisition rather than a dialogue." Fragoso, seemingly trying to temper the conversation, said he was "genuinely curious" about Mamet's viewpoints. Still, the writer took specific offense to the reference to anti-war protests on college campuses. "Twenty months prior to my birth, they were throwing Jewish kids into the ovens. So American Jews of the midcentury, our main tactic of accommodation was to keep our heads down and work harder and try to be liked," he said, referencing the Holocaust. "You know what, I'm not going to debate the Columbia riots with you. Ask me something else," Mamet said. Despite his request to reorient the conversation, the two had seemingly hit a point of no return, with Mamet circling back to what he saw as the antisemitism running rampant throughout the protests. Protests against the war in Gaza, which spread across college campuses but found a locus at New York's Columbia University, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitic tropes and encouraging violence against Jews. Proponents of the protests argued they were merely centered on a critique of the state of Israel and U.S. support of it, not the Jewish people writ large. Sam Fragoso, David Mamet spar over a punching joke The two then veered into a back-and-forth about a quip from Mamet that Fragoso looked like he had never been punched in the face. While both men maintained even tones of voice, the acrimony between them was clear with Mamet calling Fragoso "squishy" (a reference to the host's feelings-forward approach) and Fragoso seeming disappointed with the turn the conversation had taken. "I'm a Jew," Mamet said. "The River to the Sea means kill all the Jews. Support the antifada means kill all the Jews." Those phrases, used among student protestors to voice support for a liberated Palestinian people, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as manifestations of hate. "For you to say, on the other hand, there may be some people out there that were involved in peaceful protest is (a) loathesome piece of antisemitism," Mamet said. "You don't know what … you're talking about. Thank you for talking to me." He then got up, leaving Fragoso alone at the interview table looking a bit exasperated and confused, before he turned to the camera and said: "And that was David Mamet." Their exchange reflects a larger fault line in the American and Jewish populace, as the war in Gaza stretches into its second year, and warnings of widespread famine in the area grow louder. While some agree with early views of student protestors that Israel is carrying out a campaign of cruelty and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, others insist Hamas, the militant group in control of the region, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the war, is solely responsible for the suffering.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Mamet's Complicated Brain
DAVID MAMET, THE PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING, Trump-and-Israel-supporting writer and filmmaker, is having something of a banner year. After the premiere of the much-ballyhooed Broadway revival of Mamet's essential play Glengarry Glen Ross (this time, boasting a headline-making cast that includes Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Kieran Culkin), Mamet premiered Henry Johnson, his first film as a director since Phil Spector in 2013. And now, this month, we have the publication, for the first time ever, of Russian Poland, an unproduced screenplay written by Mamet in 1993, when his then-burgeoning career as a movie director was really beginning to ramp up. In 1991, Mamet released Homicide, his divisive but impactful third film as writer/director, and in 1992, the late James Foley's electric film of Glengarry Glen Ross, featuring a stacked ensemble cast led by Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino, became something of a cultural event—not a box office hit, but critically acclaimed, nominated for a slew of awards, and considered a bit of a comeback for Lemmon, while its (movie-original) scene featuring Alec Baldwin as an abusive sales executive became instantly iconic. The stage should, by all rights, have been set for Mamet to get a new project, something really ambitious, off the ground. Mamet's Jewish faith had been strengthening in those years, and had manifested itself in his writing most forcefully in Homicide, the victim at that film's core murder investigation being an old woman whose corner shop was a front for an operation running guns into Israel. The opportunity to pursue these themes further seemed to have presented itself. Mamet attaches a very brief introduction to the published screenplay of Russian Poland; in it, he lays out the historical, as well as the political, but more so the personal, inspiration for the script. For instance, he writes that his grandmother grew up near the Polish city of Chelm, and that she told him stories of the pogroms she'd survived in the Pale of Settlement—the area permitted to the Russian Jews. The Pale was geographically known as Volhynia, known to her, and, then, to me, as Russian Poland. The tales-within-the-tale, here, are fables of Isaac Luria, the Ari (lion) of Sfat, in the late 16th century… I set his mystical tales in my grandmother's Volhynia, and framed them in another fable. And that is, ultimately and unexpectedly, what Russian Poland is: a collection of Jewish fables, almost an anthology, with an illegal shipment of supplies by air to Israel functioning as a kind of framing device. This setting for this framing device is the late 1940s, shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel. The military men carrying out the mission are British RAF officers, and throughout the script, they are referred to only as Sergeant and Officer. Also on board is an elderly Holocaust survivor called Old Man. (Almost none of the characters are given names, except for one or two that appear in the fables.) Neither the Officer nor the Sergeant seem to know who the Old Man is, and they even ask him what he's doing there. Not very talkative, the Old Man does indicate he's on the plane because he's going to Palestine. The RAF men object that none of the planes at the airfield have the fuel capacity to reach that destination (and the Officer also asks why the Old Man wants to go to Palestine, because, he says 'The Arabs say they're going to drive you people into the sea'), to which the Old Man offers only a shrug. Something mysterious has now been established. Explore the deep mysteries while supporting our growing coverage of books, culture, and the arts: Sign up for a free or paid Bulwark subscription today. The Old Man begins to drift into his past, and into Mamet's fables, as the flight becomes more dangerous. In the first, set in a village in the 1890s, the Beggar roams the village, seeking charity, first from a pair of housewives, then from the local Rabbi, and then from the Rich Man (or, Reb Siegel, one of the few proper names in the script). As these short tales begin to take over the narrative of Russian Poland, the dialogue becomes less casual and more formal, but what's most interesting about this aspect of Mamet's script—Mamet being justly famous for his gift for stylish, stylized dialogue—is how it reflects his attitudes as a director more than as a writer. In his book On Directing Film, and more recently when promoting Henry Johnson, Mamet has said that ideally, when directing a film, it should be possible to remove all the dialogue and, as in silent films, let the images and the editing tell the story. This is, of course, the central idea behind all motion pictures, but I can't imagine following the narrative of a film as word-drunk as Henry Johnson with all the language removed. Henry Johnson is a very skillful and artful piece of film direction, but the words, and the performances of those words, are the whole show. This is not the case with Russian Poland, or it wouldn't have been, had a film ever been made from it. In the story about the Beggar, the Rabbi, and the Rich Man, Mamet lays out his scenes and his shots in strict visual terms, as directing choices he made at the screenplay stage. It begins with this image: A longshot. A road on a hill. A Beggar comes into the shot, moving across the frame from left to right. A mullioned window bangs into the shot. Camera pulls back slightly to reveal we have been looking at the scene through a window. The window frame bangs in the window. Then a cut to the Rabbi, outside the building, commenting on the deteriorated state of the window, and the Shul to which it is connected. We have also been introduced to the Beggar, and his journey. There is now a connection (ideally, anyway) in the viewer's mind between the state of the shtetl, where this is all taking place, and the Beggar. There is conflict in this connection, one that will play out as both Rabbi and Rich Man are shown to be somewhat callous towards the Beggar—though the Rabbi is perhaps more officious than callous—but the story is one of redemption. More importantly, that window, through which we were introduced to a setting and a key character, returns as an image, and through it we are shown actions the meanings of which the audience understands better than the characters do. We see, more than hear, both the Beggar and the Rich Man, independent of each other, find evidence for the existence of God, through each man's misunderstanding of events. To Mamet, these misunderstandings, and the revelations they inspire, are as true and as spiritual as would be those brought about by a literal angel appearing on the scene. Join now It's difficult, in this venue, to get across how much of Russian Poland's story is communicated visually rather than through dialogue. But this is very much a script written by a man who intended to direct: visuals, shot descriptions, and even camera edits are described at length, broken up by streams of conversation that is sometimes of a spiritual nature, sometimes just pure gossip. This is done in the same way that a film heavy with talk might find relief, or a heightening of emotion, through bursts of silence. I can imagine one fable, late in the script, being told entirely through images, with no dialogue whatsoever (not that there's so very much of it to begin with). This fable is much darker than the life-affirming tale of the Beggar (Russian Poland can get pretty bleak at times), and it ends with a punchline—I think a certain gallows humor is at play here, but as far as gallows humor goes, it's pretty heavy on gallows—that is entirely visual. (Words are spoken, but don't need to be.) Granted, these visuals include words written on a piece of paper—words that reveal the aforementioned punchline—but this is all part of the silent film grammar Mamet aspires to. Because of his outspoken conservative politics over the last several years, even well before Trump, Mamet long ago fell out of favor as an artist. Some artists, when confronting such a fate, will withdraw; others will lean into it, inflating the political rhetoric that had been subliminal or even non-existent in their work before. And while Mamet's responses in interviews and his nonfiction writing have gotten nakedly reactionary, it has not gotten in the way of his fiction. As implied earlier, this unproduced screenplay is particularly compelling when looked at Mamet's career as a film director as a whole, and especially in the context of his work during the 1990s. Once again, Homicide, his best film, can't help but spring to mind. Mamet's current politics (many say his politics have always leaned right, if not far-right, but I don't), and what I'd call the spiritual politics of Russian Poland, often seem to be at odds with each other. In Homicide, for example, the murder of the Zionist shopkeeper is not, as homicide detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) believes, an antisemitic act. In a final twist (a swing so wild I almost can't believe Mamet brings it off), it's shown to be a random act, an apolitical crime of greed, and evidence for the anti-Zionist motive is revealed as a blind alley. Though Gold has faced antisemitism in his past, and experiences it over the course of the film, his political righteousness becomes a mental trap, and his inability to view the situation from any other angle ultimately destroys him. Not the same kind of thing you'd expect from the author of Russian Poland, which radiates a kind of arcane energy. If Russian Poland can seem esoteric, especially to a gentile like myself, it is nevertheless clearly the work of an artist who sees in it a grand truth, whereas Homicide is awash with uncertainty. Yet both works are about, essentially, the same thing. And if Henry Johnson, the story of an unprincipled idiot who believes everything people tell him, doesn't seem like it could possibly have been made by someone who supports Donald Trump, well, the human brain is a complicated organ. Share this article with someone who appreciates the complicated nature of the human brain. Share
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Mamet Compares Democratic Party to Families Who Deny They Have Pedophile Fathers
Iconic playwright David Mamet compared Democrats to family members who are in denial their father is a pedophile during an appearance on 'Jesse Watters Primetime' on Fox News on Monday night. Mamet said 'everything in the Democrats' playbook' is about denying reality, 'which takes all of a person's mental energy.' He said it's 'no different' than a dysfunctional family that cannot acknowledge reality. 'If you have a family and dad is a pedophile, the problem is not that dad is a pedophile, but the problem for everyone in the family is they have to deny that dad is a pedophile,' Mamet said. 'Because if they face it, the family as they know it is going to fall apart, and they don't know what comes next.' He added: 'That's horrific. It's legitimate, but it's horrific. That's where Democrats are now.' David Mamet just compared Democrats to PEDOPHILES 'Liberals have poor mental health because they spend all their time denying reality… it's no different than a dysfunctional family.' — Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) June 3, 2025 One example of Democrats denying reality, Mamet said, is the party's embrace of trans men playing in women's sports. He also said Democrats have alienated young men by demonizing traditional gender roles. 'One of the things men are raised to do is protect women,' Mamet said. 'It's one of the great joys of being a man.' He added that another issue he has with Democrats was seeing the Biden Administration 'turn its back' on American Jews and Israel. The veteran writer won the Pulitzer Prize for creating 'Glengarry Glen Ross' in the early '80s; he later adapted the play into a 1992 film and wrote several other notable screenplays, including 'The Untouchables.' His other well-known plays include 'Oleanna,' 'American Buffalo' and 'Race.' Mamet was on Fox News to promote his new book, 'The Disenlightenment.' A day earlier, he was on Bill Maher's 'Club Random' podcast, where he also voiced his displeasure with the Democratic party. The post David Mamet Compares Democratic Party to Families Who Deny They Have Pedophile Fathers | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
