David Mamet talks about politics, his new movie, and life in Los Angeles

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Mamet has mastered many media, including television, film, novel, and essay. The writer/director is putting more muscle into his latest film, Redbelt. It mixes Hollywood with the Brazilian martial arts sport jujitsu, which is quickly becoming all the rage. Mamet describes Redbelt as more of a fight film than an action movie. Radar sat down with the director to talk about movies, theater, and living in L.A.

RADAR: Your new movie, Redbelt, combines Brazilian jujitsu (a martial art and combat sport that focuses on ground fighting) and a little bit of Hollywood.
DAVID MAMET: Our hero, who is kind of a poor and a genius fighter, gets mixed up with some Hollywood types and has some adventures because of it. A lot of fights in it, a lot of drama.

Jujitsu is gaining popularity in the States. You say it's not like karate in that it's not a striking form, but more similar to wrestling. So it's one of those testosterone-driven sports people love to watch.
It's fun for everybody to watch. Just about everybody in the world likes seeing some sort of ritualized combat because it's essentially dramatic. You get to root for one side and hope your side wins.

What made you want to do this subject?
It's one of the things I do in my spare time.

You said you never know if a movie or a play is going to be a hit.
Nobody knows.

Do you have a good idea?
No. Sometimes one thinks one has a good idea but one is never right.

It seems like when you finish something you might think, "I love this, it's going to do well."
Oh, yeah, you always say that. It's very seldom true.

Right now you also have a comedy, November, playing on Broadway. It's set a few days before an election with a conservative incumbent president (played by Nathan Lane) called Charles H.P. Smith. What prompted this latest drama? Were you in the mood for a little Bush bashing?
It's really not about Bush. I think it's fairly clearly not about Bush, but about turkeys. We had a Thanksgiving here a year ago when a friend came and she'd just been on a plane that had flown from Washington, D.C., to L.A. with two turkeys and their handlers that took up all of first class. And it turned out the president had pardoned these two turkeys, and the Disney organization, I believe, had bought them, and was planning to have them lead the march at Disneyland on Thanksgiving Day. And I said, "Well, why two turkeys?" And my friend explained that one of the turkeys got sick last year and almost died. So this year they have to have a head turkey and an alternate turkey. [Laughter.] So I said, well, that's the funniest thing I ever heard, so I just sat down and wrote a play.

I find it amusing that the presidential turkeys got to occupy first class all by themselves.
And everybody—everybody—on the plane got a little leaflet that said, "I flew on the plane with a presidentially pardoned Disney turkey." [Laughter.]

So that was the impetus to write November. Had you always wanted to work with Nathan Lane?
Nathan is one of the world's great comics. In fact, I called him up years ago. I was doing this play called Boston Marriage, which was about a gay couple. Two lesbian women in about 1900. High comedy, I think it's pretty funny. I asked him, would he consider playing a part in drag? He said he always fantasized [pauses] ... he was very gracious, a little bit courtly ... that I'd call him up and offer him a part, but he rather hoped it would be a part of a man. [Laughter.] So I offered him this part and he reminded me about that earlier conversation.

Well, I love that in one day Nathan Lane's character is dealing with being broke, not having a presidential library, gay marriage, campaign contributions, and pardoning turkeys. Do you think the Oval Office could be that crazy?
I think it's crazier than that. Of course it is that crazy.

Are you loving the primaries?
Everybody is, don't you think? It's exciting.

It certainly seems to have reinvigorated politics for lots of people.
It's marvelous. The whole thing kind of started in 2000 and it kept growing in '04 and the midterms. It's marvelous.

The race between Hillary and Obama is unreal. She had an amazing comeback.
Everybody's had an amazing comeback. Hillary's comeback is amazing. Obama's comeback was amazing. McCain's comeback was amazing!!! He going off by himself, flying coach, without the press because they'd given up on him.

It's a kind of cinematic election: a tough-guy woman candidate running against an Ivy League–educated black man and a 70-something Vietnam War hero.
If one wanted to pitch it as a reality series, it would be interesting. I met this young guy who said, "I think I want to marry a woman that I don't know." And the waitress leaned over and said, "You will." I think that's what you get with a president. They have to be all things to all people in a primary. Then you have to be different all things to different all people in the general election.

But once they get into office they have to face the reality of running the country.
At the end of The Candidate, the character played by Robert Redford wins the political race and asks, "What do we do now?"

So I'm sure people are always asking who you're voting for?

It's only par for the course that people are trying to get me to say who I'm voting for 'cause everyone's trying to get everyone to say who they're voting for.

You said you feel like that's not your place to say who.
I know it's not my place. But Rebecca [Pidgeon, the actress who is Mamet's wife] and I went to see Jackie Mason last night in the show he's taking to Broadway. It's spectacular; I mean he just bashes all of them.

He does?
He makes kind of coleslaw of every candidate.

You hadn't really delved into politics since you wrote the film Wag the Dog, which is about a president getting into trouble—a sex scandal—and trying to distract the American public by staging a phony war in Albania. What made you want to jump back into the political arena?
Well, no, I had done a bunch of blogs for Arianna Huffington, and then I did a bunch of political cartoons for her and other people, and wrote several essays on politics.

I saw your cartoons on the Huffington Post. What made you start doing those?
I started doing cartoons a long time ago 'cause my best friend was Shel Silverstein. I started drawing and he said, "Oh, Dave, keep drawing," and so I kept drawing. I said, "But, Shel, I can't draw," and he said, "Nonetheless." So I've been doing cartoons forever. I adore it. It's my favorite thing.

It is?
Yeah, it's much more fun than writing.

Why?
'Cause you don't have to write.

In Hollywood, there are the politics of screenwriting. One blog was talking about how you don't like working with big studios since you refuse to kowtow to studio execs.
Well, nobody likes kowtowing to studio execs. But one has to bring one's pics to market. I'm just not very good at it.

Making movies must be more fun without the big studios.
Doing a movie is fun. It's just fun flat-out. I was doing a movie with Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, and Rebecca called Heist, and we were up in Montreal. And, as always, running hard. I said to my great colleague and assistant director, Cas Donovan, "Geez, wouldn't it be fun to do a movie with a vast budget sometime?" And she thought a second and said, "No, we'd just make more expensive mistakes." And I'm sure that's true.

I'm curious about your thoughts on the Internet.

I'm kind of bifurcated on it. Hypocrite that I am, I don't have a computer. But my assistant uses the computer, so I'll say to her, "I wonder if you can find out the following things," so I get the benefits of it and I get to delude myself that I'm not a whore to the 21st century.

Do you watch television?
I don't. We got kids, you know. We work hard, come home, and by the time the kids are asleep we have time to read a couple pages of a book.

Do your kids watch television?
They watch television, yeah. And they're always on the computer. I'm always telling them to get off the computer. My wife is always saying, "Dave, Dave, hush, did you watch television when you were a kid?" And I said, "Yeah, all day, every day."

What do you think about living in Los Angeles?
I like it here. I like living here. I like working here. Hollywood is a dreadful place to visit, but it's a great place to live.

What do you mean by that? That's funny because so many people who don't like it here haven't spent enough time in Los Angeles.
It's true. It's a different kind of city. And like any kind of change, our first reaction to it is, it's wrong. It's a city that's based on the automobile. That's the way it's laid out, but it's a wonderful city. I was talking to Gore Vidal and he said, "You know, the best [in every field], the best people in the world are here in Los Angeles." I thought about it for a while and I said, "That's true." Greatest teachers of anything you want to find, greatest minds with artists, sculptors ... all the great actors are here.

People complain that L.A. just isn't interesting.
You know what it is—it's not interesting to visit 'cause you don't know where to go. But there are wonderful webs of people and associations of people in Los Angeles. You get in your car and you go here or there. Finally, it's not that much different from getting in the subway and going here or getting there. One of the things that's marvelous about L.A., which is really unfortunately becoming unique in America, is it's a working town.

Some people don't have that perception, maybe because the weather makes it seem as though it's so carefree and there is no character to the city. The car culture and the weather make people think there is no heart or that it is too easy a life, as if you almost need a little more hardship in daily life.
I think that's a bunch of bullshit. There's enough hardship in daily life. You've gotta go looking for it? If you turn down your head, nobody's going to say to themselves, "My life is too easy. Thank God it's 40 degrees below."