Every couple of months, I am forced by some cruel twist of chance or fate to think about David Mamet. When this happens I invariably have the same reaction... RAGE. This guy drives me crazy!
He is a great storyteller, something very rare, but his dialogue is God-awful! Some people talk about him like he's God but I can barely sit through the torturous moments of his characters and their completely unrealistic yammering. Case in point. I pulled this from Wikipedia as an example. It's from Glen Garry/Glen Ross:
Moss: No. What do you mean? Have I talked to him about this [Pause]
Aaronow: Yes. I mean are you actually talking about this, or are we just...
Moss: No, we're just...
Aaronow: We're just "talking" about it.
Moss: We're just speaking about it. [Pause] As an idea.
Aaronow: As an idea.
Moss: Yes.
Aaronow: We're not actually talking about it.
Moss: No.
Aaronow: Talking about it as a...
Moss: No.
Aaronow: As a robbery.
Moss: As a "robbery"? No.
Normal people don't make distinctions between talking and speaking. It's just silly. I get what he's trying to do, I just think the construction is totally artificial. Even great actors come off sounding wooden and stilted when they have to deliver dialog like this.
I had a discussion with one of the employees at my local Blockbuster about this and he just loves Mamet. Thinks he's the greatest screenplay writer going. Even likes the style of the dialogue! I am baffled. I told him I thought Quentin Tarantino's dialogue was a hundred times better, which it is, and he disagreed. Unbelievable! One could argue that Tarantino's dialog is bit too hip to be legit, but I know more people who talk the way his characters' do than the way Mamet's do and I was a philosophy major. Talk about stilted pompous dialogue... there were pipes involved. Pipes, I tell you!!
Well, I've gone on long enough about this. Hopefully the act of writing this down will bring me some measure of peace... at least until the next time.
Monday, August 25, 2008
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3 comments:
Dialogue? We don't need no stinkin' dialogue!
Consider Sergio Leone. 5 minutes of grizzled faces, the wind, and a fly buzzing ("Once Upon a Time in the West"). The *manly* art of movie making.
HILARIOUS! I for one agree with you COMPLETELY about Tarantino's dialogue. However, there is one line in Glenn Gary Glenn Ross that is hard to touch. It's when Alec Baldwin tells one of the guys..."sit down...you can't get up and get yourself a drink of coffee...coffee is for CLOSERS". As a salesman, that cracks me up every time! But then again, will anything ever be better than "doe my garage say 'dead nigger storage'..I don't think it does." lmao
Agreed.
David Mamet is supreme douche refuse.
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