Mamet blows his own trumpet

It would be easy to be mean about this book — so here goes. It purports to be David Mamet’s practical guide to movie-making and one of the points he makes repeatedly is that films shouldn’t have any fat on them.

The film may, perhaps, be likened to a boxer. He is going to have to deal with all the bulk his opponent brings into the ring. Common sense should indicate he had better not bring one extra ounce of flab on him — that all the weight he brings into the ring had better be muscle.

No one would argue with that — but doesn’t the same principle apply to books? Why, then, are the last 45 pages of Bambi vs Godzilla taken up with listing the films ‘referenced’ in the preceding 205 pages? I’m not exaggerating: 20 per cent of this book consists of cast lists and plot summaries that could have been lifted from any common-or-garden film guide.And here’s another complaint: Mamet styles himself a champion of the little guy, claiming that the craftsmen of the business often know more about making pictures than the above-the-line ‘talent’. ‘In my experience,’ he writes, ‘the prop people and the stunt people are smarter about the gags (certainly than the writer, and regularly) than the director.’ It is disappointing, therefore, that the unheralded drudges who have assembled this book have been so negligent. For instance, in a chapter entitled ‘Victims and Villains’ Mamet writes, ‘I will make bold to state that some readers of this piece may, in fact, “root” for the Palestinians.’ ‘Piece’? Shouldn’t that be ‘book’? If it hadn’t been for this elementary copy-editing mistake, I might not have realised that Bambi vs Godzilla consists primarily of recycled columns from the Guardian.