Summary
There are few figures in American culture as with as potent a step as David Mamet (American Buffalo, House of Games, Heist), first as a playwright, then as a filmmaker. With his new movie, Redbelt, he takes on a new frontier, the action film. We hear how he came to climb that mountain.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment. |
| 0:13.9 | Welcome to The Treatment. |
| 0:15.7 | You can also hear this show at KCRW.com. |
| 0:18.2 | It's always a pleasure to have David Mammon here. |
| 0:20.7 | What's so great about his work is there always seems to be in some point a kind of theoretical exploration of masculinity and then a practical application in his work. |
| 0:28.5 | If we can go from sexual war first in Chicago to his newest film Red Belt. |
| 0:33.2 | First of all, Dave, thanks once for being here. |
| 0:35.2 | It's always a pleasure. |
| 0:36.6 | But there is a sort of discussion what a man should do often in the work and then what he actually does. |
| 0:42.9 | You know, this is weird kind of schism between what somebody thinks his role should be and then what he actually does. |
| 0:49.0 | Yeah, well, you know, drama is not about, as I understand, it's not about rather nice or rather bad things happening |
| 0:54.4 | to rather good or rather bad people, you know? |
| 0:57.2 | It's about the, especially this, the movie Red Belt is a kind of a traditional fight film, |
| 1:03.3 | which is always a morality tale, I think, and it's about what happens when you start stepping |
| 1:07.9 | off the sidewalk, you know, whether to break the law or to perfect yourself, you open yourself up to |
| 1:13.6 | all of these unforeseen influences. |
| 1:18.4 | And so many works of yours are about really a test of wills or a test of wits. |
| 1:24.1 | This is the first piece you really made, it's about a physical test. |
| 1:27.7 | Right. And I wonder what it came from for you now at this point in your life at this age. |
| 1:31.6 | You said you just turned 60. Well, I did a movie before called Spartan, which is kind of a special |
| 1:35.6 | force and there's a little bit of an action film. But I think it's because I've been living in this |
| 1:39.3 | world of jujitsu and, and martial arts and studying it since I moved to California about six years ago. |
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