One star, would not recommend.

I’ve been meaning to review this for a while. I bought the book like two years ago, in a second hand bookstore. It was in the drama section, and I saw David Mamet’s name on it. “I like Glengarry Glenn Ross, so this should be good,” I thought. And then I just didn’t read it for 18 months.

Cover The cover of my copy

I finally did read it, and … there’s just not much to it. I get that it’s early in his career (the 6th stage production he’s written) and I’m sure I’m missing something, but it just feels like it goes nowhere.

Maybe that’s the point.

But I figured, maybe I’m wrong. So I watched the movie adaptation (which the cover of my copy made damn certain I was aware of).

Dennis Franz and Sean Nelson were great. Somehow Dustin Hoffman was terrible.

As an aside, I’ve been watching through Documentary Now!, by first watching the original documentaries they’re riffing on then the related episode of the show (this is probably a story for another article). But having seen the Salesmen/Globesmen episode, I think I can correctly recreate the order of events that happened:

  • David Mamet starts to write theater productions
  • David Mamet gets some traction around the late 70s, maybe around the time American Buffalo is written
  • David Mamet watches Salesmen, a “documentary” about door to door salesmen struggling to sell bibles
  • David Mamet is like, how can I make these people even more sleazy?
  • David Mamet writes Glengarry Glenn Ross
  • GGGR is a big hit, gets turned into a movie which is also a big hit
  • Some movie exec is like “what other Mamet material can we turn into a movie?”
  • American Buffalo is probably cheap to option since it’s an early work
  • American Buffalo gets turned into a movie trying to ride the GGGR coattails and instead fuckin sucks
  • Dustin Hoffman is like “I can be in the next David Mamet work? Look what it did for all these other actors who were in GGGR!” And then he shits the bed with his performance

I’m sure I’m wrong. I just hated every character other than Bobby. I hated the plot (or lack thereof). I even hated the dialog (and in the stage play it’s even worse than the movie with these like subtext lines that it never really explains if they’re spoken or internal thoughts or what).

Though my copy appears to have been used for an audition, so that’s neat.

Cover

And I leave you with the knowledge of this cursed production:

Cover

If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.

floppies