David Mamet
Appearances
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Isn't that great? The fucking...
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, because the secret is, what does it cost to make a movie? You can make the 500 grand movie for $100 million, and you can make a $100 million movie for 500 grand.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Wait a second. One guy's in the hospital. The other guy can't. Does everybody over there have a disability? Yes.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Dude, well, he's got very good taste in clothes, and he's got that Harris Tweed jacket on. Yeah. He's got on the hat, wearing it in the correct direction.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Well, I don't know. Come on. Mystery guests, come in and sign in, please. What is your disability? I'm just a little slow.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Slow and steady wins the race.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Guys, I was talking to Jay Moore yesterday, Jay Moore podcast. Yeah. And he loves the movie and he loves you. And he talked for like a half an hour.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
About the way you tuck your shirt in that thing.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He saved my life. I was going through a real difficult, really difficult time.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He saved my life. And I would go to the meetings, and one guy would say, you know... My wife left me, and she took all my money, and then I realized that she'd given me a very bad disease, and I couldn't even go dating anymore, and I bought a gun, and people in the room were laughing.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And they just took it play Oswald. And I was psyched because that's going to be so great. Yeah.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
This was such a great idea because we did the play. It was fucking great. And we could have run it forever, except you can't ask the actors to come in and work for $19.95 a week.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
We would love it. But anyway, and so Shia and Evan come and say, let's do a movie. So I say, no, we can't do a fucking, what are you talking about? Takes forever, and we have to go and talk to the assholes in the valley. And they say, no, no, no, no, no. Dude, we're going to do it ourselves. We're going to raise the money ourselves. We're going to do it ourselves.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So I say, how are we going to do it? They say, fuck it, I don't know. We're just going to do it. And so like a lot of the great things in my life, I got dragged into it kicking and screaming. Yeah, yeah, he wasn't into it. And it turned out to be the best thing that I've done in decades. The most changed my life.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, please don't. I got to do it. It's the best t-shirt I've seen in 85 years. Oh, with a t-shirt. Oh, really? Where'd you get the t-shirt? It's magnificent.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
They dragged me into it, so what we discovered is you don't need Hollywood, you don't need a bunch of money, you need some talent, you need an idea, and you need a fucking telephone.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, it's not bullshit. Listen, the first moment.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Listen, from the first moment, we had a mutual friend who eventually sold both of us out. And my mutual friend was having a lunch with Shia. And I'd always admired Shia's work very, very much. And I sat down and my mutual friend says, oh, sit on Shia LaBeouf. I say, hi, Shia LaBeouf, why have such, I so admire you. And Shia says, that's not necessary. And it just, it was fucking shocking.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It's like, it's fucking shocking. It's like I saw into who this wonderful man is in a second. I'm a human being, you're a human being. It's a pleasure to meet you. Remember that?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
The way I see it, it's just like... These two lifelong friends, an old guy and an old woman, they've been high school sweethearts, and they've both grown old together. But they meet again, and their lives seem to be older, but they go on a road trip. What fucking...
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did this thing as a play. We're doing it as a movie. And it's about a guy who is so compassionate that he ruins everything around him and everyone takes advantage of him. He ends up going to prison and he ends up getting his life changed by the boss con over there. And then some shit happens. Wow.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Right. Well, but see, that's the trick, is the best thing in the world if you're rehearsing a play is tell everybody, show up learning your lines. Don't show up if you're not letter perfect. And most actors don't know that anymore because they've been badly trained and badly rehearsed.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And they want to sit down and talk about where they went to school and what their character ate for lunch and all this bullshit. So shy up because he don't know any better, knows better than any of them. Just show up learning the fucking lines. Because if the actors show up in a rehearsal late day one, knowing their lines, what do you do? You block the play.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It takes you three days and then you put it on.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Wait a second, but you're a stand-up comic. Yes. Wait a second, two guys go into a... Whorehouse. Whorehouse. Of course it's a whorehouse, but you're going to grow up on the bar. Well, you got to know your lines, right?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
If you're telling jokes, you got to know your lines.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Hey, listen, if you had Stormy Daniels on, would you say, where do you get your ideas?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Well, it is very hard. Shia, protect it. I'll tell you. I wrote this play a long time ago called American Buffalo. And it was a series of sketches about these thieves I was hanging out with playing poker. And they were really good. And I did it off Broadway. A bunch of sketches. And a guy called Ulu Grossbard, who was a great director. You should see his movie Straight Time.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Ulu Grossbard comes to me and says, if you can figure out the plot. I'll put it on Broadway. So I went from being an out-of-work cab driver to I had to sit down and figure out how to write a plot, which is very difficult. And then he put it on Broadway. So I said, oh, I get it. I know what keeps the asses in the seats, a plot, which means making the audience wonder what happens next.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
That's a plot. If you can write a plot, the dialogue doesn't have to be good, which we know because we see films in translation. We want to know what happens next. So it's very hard to write a plot because it's an equation and the mind always wants to come up with the easiest thing, right?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
But the easiest thing is probably not the best thing because if you can beat yourself to the punchline, the audience can beat you to the punchline. So in comedy, what you got to do is you got to beat the audience to the punchline. Give them enough to wonder what happens next, right? A penguin and a rhinoceros go into a whorehouse. Yeah, they want to know what happens next.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, I do really want to know. Of course.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
The penguin fucks the nun and the rhinoceros eats them both.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
But let me tell you, a penguin, a nun, and an ostrich go into a whorehouse. Where's the rhino? He's taking tickets. Oh, my God. And they say the whorehouse is an old brick building on a quiet residential street, the kind of street where maybe your grandfather and grandmother were. I want to know what happened in the whorehouse. I don't want you to tell me how it was built. Right.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
A couple of times I wrote with other people, but at some point I stopped doing it because even when I wrote with them, I'd say, you know, thanks a lot, go sit down.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I got out of college and I was unemployable because I didn't know anything. I didn't know anybody. And the idea that someone was going to support me, meaning my parents, was unheard of, both in my generation and in my family. So I came back and I got a bunch of jobs. I worked at everything in the world because you could always get a job in Chicago.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And I got involved in theater, and I saw some stuff that I found very provocative, so I started writing plays about it. One was, as I said, I used to play in this poker game with a bunch of thieves, and then I used to work in a boiler room selling land over the telephone.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
The boiler room used to be you put 20 guys on a phone in a room and they have to call up the people and say, oh, you know, Mr. Lee, I see that you were interested in land because you wrote in for our brochure about land in Arizona.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I saw these things that interested me.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And then I started reading Chekhov's plays, Anton Chekhov.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
There's a guy called Chekhov in Star Wars? No, no. Hey, wait a second. I got a question for you people. How do you remember the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars? I can tell you a million things about it.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I got a question about William Shatner, okay? Yeah. It just occurred to me.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He's reading his newspaper out in the back. by his swimming pool, right? And his wife, who's an Olympic, like an AAU swimmer, is swimming around the pool, swimming around the pool, swimming around the pool. And she comes over and apparently, according to him, he put his foot accidentally on her head and she drowned, she died.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
My question is, what was he reading? Yeah.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
But speaking of, wait, wait, wait, wait. Speaking of Louis C.K., dude, speaking of Louis C.K., we talked about Louis, that when we were doing this JFK movie, I know him from around, right? And he was considering playing Jack Ruby against his Lee Harvey. Wow. How awesome was that?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Sure, sure, sure. So wait a second. So I called up Louie. So we're starting this new thing, right? We're going right to the people and called up Louie because I knew he was doing it. I said, what's the secret? He said, there's no secret. Call up my guy. I call up the guy. The guy says, yeah, there's no secret. You go online, henryjohnsonmovie.com. You put up an Instagram, whatever the fuck that is.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
is. And you go out and you talk to people like you and people buy your product. That's the secret.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I got tired. I got tired of being dead. Yeah. I really did. Yeah. I got sick of it. You know, right. COVID hit and the fucking theater died and I got blacklisted. Nobody want to do my plays and nobody wanted to do my movies over there. I just got fucking tired of being dead. And somebody called up and said, let's do the play. And then we did the play and he said, let's do the movie.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And now I'm not dead anymore. We're about to do another movie. Wow.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, we all want each other dead, man.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah. They say, okay, the money that you're making with your shit is taking food out of my children's mouths. Yeah. I hope you die.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
That's just like Chicago in the 70s. All these little theater companies sprang up. Right. And we each had our own flavor and we each had an audience and we worked with each other.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Completely. It's over. I say it's like the Erie Canal, right? However great the Erie Canal was in 1825, you can't put enough money into it to make the Erie Canal work again when the railroads come in. Right. You can't put enough money into Snow-fucking-White, right, to make the studio system work again when the Potterverse exists.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
That's a very good question. I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, yeah. Do I like attractive people bringing each other up? Yes. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's a cheap way to get out of a scene that you don't know how to fit.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Last great thing that I watched was new. I liked Casablanca.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Anybody. Anybody and one. All the producers let me down. Every one of them. That's right. That's what I want to hear. They're all swine. Trash. Hate them. But at least back in the old days of the studio system, you got betrayed by a better class of people. Right. Right.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Shia's sitting right there I've worked with the greatest actors over the last 50 years including Shia has never worked with a better actor ever what about Gene Hackman same thing never worked with a better actor shut the fuck up let him rest in peace you fucking bastard how come you never mentioned the Asian lady either his wife yeah
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It's always Gene. What about- Wait a second. Chang Chang. He went on a big rant.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So Gene, so I never worked with a better actor than Gene. Oh, yeah. So Gene introduced, the first time I met him, he introduces me to his wife, Betsy, who was a concert violinist, an Asian woman. And he says, this is my wife, Betsy. I met her in a massage parlor.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. You work with great actors. If you know what you're doing, what you get on opening night in the theater is the cast and the script. That's it. Oh, right. The direction, the staging through, nobody fucking cares. So when you work with actors who know what they're doing, you say, okay, how do we rehearse the movie except for blocking?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I've never rehearsed a movie.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Right? You work and say, you know what you're doing? You got any questions? Let's play the stupid fucking scene. Right? That's all that there is.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, no. I had a big fight with De Niro, though.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Well, it was just over the phone. He was doing the Untouchables, right? Yeah. And I went to the Untouchables and he calls me up. He says, I got some questions about the script. He's shooting. I said, well, hold on. Aren't you supposed to ask the director about the question? No, no, the director, Brian De Palma, said talk to you. He said talk to you. I said, you have questions about the script?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I said, yeah. I said, did you read the script before you took the part? Yeah. He says, yeah. I said, why'd the script got worse? Because they're paying you two million bucks for a week's work. Slam. So we didn't talk for years and years and years. And then I ran into him. He did like four or five movies that I wrote, De Niro. And he said, you know, blah, blah, blah. He said...
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
You know what, I called you when you called me when I have the greatest respect for you. I said, Bob, I have the greatest respect for you. So we're going to have to do a reading of some film. I think it was The Edge that was originally, eventually played with... Sean Connery? No, it was Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So one of the great secrets about when anybody asks you to do a reading is they're never going to do the movie. Right. Never. Right. Because they use the reading unconsciously as a way to get out of doing the movie. And so the movie star, the main guy, is going to mumble and everyone's going to audition at the reading. So it's garbage.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So anyway, we do the reading. And I talked to Bob afterward. I said, what do you think? He said, it's good. It's really good. But it's just not... For me at this moment, it's just not it. I only have so many of them. And it's got to be it for me. It's got to be... It's gotta be great for me. It's gotta be great. He said, is that okay? I said, of course. He said, are you mad at me?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I said, of course not. He said, are you sure you're not mad at me? I said, no. He says, good. Because I got this piece of shit I'm supposed to shoot on Monday. I wonder if you could take a look at it.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Whoever it was. We did Wag the Dog. Barry Levinson called me up. He said, I got this idea. It's in a book. The president gets in trouble. He's got to go to war. I said, oh, I got it. He's getting in trouble because they caught him in the closet fucking a Girl Scout. He says, yeah, go write it. So I go write it. And two months later, they were shooting it.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Really? Yeah. Wow. But I actually got, yeah, when I was a kid, I got in fights, but the only fight I actually got into, you know, outside of the mat and boxing, is I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and these guys were playing three-card Monty. And so, as my great friend Ricky Jay, the great magician, said, three-card Monty's not a game of... Skill, it's not a game of chance, it's not a game.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So the guy says, okay, put your money down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The red you get ahead, the black you get back. 20 gets you 40, 40 gets you 80, 80 gets you, little lady. Where's the red card, where's the red card? He does this thing, right? And so he says, oops, we'll take, that's not the red card, that's gone. Where's the red card? So I know where the red card is.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It's where you're not supposed to look. So I take it and I go over there and I turn the card over, which you're not supposed to do because they never let you win in three-card Monty because if you say, I want that card, oh, he upsets it and you have to start again. So I turn the card over and the guy punched me in the fucking face.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Did it hurt? It's on Fifth Avenue. Oh, sure.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It was Fifth Avenue and right near Rockefeller Center.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, I just, they disappeared.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I didn't know Kurosawa. I saw him once. He was at the premiere of Ran. You were at the premiere of Ran? Yes, in New York. Oh, my God. And he was there. Beautiful, big maze, like 6'4", I think. And he was there. He was that big? Yeah, he was a big man, yeah.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He probably got it on Deer Sousala.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He does love Kurokawa. He's obsessed. Let me say four of them, right? Dersu Uzula, certainly. Yes. Stray Dog, because it's got Takashi Shimura, who was the greatest actor who ever lived. Yeah. Takashi Shimura. And then Seven Samurai. Yes. Which is perfect. But then, God forgive me, I think he screwed up the end of Rashomon, because he had an extra scene after the movie's over.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Guys, am I having a fucking time war? Sorry, sorry. When I was a kid, I started doing this shit. They'd say, what do you think about Mark Twain? Now we're talking about your dick?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah. These guys trying to hit each other. A lot of them were guys wearing diapers trying to hit each other with sticks or swords.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Not only did I see High and Low, I rewrote it. But that, I was, who was it? See? Scorsese came to me and says, you know High and Low? I say, yeah. He says, you want to redo it? I say, yeah. He said, what do you think of the movie? I said, it's a great movie, but they missed the ending. It has the wrong ending. So I figured up the ending and I wrote it to Scorsese.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And Scorsese wrote it back with a bunch of scribbled notes. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And then a bunch of stuff happened. I think Spike Lee did another version now. I don't think it has anything to do with my script.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He wants to know, yeah. I've had a great time. You guys, I mean, come on, get out of here. Okay, here's one for you, Andreas. I'm a man who enjoys talking to a man who likes to talk. It's Sydney Green Street in Casablanca.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Okay. Fiddle-dee-dee, I'll worry about it tomorrow.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
That, I believe, is the last line of Gone with the fucking Wind. Come on, dude.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
It's in state in Maine. Alec Baldwin is in a car with Julia Stiles and he's drunk. He turns the car over. They're drunk out of their mind. She's underage. He crawls out. He looks at the car about to blow up and he says, well, that happened.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He's a sloppy kisser. Did you know that? Mark Twain? Did you know him? He's a sloppy kisser. A little bit before my time, he met General Grant, and General Grant said the motherfucker stuck his tongue down my throat. That's what he said about Mark Twain.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
right america western culture is not no longer dying anymore it's like it's like the japanese have a term a matsuo matsuko means pine pine tree but it also means vigorous old age so that's what i think we're looking at now and you thought you were looking for a dismount yeah we're digging a new hole baby we're digging a new hole keep rolling
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Now you're really going to have to cut out the line about William Shatner's dick.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Matsu or Matsuko. Matsuko. Means pine tree. It's also a name.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, he likes all the right. We lump them all. You know what? Koreans are fucking tough. They are. They are.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Whose script is it? Oh, wait a sec.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
We have all the time in the world.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So anyway, so my mother, rest in peace, was ill for a long, long time. I mean, there was a woman who was her caregiver. And she saved, she elongated my mother's life by years and loved my mother and was just marvelous and made a lot of personal sacrifices. And my mom died. And this woman came up to me and I said,
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I don't know how to thank you for your, I mean, it's beyond what I, it's godly what you've done. It's beyond generous. If there's anything in the world that I could do for you, anything ever that I could do for you. And she said, well, my nephew wrote a film script. I said, anything but that.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Exactly so. Yeah. You got to turn your head. But that's always, don't you find that that's always, you feel like it's a put down. You're going to say, oh, I guess it's the thing we kissed this person in the lip. And they turn their head a little bit.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, but define a long time.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Well, yeah, I've been married to the same wonderful broad for 35 years.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Were you a coxswain when you were young?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
William H. Macy, my great friend, we grew up together. He used to say in the 60s, you were terrified that somewhere there was some woman you hadn't had intercourse with.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
If you fight about the kids, you got to fight about the kids.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, I wrote this play, Glen Gary, Glen Ross, and I did it as a movie, and I put in this extra scene for Alec Baldwin that says coffee is foreclosures. It's all everybody remembers about the stupid- It's funny.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, that's great. And what everybody loves, everybody loves, everybody adores you.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Oh, wait a second. Everybody in this fucking room. So my producer calls me up today. Fuck off, man. My producer calls up. He says, Dave, you've been doing this forever. I don't want to tell you your business, but don't forget to plug the movie.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
The movie's called. We'll do it later. Yeah, okay, later. We do it later. We don't do it now. We'll do it fucking later. But here's the thing. In the movie, he's got a line. He plays a prisoner. And the other guy, Evan Jonakite, who is the guy who he's turning out as now, is punk, says, but how do you know all this shit? And his line is, baby, I do this for a living.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
So that's, everybody's talking about that.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
See, that's the thing. A lot of movies, most of the people who make movies never see their movie with a live audience. None of the executives do. What they're doing is completely theoretical because you've got to sit in the audience and say, where did the attention fade? Why? And how can I fix it? Because if not, what the hell are you doing?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, focus groups are bullshit.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah. I'll tell you good focus groups. Because what you do with the focus group is you ask the people to become critics. So you're bringing out the worst in them. Think about it. We go to a restaurant, and we have a pretty good time, and then the chef comes out and says, we're going to sit down for half an hour, and we're going to talk. What did you like? What would you like different?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Well, I don't want to feel stupid, so I'm not going to say I had a good time. Yeah, you got to have something. Yeah, maybe a little bit more salt in that thing. So there was a guy called Joe Farrell who invented this like in the 70s, 80s. I was doing a bunch of studio movies. This thing where the people would sit and watch the movie on a screen and they'd have dials.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
And if you put the dial this way, it means I liked it. And you put the dial that way, it means I don't like it. And they would have graphs and graphs and graphs. And all the P&A, production and advertising money, would get allocated based on the graphs. And Joe Farrell made this huge amount of money with these stupid fucking graphs. And I was talking to him one day.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
I did a movie and I said, well, you know, Joe, I guess the numbers aren't quite as good as they could be. And he said, well... how good would you like them to be? It's all a scam.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, the dials are a fucking scam. A smarter man would have said, Joe, wait here a second. Oh my God, is this your $50,000 or mine?
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
He was just bribable. Yeah.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
Yeah, exactly so. But the thing is that we just did this movie very cheap, very-
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
But the thing is, we made it with ourselves because Shia said, we just did the play, the play's over, let's do a movie. So now the business has completely changed and the studio system is just completely over. It's just dead. It doesn't exist anymore because the technology has changed, which is kind of great. Unless you have an interest in the old technology and you want to spend $250
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
million dollars remaking a bad version of Snow White. And, you know, you could take all the people who saw it and stick them in a fucking school bus, but nobody's taking responsibility for that because they're all bureaucrats making bureaucratic decisions.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, but I understand there was a lot of anti-Semitism in it from this one girl. But if I want to see it, I'll just go to Columbia University.
Bad Friends
A Penguin, A Nun, and an Ostrich w/ Shia Labeouf and David Mamet
No, one of the girls came out and she said, you know, free... Oh, oh, the main girl. Rachel Zagler. Rachel Zagler. Snow White girl. Zagler. She apparently also said that the prince was fucking stalking her.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You know, I don't know. I think he's gotten into the wrong... But that's your business. Yeah, he's gotten into the wrong pew.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I said they both run on, yes, that's right. They both run on the power of myth.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, it's a single disease. So I was looking at the horror of the Biden years and at the absolutely a bunch of events and actions which were in themselves incomprehensible, but in total were absurd because I couldn't understand a common theme.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
What was the common theme between saying boys have to play in med sports and saying that Israel is a terrorist state and saying that the schools... Well, the Biden administration didn't say they were a terrorist state.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, the Biden administration withheld arms... congressionally mandated aid to Israel, Biden and Kamala Harris refused to meet with Netanyahu, and they refused to condemn the world court for calling Netanyahu a war criminal. I'm with you on all this. Okay, I know you are. So... Boys and men's sports open borders, which is completely indefensible. Why? It's in the Constitution.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
If you don't have a border, you don't have a country. Rights for illegal immigrants. Climate change. These are all of these things which are, at best, debatable. And I said, but more than that, they don't seem to be part of a program. They don't seem to be part of, say, if we say the left. has a program, whether it's overt or covert, to do something.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
These things don't add up to a combined program. They add up to a lot. I said, okay, I know what they look like. They look like an open city. That is to say, Paris in 1944, or Naples in 1943-44, or Moscow in 1812. The inhabitants have left, the attackers have left, the city is open. So it's open to marauding gangs, each of whom is going to prosecute its own enemies. its own program.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So I said, ah, that's exactly what the Biden years look like. There's a bunch of people each prosecuting their own programs. It sounds to me, this is before the real information about his senility came out, like a bunch of people sitting at a conference table and one of them says, you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to get out of Afghanistan today. Somebody else says, well, you know,
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Getting out of Afghanistan is a good idea, but all the Joint Chiefs have said, if you get out today, people will die. No, fuck it. Guy says, I want to get out today. Well, guy says, I don't want to vote for that. So this guy says, I tell you what to do. You want to open the borders. I want to get out of Afghanistan today. I'll sign your auto pen thing and you sign mine.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Somebody says, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. What about me? I think that men should play in women's sports. Well, fuck, okay, you want to vote for that? What will you do for me? I'll vote for men and women's sports. What do you want to do for me? Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do for you. I will vote to not meet with the Prime Minister of Israel. So looking at the facts...
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So that's what one does when one tries to make a, write a play. I'm gonna look at the facts which seem unconnected in saying what connects them. And what connects them is the idea of a committee of brigands who've taken power and they're each going to prosecute their own agenda because no one's going to call them on it. The cat's away in the mouse's play.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So that's what led me to a large extent to write that book.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Sure. Okay. Let them say it. All right. The question is, if you read the Constitution— Which I do. It's pretty easy, about 20 pages. What is the Trump administration doing that's unconstitutional? The answer is nothing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
What are you talking about, the one district judge who said, bring the guy back from El Salvador?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, no, I think your information there is wrong. I think that what they're doing is, in some cases, they may be... They may be slow walking it, but I don't believe that there's any... Here's what they're doing, is that all these rogue district judges are issuing restraining orders against the president in his performance of his constitutionally mandated duty.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, I got a couple extra rooms in my house, but both of them, three of them, but all of them are just like six inches too short for a pool table.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
It's his constitutional duty to take care of the border. It has nothing to do with the judiciary. If someone feels wronged, they have the opportunity to sue... But the district courts do not have under the Constitution.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, but you're wrong as to the facts, again, because here, let me explain it this way. Say that you have a fellow who hates you, okay, and he is... Throwing stuff at your car and throwing stuff at you, blah, blah, blah. And he gets sent to prison, okay? He gets convicted, right, of harassment or he gets convicted of assault or whatever, whatever, whatever.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Say, okay, he's in prison and he gets out. He's got a parole. But one aspect of the parole is he has a restraining order. He cannot come within 1,000 feet of you or your house or your place of business. If he comes within 1,000 feet of you, your house, your place of business, his parole is violated.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
It's exactly the same situation as the people who have been convicted of crimes and who have been deported and have then reentered the United States. They have the right to due process to find out whether or not that's the same guy. But prior to that, their crime and their sentence has been adjudicated.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
As John Wayne said when he was playing Coriolanus, listen, I didn't write this shit, right? But I did write that shit.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, I know. Well, since I got retired and blacklisted, I've been looking like a swine.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah. I mean, it's... I'm not quite sure what the play's about, what the movie's about, but I think it's about a guy who is so accommodating that he not only gets taken advantage of by everybody he meets, but causes havoc around him constantly by his goodwill. Somebody said that there are... Old fools and young fools, happy fools and sad fools, but there never was a fool who wasn't cruel.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So this is a guy who is so good-willed and so wants to please everybody, he's a fool, that A, everybody takes advantage of him, and B, ends up getting everybody killed. The same old story.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No. Listen, I think I've been fairly clear. I've written a whole bunch of plays and movies and fiction and so forth. But then independently, I've written a bunch of political stuff, but I'm pretty clear about keeping the two... In fact, I'm dedicated to keeping the two separate.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, here's the thing. If something is a work of art, which I think that if you're a creative person, you aspire to... There's mass entertainment, right? Then there's entertainment. And then there's, at some point, it's possible for it to be art. And at some point, you aspire, however popular your stuff may be. And I want to be popular, you know, too.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But at some point, you say, I would like to aspire to the realm of art, which means something beyond art. the ability of the consciousness to quantify, right? You say, oh, again, I laughed, so obviously that's a comedy, or I cried, so obviously that's a drama. But art is something beyond the ability of the consciousness to quantify. So if somebody said of the Chopin etude, what does it mean?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But Chopin goes, fuck, I don't know. I do it the best I can. So I'm trying to aspire to have my stuff... which is to say beyond the human capacity to encapsulate. Because if you're going to encapsulate it, you stop thinking about it. Oh, I get it. See, maybe I'm not that bright.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, but see, it was great that you said, I get it. But that to me means differently than I understand it. I get it means, oh, yeah, which is what craft is in playwriting. You would DM someone and say, oh, my God, it was in front of me the whole time. Everything that I thought, this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense. Ah, now it makes sense.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, that's what Aristotle said. He wrote the book called The Poetics a little while ago. He said the ending has got to be surprising and inevitable. Oh, really?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Oh, yeah. He said that's it. So if we know that as dramatists, it's no different than a joke. The ending's got to be surprising. Oh, aha.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah. I didn't see where you're getting at. Right. That's why we laugh. That's right. Right? Because it reconvinces us happily that we really aren't that fucking smart. Right? So the joke and the good play frees us from our self-absorption. I'm so smart. Why am I not doing better? Someone's trying to fuck me over. Right? No, no, no, it's because I'm too lazy, I'm doing this and that. No, I'm not.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
That's what we do on our stupid minds all day long. So a joke frees us from that.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, it doesn't quite constitute a party because we aren't convivial here. We're actually having a structured conversation.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
They're political. They're politicians. Listen, it's the same thing as saying I want to do a movie about doctors. That doesn't mean I want to operate on people in a fucking audience.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, no, no. I'm working on this movie about these two con men. Say, con men. Sure.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah. I was just writing about today. Like, we just... Please screw me over. Please lie to me. There's so much a part of our human condition is Ricky Jay, the great magician, said that the more intelligent the person is, the easier they are to con because they believe in their own intelligence. So they're trying to beat you to the punchline. I know what you're doing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So while they're trying to beat you to the punchline, their attention is over here while you're picking their pocket. So was Lincoln gay? I mean, probably. Because? Well, the question to me, a different question, right? It became part of an American culture and it started with biography to say, oh, who did what with his dick, right? As if that was important, as if that were important.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Whereas we see now, now it's become part of the culture. Thank goodness. The fuck difference does it make, right? So all of the, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison for homosexuality. by a section of society, which is the British aristocracy, the British upper class, all of whom practiced homosexuality in some form or another. But he broke the taboo about talking about it.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, that's right. But see, that's why in the Muslim countries, a lot of the time, they will not build a house that's more than two stories tall.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, because if they catch you fucking another boy, they throw you off the roof. I'm kidding with you. But you know what? That's the thing. It could be true. Yeah. It could be true. So the question to me is not whether or not Lincoln was gay. Who knows?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But whether somebody who's that—these con men find a guy who's that interested in the subject that they say, wow, I can take advantage of this guy, right? He's so interested in being right about this subject that I can sell him this letter that proves that Lincoln was gay.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, quite to the contrary. Actually, Oscar Wilde's a little bit later. Oscar Wilde's 30 years later. But they passed this rule law in 1893 that made, as they said, sodomy a crime in England. They made it a crime for the first time. And somebody said that in Chelsea, which was the artistic Bohemian era of London...
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
After they passed it, the air in Chelsea was black with the smoke of burning love letters. Yeah. So he had a very good friend, a Lincoln named Joshua Speed, who he lived with for many years.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Hey, as we say, let me finish. So anyway, he wrote a lot of letters to Joshua Speed, which are in the Lincoln Library somewhere. And they're very loving letters, right? And so some guys who were interested in gay history have always said, oh, the letters might say this or letters might say that. But I'll bet you there's another letter where the whole thing comes out of the closet.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I don't know. I mean, you know, what are you drinking? Tequila. Well, why not vodka? Because I like this better. Okay, there you go.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, sure. Somebody asked me a long time ago where I got my ideas, and I told them... And I'll tell you that there's a little Mexican guy, he's got an old Camino, and he parks in a Vons parking lot on Encino every Saturday, and he sells ideas off the back of the truck.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Oh, that kind of fell apart through the people who were making the movie ended up suing each other, and I ended up going wee, wee, wee all the way home. But some very good things happened from it, one of which is I cast Shia, who was going to play Oswald, Oh. And Louis was going to play.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Louis C.K. Was going to play Jack Ruby. Yeah. The cast went on forever.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah. So, yeah, that's about the length of an old-style vaudeville turn. It was about seven minutes. And that's about the length of a guy who's telling a story at a dinner party.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I mean, you... I think there were certainly other gunmen. I don't know that he was one.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
He was the perfect patsy. So the perfect movie about the Kennedy assassinations, The Parallax View, where Warren plays this... It's a wonderful talk about... Everything coming together in the last 10 seconds. Warren is this investigative reporter trying to investigate blah, blah, blah. And at the end, we find out 10 seconds to go on the movie.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
They'd been leading him on to the point where he's up on a catwalk with a rifle. Right. And he's going to be the patsy. But did you know that one of Marcello's girlfriends was Lee Harvey Oswald's mother? I did not. Check it out. He was all over Oswald. He was part of a whole crew at the Jack Ruby's bar.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I think he was... fairly obviously a CIA low-level throwaway, that he went over, they said, fuck it, okay, go over to Russia, and they put him assembling radios over there.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I know it's faked. Everybody knows it's faked. I didn't. Well, if you look at it, There are several frames missing. Every frame is numbered, right? And several frames are just missing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, there have been a couple of explanations, one of which is that they were too brutal. But they would have to be deliberately taken out? Yeah, they've been taken out. Another one of which is the blood spatter was painted on. How do I know it's painted on? Because I've been making movies for 40 years. You can see it. In one frame, it doesn't exist. In the next frame, it does exist.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
And in the next frame, it doesn't exist. So what would actually... The film goes by 24 frames a second. If it were actual blood spatter, you would see it grow, and then you would see it disperse. But it's just painted on. It's very, very... So who did it? Who faked the Zapruder film? Well, I wrote that movie too, which has yet to get made, about the guy who faked the Zapruder film.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
It's already, but it's just... I was going to do it with Cate Blanchett, and that fell apart at the last minute. Maybe I'll do it some other time. Oh, I would have jumped on that one. Yeah, me too. No, I mean getting her for the movie. Oh, she was great. I went down to see her and she said, yeah, I'll do it. She was going to do it for nothing. She just loved the part.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
That's about the length of one story. If you look at it, you'll see it. And the way that I first came to notice it was people quiet down at the theater. They come to the theater at 8 o'clock. And at 6 or 7 minutes after 8, there's a hush.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So the movie is about this woman who's grandfather made a lot of money in the movie business. Then it turns out he was working for the Air Force during the Area 51 alien incursions, right, in Roswell, New Mexico, and that he was altering the, doing the same thing with the UFO footage. So she chases that down. And that's not true either.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
And then people start trying to kill her because she's getting too close, too close, too close. Then it turns out he was the guy who altered the Zapruder film that they shot in, shot by Zapruder, who'd been in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. It was shot, obviously, in Dallas, but instead of giving it to Kodak in Dallas to develop, they shipped it to Los Angeles.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
The part that took out and why was that he was shot from the front. He wasn't shot from the back. He was shot... They blew his head apart from the front with several shots to the face. Well, that would have been Oswald. No, because it wasn't from that angle. It was from the street angle.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, no. No, no, I don't know. Also, Dershowitz was, Alan Dershowitz, I know pretty well, was clerking for one of the guys on the Warren Commission who told Dershowitz, who told me, da-da-da, that the whole thing was a cover-up, but that we had to do it for national security reasons.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So the other thing is, how do they know that this guy, they said, oh, we determined in one hour that this, A, that this guy is the shooter, and B, that there are no other shooters. They didn't know. No. And the other thing is the single bullet theory. Of course. It's nonsense.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Except everybody shut up and anybody who says, anybody who objects is a conspiracy nut.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well... My wife and I saw the UFO. We saw him. And I saw him twice in my life.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I agree. But here's the other thing I think, that if the front page, does people read newspapers anymore? I do. The New York Times still publishing?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I would love to know where Mogadishu is. Where is it? Come on. That's where I left it, right? My point, or it's going to be in the last place I look, but my point about the New York Times, it's funny that they're still publishing, is that if they came out with the big scare head tomorrow, Aliens Land in New Jersey, everybody would say, yeah, okay. Don't you think? Yeah, what else is new, right?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Not that they'd seen UFOs, but I got my plate full already, okay? I got to deal with this, I got to deal with that. So does aliens here. The gig is on the hate.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
That's exactly my point. Why at that point? Why not after two minutes or after 20 minutes? Because that's built into the human consciousness that at a certain time we start to look around to reassess our... Our situation, because we're basically animals. And I don't mean just the Democrats.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, the big changes in civilization Everything changed. First one was the industrial revolution. And the second one is the computer revolution. So we're in the midst of being, everybody in the Western world is undergoing a certain kind of moderate cognitive dissonance because nothing makes any sense anymore. So because they're undergoing cognitive dissonance, they do what somebody does.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
They lose their mind and start looking for people to blame. Right. whether that's Biden or whether it's Trump or whether that's the transsexuals or the transphobes, whether it's Israel or et cetera, et cetera, whether it's tariffs or lack of tariffs, people want, rather than having cognitive dissonance and being, in effect, basically catatonic by the change, they want to be able to become phobic.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
and say, okay, I get it. It's that, right? It's just like crazy people say, it's that guitar that's trying to kill me, right? Because they're nuts. So to a certain extent, we're nuts.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, and it's exactly what 51% of the people would say about the left.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, the problem is there's no party anymore. There's no Democratic Party anymore. It's completely fragmented. It might reform, but when they keep saying we have to find a message, we have to find a message. Well, if you don't have a fucking message, what are you doing being a political party?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But we will back that. But why are we living here? As Elon said, it's the most expensive weather in the world.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But, you know, my wife grew up in Scotland. And like anyone who comes from the British Isles, the moment they see California, they say, you know, everything I left behind, fuck it. You can't get me out of here. You know, it's nice. It's beautiful weather 400 days a year.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Because the problem about being overtaxed is, A, it's confiscatory. Is that because I got a couple bucks? Probably, but it's also because what's the money being used for? Because it's not being used for the cops. It's not being used for the fire department. The schools are the worst in the nation. Terrible. So why are the taxes going up?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I know how to fix that is elect him. Elect him, he'll go right back to the left.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You don't know what happened to me the next morning. I was on your show, and you said, are you implying that the election was stolen? And I was kind of iffy on it, right? Next morning, 8 o'clock, the phone rings. The woman on the phone says, Mr. Mann, what will you hold for the president? I said, wait a second, Biden is calling? It's Trump. It's during the Biden administration.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, but some of them aren't, some of them aren't. I mean, I really, Futterman is doing, is extraordinary because he's a Democrat who's actually has self-respect, the opposite of which is shame. They'll say any fucking thing in order to get a vote or money or airtime. I think that's a concept which is kind of foreign to Gavin Newsom. I get it.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
As the election time comes closer, the liars are going to come closer to trying to lure more people in. The funny thing to me is that anyone still listens to their pronouncements rather than looking at their record. Have you driven through the Palisades in Malibu?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I'm kidding. I did it because I was over there visiting somebody, and they gave me a pass to come back through. It's beyond anything. I mean, it's out miles and miles and miles. And then you get off of the PCH and drive up Sunset into the Pacific Palisades, one of the richest, most beautiful communities in the United States, which burnt down because they didn't have any water in the reservoir.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, here's what I think. I mean, whether they're a lesbian or not, I couldn't care less, and it certainly doesn't affect their ability to do the job. But the woman who I believe was the fire commissioner issued a statement when she first got the job saying that her first priority was going to infuse equity and inclusion and DEI. Yes, yes.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I would have thought it was to put the fucking water in the fire hydrants.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
He says, David, it's Donald Trump. I say, oh, Mr. President, thank you for calling. To what do I owe the honor? He said, I saw you on Bill Maher yesterday. You were great. He said, but you wussed out on the question of the stolen election. And then he talked to me for like 20 minutes. about how the election was stolen.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, I don't know. I mean, you know, as Lennon says, it always starts in the schools, right? That the schools got taken over by the— Horrible. Yeah, terrible. And so now we have people like Randy Weingarten and so forth clumping for the right of the schools to teach whatever they fucking want. Yeah. in contravention to the wishes of the parents and common sense.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So if you get the kids young, those kids are going to become the teachers, and if you get them young and you get them into the elite institutions, they're going to become the levers of government. And then you're in a lot of trouble.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, exactly so. I don't understand how any— Not a good person, but a rational person who wants to run for re-election can say we have to have men and women's sports and expect people to vote for them. And maybe they're right. I don't know. I just don't get it.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
That's a good question. And part of the answer is, as always, who benefited? Exactly so. And the answer is the mice who could play while the rats away, the cats away, the mice could play. So a lot of people have a very good time having a lot of power with absolutely no responsibility and thinking that they were secure from any oversight because of the press. And they were. But now we'll see.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, the business is over. You know that. Oh, but it's more that the business is over. Well, no, no. A, the business is over. B, I'm real old. And C, I'm working a lot. I'm just, you know, I'm not working as I was working before. 40 years ago in the last decade of the studio system. That's all gone. Right. But I'm making movies, I'm doing plays, I'm writing books.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Sure. Why not? Why not? I mean, the worst thing in the world for me was having to sit in a room... With a bunch of idiots, right, who knew nothing about movie making and explained to them what the script meant, right? And so through logic, you know, I didn't do it. I said, you know, make the movie or play me or trade me.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
But the only worst thing that I was to sit in a room with a bunch of idiots who don't know what the script meant and have no idea who I am. It's like Joe Mankiewicz. He came in when he was an old guy, and the studio executive said, what have you done? And Mankiewicz said, you first.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I got this movie, Henry Johnson, and I got that book. But you wrote that. Yeah.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I'm working on the Confidence movie, and I think I got somebody who's going to make it. And we got some really interesting people involved in that. And I got a couple of the little books coming out that... Over the years, especially during COVID, I did so much stuff that now it's all jammed up. And I made a huge mistake many decades ago.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I realized that because I like to write a lot that I needed to create other identities and names. And I should have done it, but I never did. You mean like...
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Oh, my God. I'm not talking about the votes. I'm not talking about counting the votes. That the Hunter Biden laptop was suppressed. The COVID information was suppressed. Zuckerberg said himself that the White House pressured him not to bring forward the information on the laptop. And Rasmussen said, had that come out, there would have been a 17-point spring.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Oh, I don't know. They seem to like my work a lot in Italy, and I got a lot of supporters. In fact, that Henry Johnson movie premiered at the Tarmina Film Festival. That was a world premiere. Other than that. I've always been very interested in education, and I wrote this novel that's coming out soon called Some Recollections of St.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Ives, which is a false memoir of a guy teaching for 40 years at a New England prep school. I'm very, very happy with that. So that's coming out next month.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, it's about education. It's about a fellow looking back and saying, really, what is education? What did we do with this school that's different than other schools? What have I learned? And so years ago I said to my wife, I want to write a book about education. She said, please, please don't. So instead I wrote a novel about a school.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I think so. But see, the other thing is the contributory factor is the internet because kids are addicted to these, you know, I got a bunch of kids and they came into the end of the addiction. They're addicted to this stupid fucking machine. which means that they don't see the world.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
And you walk around my neighborhood, you see not only teenagers on the stupid fucking machine, but guys pushing a baby carriage, and the fucking baby's on the stupid fucking machine. No, not a baby. Yes, indeed. I have pictures.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You're saying babies have cell phones? No, not a cell phone, whatever they are, the little games, right? So the thing about all these machines is that they're hypnotic. So they're just like cigarettes, right? They get you all jazzed up, and so they make you want to... Smoke more cigarettes because you're jazzed up. The periodicity of the machines is hypnotic. You can't look away.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So you have to give yourself a reason that you've been hypnotized. And you say, oh, it's because I like secession rather than the Game of Thrones, or because I need to stay involved, or because I need this, or because I need da-da-da-da-da. But to me, the giveaway phrase, I think I put it in the book, is I just have to. What are you doing? It's 10 o'clock. I just have to do this, right?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You don't say, I just have to have a drink of water.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, they can't discipline themselves to do anything because why should they? If their parents don't discipline them, the school doesn't discipline them, the church doesn't discipline them, the Boy Scouts doesn't, the military doesn't, why should they learn discipline?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
We learn discipline when we have to, not before.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
See, that's why we have to have school choice. Because if the government is going to tell you where you must send your kids, and you don't like what they're teaching you in school, you've just given your kid to the government.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I took... I had a couple of kids from a previous relationship who went to an impossibly elite, loathsome, woke seminary in Santa Monica. And then I had my daughter Clara, who dropped out of school when she was 14. because she just couldn't take it anymore, and she became an emancipated minor and went to work on a Disney show for two years. And she was great, so she didn't have any school.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
And then my son went to a couple of schools, and he just did something extraordinary. He's 25, and when he started to be 20, he says, Dad, I want to create a video game. I said, okay, good, good, good. You may not know every young kid of that age wants to create a video game. That's their dream. Five years later, he's taught himself code. He's created this video game.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
It's just released and it's on the internet. I said, how'd you do? He said, it's been out for a week. Oh, I just made $5,000. I said, what? This is a kid, you know, sitting by himself. So I should maybe cool my jets because he spent all these years sitting on his computer. He made this gorgeous video game. Now he's going to make another one. But was that enough to make a living?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I mean, is it enough to start? I said, no, dude, you're doing much better at your age than I was at your age. You know, I was just starting to, I was driving a cab for a living, right? He's working on a straight job too. I said, you know, one thing at a time. So what are you going to get out of going to school?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Also, why are these parents, these idiots sending their kids, especially the Jews, sending their kids to these quote elite universities? That's it's, it's insane, right?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
That's true. Boy, that's true. Because these colleges are living on fumes now.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Wait, wait, we play within a certain amount of rules?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Here's the thing. I don't want my tax dollars to go to give an endowment to Harvard.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Okay, so Trump says, wait a second, you have to do away with the anti-Semitism. They say, fuck you. They say, wait, no, no, no, you really have to. It's against the law. It's against the Civil Rights Act. You have to stop.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Exactly so. They said they were going to make some concessions. I don't know if they made any. But here's the thing. If it were blacks or gays or women, you wouldn't say... Absolutely. They made some concessions. Oh, my God. So Trump says, you have to fucking stop it. And they say, I'm not going to. So they say... So he says, okay, guess what? I'm going to have to raise you back.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
We're going to play hardball. That's what he's doing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Did you ever play poker? No. Okay. When you play poker... You have to dominate the table. You can't just say, I'm going to call your bet and see what happens. You have to raise people. You have to put people on the back. You have to make them respond to you. So that's what he's doing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Then don't play the hand. But if you do have the cards, you have to make people fear you and wonder what you've got. So that once in a while, when you don't have the cards, you... You muscle them and either you win or once in a while they call you and they find that you're bluffing so that the next time you can win. It's playing the long game.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You know, I don't know. I think he's gotten into the wrong... But that's your business. Yeah, he's gotten into the wrong pew. Right? The point is, listen, the thing about somebody who's in a position of great power is that they are enthralled to the people that they choose to advise them about the people that they should choose. Right? So we're the same thing.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
You go buy a house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to say, hmm, I want this. Who am I going to pick for the architect? Who am I going to pick for the designer? Who am I going to pick to do the permitting? And then you're fucking fucked. You better hope you guessed right. Right? So...
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Somebody is advising him about getting into the film, making our films better here by putting tariffs on foreign films. That's not going to make our films better here. The reason that films aren't better here is Hollywood, right? So the way to make the films better is to let the market work.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I love popcorn movies. You hate Titanic. Oh, that's a garbage piece of shit. But I went to a movie just the other day, and I ate a whole bunch of popcorn. But then I... But I think there was something in it.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Popcorn movie that I like... Well, you know, I like old movies.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Dude, he was joking about. Oh, boy, you swallowed the whole. Also, wait a second. Are you saying that he would not, okay, you want to adjudicate the last eight years where you're saying he was a Russian spy?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, but I have really good popcorn that we cook at home in an air popper.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
So you're absolutely correct. You know, he lived to be forever at some point. Tom Cruise has got to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I went to the communal experience of a movie to see this movie on the third street mall, which is dead, with a couple of friends. And the two of us were there with one other person. The mall is dead, not the Third Street Mall.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
When's the last time it's dead? There's nobody there. Why? Because it got closed down because of COVID, and then it closed down because of the riots, and then it closed down because of the homelessness. So 90%, I think, of the stores are empty. There's nobody there. Holy shit. It's terrible.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Also, I like what you said about your meeting with Trump. Because you just told the truth.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Yeah, there's no... You have no card. Listen, things died. The Whig Party died. It was replaced by the Republicans in 1860.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I hope that they do. I mean, people like Fred and people like Josh Shapiro, they're great. But, I mean, Pocahontas and the governor of Maine, who says, I insist on boys in the girls' bathroom, that's crazy. It's just freaking crazy. It's not just wrong. It's crazy.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
No, I don't think they want to destroy the family. I think they have destroyed the family. Okay. But they haven't destroyed my family. But they didn't really do it on purpose. What you're saying is I didn't know it was loaded, right? Yes. That's what Lee Harvey Oswald could have said, right?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
What we understand as dramatists is that nobody ever did something for a bad reason.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
He thinks he's doing everything for the best reason.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Wait, that's the first that I've heard. A, and B, if it's true, and I'm not saying that it is, how did that influence the election?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Here's my question. When last we spoke several years ago, you were stuck on this issue, you're still stuck on it. How come? Because it's not been resolved.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Wait, wait, wait. Excuse me. Now what you're doing is… injecting metaphysics into what might be a matter of... So the question is not what he did. The question is not even what he might do. What you've just said is one can't imagine what he would do.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Dude, he didn't have to concede the election. He lost. If somebody is beaten in a prize fight and the other guy gets the belt, the person who's beaten does not have to concede. It's not necessary. He's lost.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Oh, come on. Oh, come on. What? Come on. So wait a second. He didn't say the words, I concede, and so that meant people rioted?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
They don't see themselves as the loyal— Well, you, like me, have built a career out of nothing except talent and a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work, but you're full of shit. I don't understand when you say that he did not say the words, I concede, cause half the country, which you just said, to riot.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Okay, what do you think we'd be today if Kamala Harris had won? What, sir? What do you think we would be today if Kamala Harris had won? What would happen? Would Israel still exist? I don't think so. Still exist, of course.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Why wouldn't they exist? Because the Obama, Marxist, Leninist, Islamist that were taken up during the— Here's a good question that I would ask you is, who was running the country during the four years that Biden was out of his mind and demented?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Excuse me, I never said that. Yeah, you did. Show it to me, and I'll tell you what. Show it to me, and I'll give $10,000 to the charity of your choice. No, wait, no. I'm serious. No, wait a second. I'll find it. No, no, you're pretty good. I'll find it. Good. I'm going to give $10,000. You show it to me, and I will give $10,000 to the charity of your choice. Okay.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Because you're throwing around a lot of generalizations, and I have a bigger question. Not generalizations. Oh, really? What's the generalization?
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
I got another question. I sit down and all of a sudden you're attacking me about I got to come up. I have to come up with new idea about Trump and I have to talk. What the hell do you care? Let me ask you a question. First of all. Wait a second.
Club Random with Bill Maher
David Mamet | Club Random
Well, I'm not asking you to agree with me, but I got a good question. You started off with a very difficult question and a question which you have very strong views, and I do too. How would you like this part of the conversation to end so that we can move on to something else? What would end it to your satisfaction?