Ryan Holiday (2:18)

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. You can tell my voice is mostly back to how it was. We're all recovered over here for the most part, which is good. The famous line from Epictetus, you've heard.

Ryan Michler (2:33)

Me talk about it before.

Ryan Holiday (2:35)

He says that we're actors in a play. We don't control the role, we don't control the timing, we don't control what lines we Get. But we control how we play the part, right? We control how we say the lines. We control whether we play our role well. I think this is Epictetus looking at a world where he's a slave and Seneca is Seneca.

David Mamet (2:58)

Right?

Ryan Holiday (2:59)

And you could argue that, sure, society has made some progress since we have more agency, we have more freedom, individuals are more empowered. And this is all wonderful. But the. But the same fundamental reality exists, which is that we're not in charge. Things are happening. We're not the playwright of our reality. Right. We are not the director of the universe. And so it comes down to how we respond, how we play the role we've been assigned in life. And this quote is actually what I wanted to open my conversation with today's guest with David Mamet, one of the most influential playwrights and writers of the last half century, won a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, actually. I remember when I started in Hollywood, my boss sent me that famous scene from Glengarry. I don't know what that says about my boss or about where I was working, but it was my first interaction with his work. I've read a bunch of his novels, I've seen a bunch of his movies. Actually, the first movie premiere I ever went to in Hollywood was a David Mamet play. I saw this, this movie he did called Red Belt Got to Walk the Red Carpet. It was a whole cool other part of my life that I don't talk about too much anymore. But it was fascinating. And as it happen, he is a fan of the Stoics. You see little mentions here or there in his writings, including in the new novel that he did. I saw this great interview where he was talking about the Stoics as porch guys. Like guys that sit on their porch and shoot the shit. Which is an interesting, very Mamet esque read of the Stoics. That I guess is literally true. And again, you always get a different perspective on something you're interested in when you talk to a different person. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to David Mamet today. You have almost certainly seen some of his works over the years. He's written and directed films like House of Games, Spanish Prisoner Heist, the Verdict, the Untouchables. He did that HBO film about Phil Spector with Al Pacino, created the TV series the Unit. And he's published a bunch of non fiction books on writing, which I've read. And then he has this great novel called Chicago, which I loved. And he has a new novel called Some Recollections of St. Ives, which is really good, too. In today's episode, we talk about courage and restraint, why just saying the words matters more than overthinking, why he thinks talent is overrated, and what stoicism looks like when it's actually lived instead of admired from a distance. I don't agree with David Mamet on a lot of political stuff. He's an interesting, somewhat crotchety fellow. Just a couple days before we filmed this interview, he stormed off the set of one interview. But I like talking with people who are great at what they do, people who see the world differently, people who are iconoclastic and uniquely themselves. And he is certainly that. You can follow David on Instagram avidmamet. You can check out his latest film, Henry Johnson, on Apple TV, Prime Video or YouTube, and you can check out his new novel, Some Recollections of St. Ives. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Ryan Michler (6:05)

Well, I'm excited to talk in a. In another life, I was an assistant in Hollywood, and my boss, on my first day, he made me read what Makes Sammy Run, and then he made me watch the scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. He may have been missing the actual point of both that book and that scene, but it was. It was supposed to be motivational, I guess.

David Mamet (6:26)

One of you guys was missing the point of the scene, you say?

Ryan Michler (6:29)

I think he was missing the point of both. Both the scene and what Makes Sammy Run, which is supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a motivating tale.

David Mamet (6:36)

Yeah, yeah, maybe so.

Ryan Michler (6:39)

Across the desk from me was Eddie Bernard, who is the guy who connected us. And I remember the first movie premiere I went to was the premiere of Red Belt at the Egyptian Theater.

David Mamet (6:49)

Oh, great. Yeah, that's a good movie.

Ryan Michler (6:51)

Yeah, it was a surreal experience for me because I've been a fan for a long time. But anyways, I'm excited to chat. There's a quote from Epictetus who I know you like, because many years ago, actually, at that job, I read Bambi verse Godzilla, and you have an Epictetus quote in there. But whenever I talk to actors or directors, I give them this quote from Epictetus, and I'm curious to hear what you think he says. Keep in mind that you're an actor in a play. That is just the way the producer wants it to be. If it's short, if that is his wish, or long, if he wants it long, if he wants you to be the part of a beggar, see that you play it skillfully. And similarly, if the part is to be a cripple or an official or a private person, your job is to put on a splendid performance of the role you have been given.

David Mamet (7:38)

Yeah, that's great.

Ryan Michler (7:39)

How does that strike you as a writer and a director? Because I think most people are taking that quote from the perspective of an actor, which we all are, in the sort of role of life. But how do you think about that as a person who is often giving people the lines and the roles they have to play?

David Mamet (7:55)

Well, there's some wisdom in what he said. It's insufficient. Because actually what the actor has to do is show up and say the stupid fucking words. So that which they call talent and that which the critics call talent and the award people call talent is generally embellishment, but which is unneeded. Because if the script is good, it doesn't need an embellishment. If the script is bad, embellishment's not going to help it. So what the actor actually needs is courage. And it's actually stoic philosophy to just say the stupid fucking words. What is the one thing that you can't change the words? What is the only thing that you need is the words to stand up. As Cagney said, hit your mark, look the other guy in the eye and tell him the truth will be sufficient. What actors don't realize is that the difference between what's coming out of their mouth is and what they feel, which is always, oh, no, this isn't right, actually, is the play. It's been engendered in them by the play. Right? They say, I can't play Hamlet because I just. I don't know what I'm doing. Or I can't play Othello because I'm just so fucking jealous of this other guy, you know, or whatever. Because the words themselves will awaken whatever may be needed in the actor. The actor doesn't have to do anything about him except say them clearly. And that's why a lot of actors won't speak clearly.

Ryan Michler (9:24)

So the courage is in sitting with the discomfort, or the courage is in ceding the control to the playwright or the author, so to speak.

David Mamet (9:33)

It's both saying, what's your job to stand up there and speak clearly to the other guy? And you don't have to do the play. You don't have to act the play. You don't have to act the character because there's no such thing as the character. There's a guy standing up there saying some words. If you do that, that's going to awaken something in him. Which will be a new thing to deal with. So most actors, they're trained by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing. And they say, I have to prepare to say the lines in a certain way. Right. But if you asked them that, they would say, no, that's ridiculous. It's not that I have to say the lines in a certain way. It's that I have to realize what the character might be feeling at that moment so that I can say the lines in a certain way. Well.

Ryan Michler (10:19)

And then maybe the other virtue here is the restraint to not overthink and to simply be in the moment of what you're doing, which is in some ways a harder thing to do than to feel.

David Mamet (10:32)

Well, of course it is. The perfect proof is the rehearsal process. You don't have to rehearse a play for four months, right? You have to learn the lines and do the blocking, get up on stage, and the play will be clear. And we know this because if you see something done in summer stock, which we all used to do center stock, you got the script on Monday, you put it up on Friday night. You didn't have time to fuck around and say, where do you think this guy went to college? And it was not only. It was not only just fine, it was much better than the people who, in effect, prepare the thing in front of a mirror. As you know, they used to. Used to say they did in the old vaudeville days. But instead of preparing it in front of a mirror, they prepared front of the mirror, if I may, of their own fucked up consciousness. Right.

Ryan Michler (11:15)

In the ancient plays, you're not even you, right? You're wearing a mask. And so there's probably something simpler there where you are just saying the lines, because that's the whole thing. There isn't this sort of disintermediation of inserting this. This person who is pretending to be this person, because the. The mask is wearing a lot of that. That weight.

David Mamet (11:36)

Well, one of the wonderful things about performing in masks is that one understands what's happening in the actor without the face. That there's something ineluctable in the performance. That it's just. Where did that come from? We don't know, but there it is. It's kind of great.

Ryan Michler (11:54)

Yeah, I was just in Greece and I saw like an Aeschylus play and a Euripides play and with the traditional mass, and it was a very different experience. Even when you're watching a man play a female role, for the first few seconds, there's this suspension of disbelief. But you turn yourself over to the language almost immediately. Almost like watching a movie with subtitles, where you're not hearing the dialogue and you're just reading. The mind can do it pretty quickly to get lost in. In just a different format.

David Mamet (12:25)

Well, that's so true what you said. For example, if you go through television and you kind of scroll through what's on the air on television, you can turn off the sound and you can see what's happening between the two people immediately. But what's happening between them generally is narration. They're explaining either what they feel or explaining something that happened offstage. Right. Which was explaining the play to each other. Because that's what the people who fund and choose the entertainments understand as entertainment. How will they know? I have to make sure they. They. The stupid people understand.

Ryan Michler (13:01)

Yes. Yes, that's right. So what I've always taken the Epictetus quote about, you know, sort of, we're all actors in a play. I think it's true in more ways than one. Right. So you're the actor in a role.

Ryan Holiday (13:13)

You didn't.

Ryan Michler (13:13)

You didn't control the dialogue. You don't control how the director's blocking the shots. The director doesn't control the marketing budget and how the studio puts the film out. You don't control what the audience is going to say about it. You don't control what the weather is going to be or world events are going to be. When it comes out that all of our roles are relatively circumscribed, not just in something like the movie business, but all of us in life, and when we sort of really winnow down our responsibility to, like, what's actually being asked of us here, it creates a different opportunity for not just, I think, a kind of contentment, but also a different form of excellence, because you're not trying to do everything all at once. You're just trying to do your fucking job.

David Mamet (14:00)

Well. Yeah. Yeah. They say piloting an aircraft comes down to, what now? What next? What if?

Ryan Michler (14:07)

Yes. And the restraint, even probably, of modern piloting, of where Autopilot is doing a good chunk of it. And primarily your job is to not crash the plane by intervening when you shouldn't intervene.

David Mamet (14:20)

Yes. That's always a bad idea.

Ryan Michler (14:22)

So I remember the quote. I folded it when I first read it. But the quote you have in Bambi vs Godzilla is about, how do we accept the response of the audience? Epictetus. You quote him here. He's saying, who are these people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not the same with whom you are the habit of saying they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad? It is crazy. I think the stoics point this out time and time again, how much we seem to want the approval of people whose approval is meaningless to us. Like we want the approval of people we don't respect. It's madness.

David Mamet (14:57)

Yeah. The other thing is that now, in this wonderful plague of the computer age, people want to stake their happiness on the display of a little number in the screen. There's nobody there. How many people like me? There's nobody there. Right? Listen, there's two things in show business. One is the relationship with the audience, right? And the audience is pretty smart. In fact, Billy Wilder said, they're a genius. The audience is a genius. Collectively. Individually, they're idiots like you and me. There's the connection with the people in the audience. And the way you learn to perform is in front of an audience, because if you're not in front of an audience, everything is moot, right? But if. When you are in front of an audience, you get corrected, right? Now, just like boxing, you know, you can study forever, but you get into the ring with someone who wants something different, and you're going to learn something, right? It's no longer moot. And it's the same thing with an audience. You're playing to an audience, you can say, oh, this worked. Oh, that didn't work. And if your paycheck depends on figuring out why it didn't work, you'll figure it out, or you'll get out of the business. The other thing is dealing with the audience in a removed situation, for example, having a talk back after the play, or meeting a fan on the street or et cetera, et cetera. It's always heartbreaking because one realizes as the artist that there is no connection, that the great compliment the audience paid you is having a human connection with your performance, right? And so they and I, and you feel like we know that person will come up to them at a bar when they're having a screaming fight with their boyfriend and say, you know what? I hate to interrupt the but. Right, but. So the people who are fantastically successful in show business, for example, they all want to be liked, as we all want to be liked. And their income is, to a large extent, based on how many people like them. But they spend so much of that income insulating themselves from regular people, not because they're particularly standoffish or egoistical, but because they can't fucking stand it. Because there is no connection there.

Ryan Michler (17:11)

Yeah, well, what draws people primarily to the arts is a certain sensitivity, I think, or a certain attunedness to what's happening in the world, what's happening in people around them. And then so the, the irony or the, the. The curse of that is you're then perpetually looking for a kind of validation. You're going to be sensitive to criticism. You're going to be wondering what other people are thinking. And then there's also kind of an alienation, I think, that comes from making things that people consume. You're making it for yourself, but then at some point, you're kind of flinging it to the public and you've already moved on to the next thing while they're interested in what you've done or who you've been.

David Mamet (17:55)

Yeah, well, you know, as Shakespeare said, we this way, you that way. That's great risk, that's great wisdom. There's really nothing there, any more than there would be between coming up to a great thoracic surgeon at dinner and saying, you know what? Gosh, I'm so thrilled by what you did to my Aunt Agnes over there. Where do you get your ideas right?

Ryan Michler (18:17)

Yeah. And like you see it with athletes, too. You know, after the game, they go, you know, so where does that come from? Or how did you do that? What were you thinking?

Ryan Holiday (18:26)

And the answer is, they weren't thinking.

Ryan Michler (18:27)

At anything at all. They were doing their job. They were locked in. In the moment. So there's also this kind of alienation that I think you experience in any kind of elite performance where there is a kind of an otherworldliness quality to it. Like when you really get it right, obviously it's you that did it, but there's some part of you that you're not regularly accessing that came from it. Or a wooden be so extraordinary. I don't know if you agree with that.

David Mamet (18:54)

Well, of course I do. But there's something else about being about prominence. And Tolstoy makes this point in the epilogue to War and Peace. Everybody should read War and Peace. Best book ever written. It's a real page turner. He says, what is power, right? He says, the savage sees the pups of the railroad train. And then here's the woo, woo, woo, chugga chug. And then sees this big locomotive. So the savage thinks, obviously, since I saw the puffs first, the puffs were causing the railroad train. And he says the same is true of Napoleon. He says, why would 5 million Frenchmen march into Russia right? Because this one guy said so. No. On the other hand, there is such a thing as a personal power of the mass. What is it? And I think that's a question that we're all looking at today. When you see some people, you know, your viewership is free to determine the side that they loathe, who have nothing other than prominence. I mean, people who you wouldn't hire to. To take out your trash, who were running for huge public offices because they're prominent. How did they get prominent? Fuck, I don't know. But there they are. And so because they're prominent, those people and you and I tend to imbue them with superhuman qualities, whether your side of the aisle, in which case you're superhuman good. Or the other side of the aisle, in which case you say they're monsters. Right? When they're just. They're just prominent. We just saw them first.

Ryan Michler (20:26)

Yes. And the, the scarcity of it is what creates the value that very few people are that famous or are that empower for have done that. And then it becomes sort of its own motivating force.

David Mamet (20:41)

Yes. Also, we tend to believe, all of us, what we heard first, Right. And I was talking to a friend of mine, is a retired career cop, and she was talking about that. She said, if you ever get in the position, God forbid, the cops have to show up at your house. Be very careful what you tell them, because they're going to believe what they heard first. And to get that idea out of their mind is going to be difficult. And that occurred to me. The same thing is true in jokes. For example, the old joke about these missionaries are caught by the cannibals. The cannibals say, well, you know, you shouldn't be missionizing here. So we're going to give you two choices. Death or Kiki. Right. Everybody knows this joke, right? They say to the first guy, what do you want? Death or Kiki? He says, I'll take Kiki. So they shave him, they cut off his ears, they paint them blue, and they sodomize him. Then they turned to the second missionary and said, okay, I have two choices. What do you want? Death or Kiki. He says, I'll take death. They say, well, you shall have the death you desire. But first, Kiki. So I told a joke to some guy one time and I said, kik. But first Kiki. And I heard him mumbling, yes, but first Mungo bungo. But first. Because that was the way he heard this joke the first time, Right?

Ryan Holiday (21:57)

Right.

David Mamet (21:58)

But whether it's mungo Gungo or Kiki makes no difference whatever to the joke. Nonetheless, he was inspired to remember that I told the joke incorrectly. So that's the primal geniture of the idea. And you put that idea in a kid's head, you know, as a young kid, it's going to be difficult to get that idea out of their head. And what's even more difficult with kids because they don't realize that they've received an idea.

Ryan Michler (22:24)

Yeah, I've been talking about this because I have young kids, and I've just been sort of amazed at just how terrible most children's books are. You know, they're funny or they're cute or they're absurd, but there actually is no sort of lesson there. Right. And that the. The sort of purpose of stories in the ancient world, up until actually relatively recently, was to sort of tell these stories over and over again, to sort of inculcate the values that society was supposed to be built around. And so, yeah, it's. You hear these ideas over and over and over again as a kid, and they sort of become true. The stories that we tell in art and literature and movies and plays was supposed to be around repeating the same values and. And to watch people wrestle with those values, sometimes living up to them, sometimes falling short of them. But that was always the purpose of stories, I felt.

David Mamet (23:18)

Well, it still is. And that's the purpose of dramatists. Right. It's not like. Because drama and movies and TV and the stage has really become like the bad children's book. It's the regurgitation of ideas which someone thinks might be acceptable, but it's not entertaining. Because when we hear the bedtime story, we go to the movies, we want to suspend our disbelief, as you say, and be taken out of ourselves, because that's the real benefit. We're taken out of ourselves rather than being forced back upon our prejudices. So you can get people to stand up and scream about anything, right? Because at the end of a play, because we enjoy to stand up and scream, yay. Yay. Yay. But the real task is to take people. They say a person rises refreshed from prayers, his prayers have been answered, to give them something that took them just like the kid's bedtime story. Well, you can say you can't tell the kid the bedtime story about. And then everybody is eaten by a big. That scary wolf. But of course you can, right? Because. Oh, yeah, I get it, I get it. Wow. I really paid attention to that rather than the telling the kid, so what Education has become in this country is a is a corrupt and obscene version of the bad bedtime story. I'm going to tell you everything that some educator, whatever they are, figured would make you into a better person, right? But it's not the job of education to make people into better people. The job fucking teaching something.

Ryan Holiday (24:53)

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Ryan Michler (28:17)

So do you remember when you were taught the stoics, how did you come to find stoicism?

David Mamet (28:21)

It's a long time ago and I don't remember. But I've always adopted the principles as simple as possible, right? So I used to put on the engraving my watch. What hinders you? And I started using those principles very, very early on when I started forming theater companies and acting schools and say, wait a second, what's actually going on here? What's the scene actually about? And what can the actor actually do in the scene? And Stanislavski would say, you can't tell the actor to remember your childhood. Because when you say remember your childhood or what does this make you think of? Their first response is, ugh, right? They stop. Okay, yes, but so Stanislavski says, you can't ask an actor to do anything more complex than please go over there and open the window. So that was a whole phrase that changed my life. Oh, okay. I cannot ask the duh Being a human being, I realize I can't do anything more complex than open the window. The actors are human beings. They can't either. So what are we left with? What's the scene about? What's the one thing that the actor wants in the scene? Ask the actor to do that and then throw the rest of his stuff out the window.

Ryan Michler (29:32)

So why did you engrave what hinders you on your watch? What did that mean to you?

David Mamet (29:37)

It occurred to me, as the Stokes would say, that anything, that any sentence that becomes what I wish is a proclamation about something that's never going to happen. Oh, and the other one is, you know, I really should. So this becomes more important to me as I get older. I find myself saying, oh, I really should. And I realize that not as a way to revel in my own weep, weep, weep, how great I am because I'm no good, but rather, it's a prompt, right? The third thing is why do I always. Right. And I realized that from trying to apply the stoical principles that if you say, why do I always? That's another way to reward yourself for not doing anything. If you state it as a question, not why do I always. Well, there's no answer to it, but you state it as I always Right. Rather, oh, why do I always pick the wrong girl? Stated as I always pick the wrong goal. And then you can ask, why do I do that? Is that what I want to do? What would I rather do? And what are the things that would change my behavior?

Ryan Michler (30:41)

And the reminder of that, what hinders you to apply the stoic idea would be that actually what's getting in your way is the way or is a kind of opportunity. That's what the reminder is for you.

David Mamet (30:51)

No, you have to give it a name, right? What is actually stopping me? If I can name it, I can address it and I can perhaps defeat it, but if I can't name it, I say I'm going to go to some fucking therapist. An hour, five hours a week for 85 years, right? Obviously. Standpoint of a guy in space. What are you doing? You're enjoying yourself with the therapist, right? What are you calling it? You're calling it, quote, getting better. What does getting better mean? Well, I can't quite describe it, but.

Ryan Michler (31:24)

I've heard you say that you don't think there is such thing as character, that you sort of believe in the Aristotelian sense that we just are what we do.

David Mamet (31:32)

Well, that's true. I wrote that about the theater. There's no Such thing as a. The character. It's just lines on a page.

Ryan Michler (31:39)

Yes.

David Mamet (31:39)

Right. You say, where did the guy go to school? Or what might the guy. There's nobody there, there's just you. But the same thing as Aristotle says about people, character in general is simply, I saw what the guy did, and therefore I'm going to make an assessment of the guy's character. Right? I got enough information, I can make a pretty good assessment upon which I can base future decisions.

Ryan Michler (32:05)

Someone told me once, like, there's no such thing as love. There is only loving actions.

David Mamet (32:10)

Yeah.

Ryan Michler (32:10)

No, you don't believe that.

David Mamet (32:12)

No, I know there's such a thing as love.

Ryan Michler (32:14)

Then wouldn't there be such a thing as the character? If the idea is it's lines on the page or it is what you do, can't we say the same thing about love? Like, you can say you love someone, but if your actions run contrary to that, do you really.

David Mamet (32:26)

Does it really matter if your actions are contrary? It's not love, like somebody that. We have this terrible concept that we came up with 80 years ago called hate crimes. Right, but what are love crimes?

Ryan Michler (32:37)

I guess we're getting far afield. But I would agree there's no such thing as a love crime. But there is a crime motivated by pure financial interest and then a crime rooted by a specific hatred for a specific group. No.

David Mamet (32:50)

Well, what difference is that to the victim?

Ryan Michler (32:52)

There's no difference to the victim, but there's a difference to society and how we might treat this person, whether they could be potentially rehabilitated or whether they need to be locked up and kept from other people like that.

David Mamet (33:04)

Well, no, because that's why we have laws, right? Because the idea of the law is what is prohibited. Did the person do it? What is the penalty for having done it? Because you can explain away their motives forever, right? There never was a young kid brought into court whose mother didn't show up and say, johnny's a good kid. Right? That's what they do. So instead of the mother, you got a lawyer, as we used to say, a liar, whose job is to come and explain why what you saw actually didn't happen, or what they did actually wasn't. They didn't do it on purpose or it was some other guy. Right? So the problem is everything becomes, as my father would say, purely suppository.

Ryan Michler (33:49)

Interesting. Yeah. You seem to have a very kind of black and white worldview. I've always seen this in your interviews and in your plays. I mean, even your point about just say the fucking line or, you know, there's no such thing as a hate crime. Do you find that. That people make reality too complex? And you're. You sort of go towards simplicity or. How do you think about that?

David Mamet (34:08)

Well, you know, somebody said, what choice did I have? Nobody ever says, what choice did I have other than in the situation. But they did have a choice, but they don't want to face it. Right. So I'm interested in the theater and in drama and how people act. So that being the case, I'm interested in how I act. Right. Am I. Am I a good person? I don't think particularly so. Am I better than anyone else? I don't know. In some places, yes, and in some places, no. But I would like to, if I were a better man, apply the same strictures to myself that I'd like to apply to others. Well, why did XYZ do that? Okay, Dave, don't you do it.

Ryan Michler (34:49)

Have you always just found yourself fascinated by what makes people do what they do? Or are you fascinated more in the rhythms of how they communicate and present themselves to the world? Or is it some combination of the two?

David Mamet (35:02)

That's a very good question of two things. I've always been fascinated by white people do. Because I didn't understand what they did. And I grew up, I guess, with a sense of wonder because people were doing some crazy fucking things around me, and it was called human beings. And the other thing was that they kept telling me I didn't understand because I didn't. So I was given over to one of the great joys of life and one of the great joys of childhood, which is daydreaming. So we're taking that away because of these devices. And there's a great piece in Anna Karenina where Karenin is trying to correct his son Stepan, and he's trying to teach him about a verb and an adverb, right? And the kid is looking out the window and he's daydreaming, and Karanen's getting very mad at his son. We have to learn the difference between a verb and an adverb. And the kid is looking out the window and he's looking at a bird, and he's thinking, wow, look at that bird on the tree. The shape of the sitting bird absolutely mimics the shape of a leaf. What kind of a world is it that the creator of this world has adapted? How did that work? And the kid is thinking these incredibly deep things, which is what daydreaming is, right? And Cram comes over and he whacks the kid. So I was that kid. I don't know if you got a chance to read that book, St. Ives, did you?

Ryan Michler (36:31)

I haven't read St. Ives yet, but I love Chicago. That's one of my favorite novels.

David Mamet (36:34)

Oh, thank you. I'm very proud of that. I think you're gonna like St. Ives because it's a book about stoicism. It's a imagined memoir of a prep school. And it's my imagined vision of a perfect school of, you know, there's a teacher and a student and a board for them to sit on. I'm very. I'm proud of it. I don't think I've ever said that about anything before, but I'm really proud of that book.

Ryan Michler (36:58)

Well, you have a line in there about the Stoa, and I think you've said this before, that not everyone knows that Stoa just means porch. And you say the Stoics are porch guys. Yeah, that they're sort of vision. Zeno's this guy, and I was just there at the Stoa pokele. That they're just sort of sitting on this porch, this long marble hallway supported by columns, under some paintings, and they're just kind of shooting the shit about life. We tend to think of philosophy as something, I don't know, much more abstract and theoretical and highfalutin than that. But it's really just people talking about why we do what we do and does it need to be that way? Is there a better way to be a person in the world that's slightly less frustrating and aggravating and miserable?

David Mamet (37:48)

Yeah, because dealing with actors and dealing with producer, dealing with the audience, it's all. Does it work? Does it not work? What are you trying to do? What's the scene about? Am I getting to it? Do I need this line? Is the audience beating me to the punch? Do I need another line? Does the scene work? What's wrong with the fucking play? And it always comes down to what is the objective of the. Of the protagonist? Everything which is not the objective of the protagonist. You gotta throw it out.

Ryan Holiday (38:17)

Have you read any of Seneca's plays?

David Mamet (38:19)

No, I don't think I've read the plays. No.

Ryan Michler (38:21)

It's fascinating that, you know, one of the great stoic philosophers who's also, you know, sort of trapped in this dysfunctional relationship with Nero, who's losing his mind, is also, like, a famous playwright. And I sometimes think about what Seneca must have thought about releasing things to an audience, you know, and he. He says that, like Cause he. He sort of does go sideways. You know, he gets caught up in. In Nero and he gets corrupted and, you know, is. Is complicit. And. And then he writes this in one of his things, he's like, but the. One of the things that I learned being a playwright is that the audience will forgive a bad play if you give it a good ending. And Seneca has this sort of magnificent ending where Nero demands his suicide and he sort of goes out bravely. And so Seneca, for thousands of years has been admired as this philosopher, but also proves this point that, you know, you can get them, you can fuck up the middle, but if the beginning and the end are pretty good, the audience will stay with you.

David Mamet (39:21)

Maybe. I mean, here's the thing. When the lights go down, you have their attention, right? It's yours if you can keep it for that first moment. The question is, can you keep it for the second moment? And the thing about the second act is an old joke. Guys are sitting around in New York, off Broadway at a theater, and one of them says, how's your play? And he says, I'm having second act problems. Everyone starts to laugh because everybody has second act problems. Because the whole point of the second act is it's a problem which the protagonist cannot figure out. He spends the first act trying to figure out the problem as he understands it. And at the end of the first act, he turns away. He says, I was completely wrong. I don't understand the problem at all. So the second act is in the belly of the beast. As Joseph Campbell said, what in the world is going on here? So it's very hard to figure your way out of that as a writer, because what you're going to figure out, if you can stick with it, is your position's the same thing as the protagonist. You have misunderstood the play.

Ryan Michler (40:22)

Yes. And the wrestling with what the motivations are and how they're gonna get through it, that's the whole thing. You can set up an interesting premise and you can come to a satisfying conclusion, but the why is really what haunts us. And I do think that's the interesting thing about Seneca. There's a fascinating book by James Rahm, who's a professor at Bard, about Seneca in his time with Nero. And I find it endlessly fascinating that this. This guy who writes this, you know, beautiful philosophical writing, you know, believes in these principles, would spend so many years, you know, working with this deranged brute who's trying to murder his family and, you know, whatever. But that. That is, I guess, ultimately what makes drama interesting? The. The infinite complexities of people and why they. Why they do what they do.

David Mamet (41:12)

Well, yeah, so that's the task of a direct. Nobody knows how to direct the play anymore. I mean, there may be some, but I haven't met them. Because it all comes down to throwing away everything, which is not the task of the protagonist to obtain a specific goal, because the audience might go along with it, as they do in movies, because they got the 10, two people pretending to have intercourse with you guys shooting each other with guns. Right. Try to keep people, in effect, reducing all film to pornography, because you got to give them a treat once in a while to keep their attention. As somebody said to Bette Davis, you have to sleep with guys in order to get ahead and show business. And she said, yeah, if you don't have any. Any talent. Right.

Ryan Michler (41:58)

The story you told about, you know, the student who's being lectured on, on words, when they're looking at it, nature. I have a story in the book that I'm just finishing about where he falls in love with painting. He has this talent. He wants to be a painter. And so his parents try to send him to this fancy painting school, and instead he gets drafted into the French army. And they try to use this as leverage. They go, look, we can buy your way out of the army if you agree to go to school. And he's like, no, the army is exactly where I want to be. Wants to be sent into an African regiment because he thinks the light in Africa is going to be incredible. And he'd been particularly influenced by Delacroix's paintings, which a lot of which he'd done in Africa. And so this is where he gets his real education as a painter, is in the army, you know, sort of marching under the beating sun in North Africa. It's this weird impulse we have with education that we try to sort of sit at your desk, shut up, do the stuff, when maybe that's not actually where we're going to learn the things we need to learn. And that's what I like about the idea of the Stoics. Just sort of sitting on the porch shooting the shit.

David Mamet (43:11)

Yeah, I met a couple of great teachers and very fortunate to meet a couple of magnificent teachers in my life that changed my life and changed the way that I. Because to a certain extent, my life spent 50, 60 years as a teacher. The question is, Dave, you and every other in the west has been abused by the education system to some extent.

Ryan Michler (43:35)

Yes.

David Mamet (43:36)

Whether that was physically abused, sexually abused, mentally abused, or just bored the fucking flinders. Why is everybody sitting on their ass listening to some fool read from an electric plan? And so I've thought a lot about, you know, as we say to California over here, the taxes are seen and what are they being used for? God knows. But we got the worst schools in the country. So I thought a lot about teachers lately. In fact, they wrote a play about this called Oleanna. It's this professor who's trying to do good, and this young woman was trying to understand what's required of her, and they end up killing each other. It's a classical tragedy, right? They're both trying to do good and they both end up destroying each other. So the question is, what are we doing for children?

Ryan Michler (44:24)

Did you feel like you had a good education?

David Mamet (44:27)

Well, I had a terrible education. I went to the Chicago public schools and the teachers had been born in the 19th century, and it was all lined up and sit down and shut up and blah, blah, blah. And I failed every course because I just wouldn't study, wouldn't do it. Just bored the fuck out of me. Then by accident, When I was 13, 14, I went to this great school in Chicago, a private school called the Francis Parker School, which at that time, spectacular because several of the teachers had been Holocaust survivors. I'm talking about in the 60s who got out under Hitler. And these were people who had multiple doctorates from the universities of Europe, and they came to Chicago and they couldn't get work because they didn't have a teaching certificate. So the Francis Parker School hired them. And I worked with some of those teachers, and they changed my life. One of the ways they changed my life is they said, you're actually really smart. They didn't say, you're really smart, but although I was failing the courses, and one of them said, a hole in Latin grammar is like a hole in your shoe. Fix it.

Ryan Holiday (45:47)

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Ryan Michler (48:20)

You know, the question that kids ask is like, why am I learning this? What's the point of this? And the impulse that we have to dismiss that question because we don't have a good answer is probably in and of itself the indictment of most of the educational system in this country.

David Mamet (48:40)

Well, the good answer is somebody who's interested in transmitting what Milton Friedman said. It's a heritage. He said the way that we do things here is actually a communal heritage. Right? We do this, we don't do that. It's a communal heritage. So that's what schools should be doing rather than quote good works, Right? Because the question is how can you take a kid and have them take French for four years and he can't order a cup of coffee, Right? So that some people like the Waldorf schools or maybe like the Montessori schools so you don't have to teach them to read. You know, let them come in when they're eight and they can learn everything that they need to know in three months. Which of course they can.

Ryan Michler (49:23)

Yes. When they have a motivating reason for wanting to learn things. That's always going to be a more powerful force than discipline, structure, consequences, et cetera. It's always been interesting to me because I hear from lots of parents who'd be like, what's a good, you know, introduction to the stoics for my 13 year old or for my 15 year old or my 17 year old. How do I introduce my kids to these stuff? I'm fascinated by our impulse to find intermediary works and not to give them or encourage them or make them feel that they are capable of reading and understanding the classics. Right. Like 16 year olds in ancient Greece and Rome were reading the Odyssey and memorizing it. And we sort of baby our kids when it comes to ideas in books. We need people to explain the things to them as opposed to giving them these difficult, imperfect, complicated, even violent and, you know, inappropriate texts and having them really wrestle with, with those ideas and that you understand that this is not a text you're supposed to read one time, but something that you're supposed to read and reread and evolve with as you, as you evolve and grow yourself.

David Mamet (50:46)

Well, yeah, see the great upheaval which we're experiencing in the west now as it's basically the second of the third Industrial revolution when everything changed. When the Industrial Revolution, steam came in and mass production came in, the people left the farms. So all of a sudden everything changed. So then we have the second part of the industrial revolution, the end of the 19th century, people have left the farms and they came to the cities for industrialization. And so now we see that that industrialization of this and the cities has died because of the Internet. So the people are out of their fucking minds. The question is to what can they recur? And the answer to most of them is fear and hatred.

Ryan Michler (51:31)

Yeah, these sort of ancient, timeless, sort of primal forces of humanity. The energy that's always there sort of right beneath the surface.

David Mamet (51:40)

Yeah, sure. Because the people in Salem village, right, 1641, was, were under constant threat of Indian attack. They were being savaged constantly. They just couldn't stand it. Right. Drove them crazy. So they decided to start burning old women at the stake. Right. That went along for a couple of few, couple of years and then they kind of forgot about it and said.

Ryan Michler (52:04)

Okay, well, the energy burns itself out a little bit or things stabilize and Then you don't need the catharsis the way that you did before.

David Mamet (52:12)

That's right. So the same thing is happening now, except instead of old women, it's the Jews. But that's been happening for a while, so we're kind of used to it.

Ryan Michler (52:21)

Antisemitism being sort of the oldest virus that there is.

David Mamet (52:25)

Yeah. Been around a while.

Ryan Michler (52:27)

And you see demagogues, whether you're talking about those in Greece or Rome or in the Middle Ages or in the Great Depression, they sort of tend to tap into the same forces and have the same kind of energy. It might change a little bit regarding what medium it's happening in or, you know, the. The person's individual style. But demagogues basically do what demagogues do.

David Mamet (52:51)

Yeah. So the somebody says, Dennis Prager, he said, is the Torah about what's happening? He said, no, the Torah is about what's always happening. So the Torah, the Old Testament, is about human nature. New Testament's about aspiration, but the Old Testament's about human. Human nature. And that's where the Declaration and the Constitution come from, is people got together. And it wasn't an aspirational document. It was a how to guide to keep human nature in check.

Ryan Michler (53:25)

Yes. It was looking at the sort of classical lessons of history and saying, hey, how do we encourage the positive forces in humanity and put up guardrails against the negative forces in humanity and set up an imperfect system in an imperfect world that's a little bit better than how we've done it before.

David Mamet (53:48)

Yeah. So if you see today, demagoguery is, I know what to do. I'm better than everybody. You can be better everybody if you vote for me. And we're going to have some golden age if you just hate the people I tell you to hate and give you fucking money. But if you look at the Constitution, it was obviously written by guys who'd been around the block, who'd been involved in business and got cheated or cheated each other, or guys who got into X, Y and Z. It's like hiring a safecracker. Right. To design your security system. Right.

Ryan Michler (54:21)

I've always been struck by how young the founders were. Right. And so, you know, I think the average age is like 35. It's not so much that they were incredibly personally experienced, although many of them were, but it's also that they had borrowed from, you know, 2,000 years of experience from the ancients and from the greats. I mean, I joke about this all the time, but the most famous play in 18th century America that the founders had seen over and over and over again, in addition to Shakespeare and all the others that they'd watched was Joseph Addison's Cato. Right. They watched this play about the Stoics so many times that most of the great lines in the Revolution are them just cribbing from Addison in the way that somebody might say, you know, coffee is for closers or something today. And if you don't have a familiarity with the canon, you're not going to recognize that that's a riff. But if you do, then you know what to recognize.

David Mamet (55:18)

Yeah, indeed. So, I mean, the more I look at the Constitution, the cooler it is because somebody say, yes. Oh, well, this is going to be fun. They got to wait a second. The other guy's saying, no, no, no. If this was the law, here's what I do to circumvent it. Oh, dude. They said, okay, well, we gotta take care of that. So I said that the Constitution comes down to this. One child cuts the cake, the other child gets the first piece.

Ryan Michler (55:44)

Well, and I do think. And we probably disagree politically, I do think the problem with where we are now is not any one person, but that the whole system was about a set of interlocking or interconnecting offices that were supposed to be dependent. The fundamental assumption of the founders was that each individual office or branch or representative would zealously assert their prerogatives. Right. And that this would. These would check each other. So, look, again, you could think whatever you want about Trump, but we'd be in a very different situation if we had Trump and a strong Senate and a strong Congress, like if we had a working legislative branch, it would relieve a lot of the pressure on the judicial branch, and it would also reduce the incentives for the President to be such a unitary executive. I think one of the weird parts about the moment we're in today, to me, is the willingness with which a lot of people who supposedly strived very hard to get the power they have seem to be willing to hand that power over to a charismatic demagogic figure.

David Mamet (56:57)

Well, I'm not going to ask you who you're talking about, but the question to me is looking at the current mess, which is called human nature, right?

Ryan Michler (57:07)

Yes.

David Mamet (57:08)

What the framers said is they said, here's how we're going to run our country. The question of government is not what's right. The question of government, the way you keep it limited, is you say, what's the law? Because our ability to determine what's right changes from person to person and changes over time. What you think is right. Now, you didn't think it was 12, and it's not when you're going to think who's 80. And so this is really the difference between a Christian and a Jewish understanding, because the Christians say, yes, it's a great idea. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right. In the Torah, it's written very, very, very differently. It says, what is hateful to you. Do not do to your neighbor. Because I might want to do unto others what I want to do unto me. They might not like it. Right.

Ryan Michler (58:00)

Yeah.

David Mamet (58:01)

It's not that I think I'm right all day long. I know I'm right just like you do. Right. But I can restrain myself from doing what I know hurts me. And so that's what the Constitution is a much more Old Testament than a New Testament document.

Ryan Michler (58:17)

Yeah. It's a set of duties and obligations that you're supposed to uphold even when you don't like it, even when it runs counter to your party interests, even when it's short term. So I think, yeah, we're in a moment where it's like, hey, Congress apportioned this money. It has to be faithfully executed by the executive branch, even if they don't like it. If they don't like it, then they have to go through Congress to fix it. Right. That's how that's supposed to work. And I do think the founders perhaps overestimate it, or perhaps it says something about the modern world that this idea of duty and responsibility, you know, that the idea, hey, I swore an oath, or, hey, this is the job of a lawyer. I'm supposed to protect my client, even if I think they're guilty. That there's this kind of, as you said, Old Testament, but also sort of classical sense of duty and obligation that I. I do feel is missing in the modern world.

David Mamet (59:13)

Well, it's missing in every world. Right. Human nature doesn't change. Tolstoy, my guy, again, says it's a mistake to say in these times as if human nature ever changed. Everybody's all. Everybody's always looking for an out. And any law is going to have to be executed, if not with precision, perhaps with some restraint of conscience. And if you don't have that, it doesn't matter what the law is.

Ryan Michler (59:37)

Right. One of the knocks on the Stoics is like, oh, it's a little. They're a little depressing, you know, and it's like, the life is fucking depressing. What are you talking about these were people who were exiled and had their families executed and lived through plagues and wars and disasters. There is something, I think, too, about the modern world, where we expect everything to be awesome and wonderful, and that's just not what history is.

David Mamet (60:02)

Well, the problem with that, of course, is that, as they say, what the eye does not see, the heart will not lust after. So we're constantly seeing these images on these stupid fucking machines, which one didn't see in the olden days. And they get us all ginned up. Who's strong enough to resist it? Nobody. Nobody is. So the only way to resist is to do without it. And because it's an addiction to say, because what is news? News doesn't say standby, news flash, everything's great. News is always inciting us to want more news because it gets us mad and it gets us frightened. And in that, it's no different than a cigarette, Right? I want a cigarette because I'm bored. I want a cigarette because I'm happy. I want a cigarette. Something triggers in me a desire for the cigarette. Something triggers in me a desire to turn the stupid machine. And people will always say, why you on that machine? And what does the other person always say? You know, ryan, we're out to dinner. Why are you on that machine? What do you say?

Ryan Michler (61:12)

Oh, I'm getting an email. I, you know, there's always something.

David Mamet (61:15)

Yeah. And it's usually prefaced by the explanation is, I just have to do this.

Ryan Michler (61:21)

Yes, yes. So just this one little thing.

David Mamet (61:24)

Yeah, but. So if you break it down. Well, no, you don't. You're telling me you explained to me that you're an addict. I have to do this.

Ryan Michler (61:32)

Sure. The purpose of the cigarette is to smoke the next cigarette. That's what it's about. And each news story, if the news story was conclusive, then you would not have to watch any more news. The whole point of the news is to leave it just unresolved enough. You will remain tuned in or you will check in tomorrow. Otherwise you just read a book and be done.

David Mamet (61:55)

Yeah. So I was having a bad night the other night, hanging out with my wife Sunday night, and it was very, very Sunday Nightingale, right. And I was going, oh, weep, weep, weep the world will weep, weep, weep, my children oh, weep, weep, weep. And she said, you know, this is the grandmother of all Sunday nights tonight. I said, yeah, you're right. It's. It's terrible. What should we do? She said, oh, I know, let's read the Torah. So we did. We read the Torah. Read the Torah portion. So it was. It was great because we made that choice rather than saying, oh, what can I do? I'd give up drinking, but I'm an alcoholic. Right, Right. We made. Made a physical choice to get ourselves out of our own mind by doing something that interested us. And at the end of an hour, we were refreshed. Right. Because we'd heard the word of God, maybe, but certainly because we'd spent the hour doing something which was more interesting than our own sick self examination.

Ryan Michler (62:59)

Whenever I pick up my phone, whenever I go on social media, I never put it down and think, I'm so glad I did that.

David Mamet (63:05)

Yeah.

Ryan Michler (63:06)

But almost every time I turn to some old, you know, beautiful work of art or literature, I'm proud of myself. I feel better. I put some distance between me and the moment or distance between me and. And my own thoughts, and I learned something. We'd all be better off if we did more of that, I think. Well, that's a lovely place to wrap up. I'm a big fan and I'm honored we got to chat.

David Mamet (63:28)

Me too. Please do. Read that book, St. Ives. I think you're really gonna appreciate it.

Ryan Michler (63:32)

It got sent a little late. It's on my list now.

David Mamet (63:35)

Excellent. Well, it's terrific talking to you.

Ryan Michler (63:37)

Likewise. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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