440: David Mamet—Whore That I Am

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
Episode 440: David Mamet—Whore That I Am
Release Date: June 17, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 440 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, host Mike Rowe engages in an in-depth conversation with the renowned playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet. Joined by co-host Chuck, the episode delves into Mamet's illustrious career, his perspectives on storytelling, and his recent endeavors, including his latest book, The Politics, Horror and Entertainment.

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Meet David Mamet

David Mamet is celebrated as one of America's greatest living playwrights, known for his sharp dialogue and exploration of themes like power, corruption, and the American dream. His influential works span across theater, film, and literature, with notable plays such as American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and films like House of Games and Wag the Dog.

Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe ([00:10]): "This is great."

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Navigating Legalities and Releases

Mike Rowe opens up about the challenges of handling traditional legal releases for the podcast. He shares an amusing anecdote about David Mamet's meticulous approach to revising the standard release forms, leading Rowe to overhaul his release process to foster more genuine and human-centric interactions.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([07:37]): "Well, yes, I mean, there's a famous story that a kid has a pet..."

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The Evolution of David Mamet's Political Views

A significant portion of the conversation centers around Mamet's political transformation. Once identifying as a "brain dead liberal," Mamet recounts his journey towards skepticism and conservatism, influenced by readings and interactions with intellectuals like Dennis Prager and Thomas Sowell. This shift resulted in strained relationships within his former liberal circles but also led to forming new alliances with conservative thinkers.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([56:05]): "The two things happened independently... I was doing a play in New York with Nathan Lane."

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Storytelling: Plays vs. Screenplays

Mamet shares his insights into the differences between writing for the stage and writing for film. He emphasizes the importance of sound in screenwriting and the challenges of maintaining audience engagement in plays. According to Mamet, authenticity in storytelling often requires minimalistic production values, allowing the narrative and characters to take center stage.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([18:35]): "The set is not important. Here's how we know that."

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The Business of Lies and Betrayal

The discussion takes a deeper turn as Mamet explores themes of deception and betrayal, which are prevalent in his works like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. Drawing parallels between his personal experiences of feeling blacklisted and the characters he creates, Mamet underscores the profound impact of trust and its betrayal in both personal and professional realms.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([73:47]): "The question is, what do I do next?"

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The Decline of Civil Discourse and Open Cities

Mamet articulates his concerns about the decline of civil discourse in modern society. He uses historical references, such as Yeats' poetry, to highlight the erosion of respectful dialogue and the rise of polarization. The concept of "open cities," where societal structures are in flux, serves as a metaphor for the current political and social climate, where conflicting ideologies collide without constructive resolution.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([76:13]): "Power hates a vacuum."

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Humor and Short Stories in Modern Times

Despite the heavy themes, Mamet and Rowe infuse humor into their conversation, reminiscing about classic jokes and the art of short storytelling. Mamet reflects on the evolution and decline of the short story as a literary form, attributing its waning popularity to the disappearance of magazines that once served as platforms for such narratives.

Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe ([96:27]): "But that may be part of why your brain was, like, struggling to make sense of it."

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Collaborative Creativity and Future Projects

Towards the end of the episode, Mamet discusses his collaborative process and upcoming projects, including the movie Henry Johnson. He highlights the importance of maintaining creative integrity and the challenges of navigating the entertainment industry's demands without compromising his artistic vision.

Notable Quote:

David Mamet ([81:28]): "What Imagines pretty much everywhere."

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Conclusion

Episode 440 offers a candid and comprehensive look into David Mamet's life and work. From his experiences with censorship and political shifts to his thoughts on storytelling and the state of modern discourse, Mamet provides listeners with valuable insights into the mind of a literary giant. The episode underscores the enduring relevance of authentic storytelling and the imperative need for civil dialogue in today's fragmented society.

Final Notable Quote:

Mike Rowe ([105:35]): "Really an honor, a privilege, a pleasure, truly."

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Overall, this episode serves as an enlightening exploration of David Mamet's contributions to the arts and his perspectives on contemporary societal issues, making it a must-listen for fans and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they say you should never meet your heroes, but they're wrong.

[Chuck]

Totally. Are you kidding me? This is great.

[Mike Rowe]

Terrific. I haven't been nervous, really, on this podcast. I've been apprehensive because I don't often understand, you know, like, early on the tech and, like, really what we were doing. But I haven't been nervous interviewing anybody. And I wasn't really nervous interviewing David Mamet, but I was in my head a little bit. Just a little bit.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, I was right there with you, man. And I was just watching, and I.

[Mike Rowe]

Was like, this episode is called Whore. That I am.

[Chuck]

And why is it called that, Mike?

[Mike Rowe]

Because David Mamet, among many other excellent decisions, had the good taste to marry Rebecca Pidgeon, an amazing actress. And she suggested to him, apparently, that he should proceed all of his interviews by introducing himself or that I am, and then make his point. Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Boy, that made me laugh. A lot of things made me laugh in this conversation. If you're not up to speed, David Mamet is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director, author. Widely recognized for his distinctive dialogue style, an exploration of themes such as power, corruption, and the American dream. But why would I read all that when I can just say, one of your first plays, Chuck, that you ever did.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Was a Mamet play.

[Chuck]

I think it was 1983. I don't even know that it had been on Broadway for very long. Couldn't have been at all, because I saw a preview performance of American Buffalo with Al Pacino and an actor by the name of James Hayden who went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. We had the very same acting teacher.

[Mike Rowe]

The Postman Always Rings Twice, the Verdict, the Untouchables, House of Games. Ah, the things change. Homicide, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag the Dog, the Spanish Prisoner Heist, Hannibal. I mean, and that's just films. Is screenwriting or directing? You go down through his TV and his literary and his nonfiction, just blah, blah, blah. The guy, he's done a million things. I mean, he may be the greatest living playwright. Reasonable people could disagree, but I wouldn't.

[Chuck]

I totally agree. And I'll tell you, my favorite movie of his that he also directed was. Was State and Maine.

[Mike Rowe]

State and Maine, 25 years ago.

[Chuck]

Just love it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. So why was I in my head? Because I sent David Mamet a traditional talent release that everybody on the podcast has to sign. I've signed 100 of these things over my life, and I hate them. Everybody hates them. But you just kind of sign them because the lawyers run the world. But, you know, if you're David Mamet and you're 76 years old, you read it and you go, yeah. Oh, bullcrap. Yeah. And then you start making notes and crossing stuff out. So he said, the greatest living playwright sends me back a release outlining what he'll do and what he won't.

[Chuck]

He's rewritten the release? Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. Now what am I going to do? I'm like, am I going to rewrite David Mamet? Wow. I don't want to rewrite David Mamet, but my partner, you know, and my legal team, like, well, look, if you want to be able to put this on YouTube, you're going to have to ask him to rewrite, rethink it. Long story short, we had some release drama and it led. And we'll talk about this later in the conversation, but it led me to completely rewrite the whole thing without lawyers.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I still need to get it approved, but my goal is just to get all the legal mumbo jumbo out of these things and just talk to people like they're human beings. Because, honestly, I think that's what pissed him off. You know, there was just stuff in here that was kind of silly, and it wasn't really gently proffered.

[Chuck]

Yes. He objected to the word alter.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. He doesn't want to alter his image, which is fair.

[Chuck]

Well, not his image, but his points or whatever.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, it's one. He said, like, look, Mike, I mean, honestly, I sign this, you could put a beagle head on my body and make me bark sounds, and I couldn't do anything about it.

[Chuck]

I was like, well, technically, I guess we could.

[Mike Rowe]

Technically, I suppose I could.

[Chuck]

Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I'm not gonna do that. But whore that I am, I am gonna tell you this. This is, I think, one of the only episodes we're going to do that's going to come with a. What's the warning that has to accompany?

[Chuck]

Well, basically, I'm marking this episode explicit, which isn't really explicit, but let me just say this is David Mamet. And if you're familiar with David Mamet, you know that he uses colorful language, and this would just be nothing but a series of duck quacks if we.

[Mike Rowe]

And honestly, you know what, man? You and I have talked about this a bunch. We're all grownups here. We ought to be able to talk freely. But I also know, and I'm very, very lucky to have a lot of families who listen to this or a lot of kids who often listen to this. And if you're okay with them hearing the F bomb explode multiple times.

[Chuck]

But if you're not, you have been warned.

[Mike Rowe]

You have been warned. Because whore than I am. I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that this is an excellent episode with a living legend. Yes, that gets a little potty mouthed here and there.

[Chuck]

Little bit, little bit, little bit, little spicy.

[Mike Rowe]

I loved it. I bet you will too, whore that I am.

[Chuck]

How many times you gonna say that?

[Mike Rowe]

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[Chuck]

It's Company Cam.

[Mike Rowe]

The legendary David Mamet has just handed me his phone and it says, great playwright and filmmaker David Mamet just wrote an incredible new book, the Politics, Horror and Entertainment. David is a special man and talent. Get this book now. And of course, now is in caps with an explanation point. Well, I guess this is it. Your ship's finally come in.

[David Mamet]

Well, you got to tell them who the quote's from.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, Donald J. Trump.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, my dude.

[Mike Rowe]

What a weird life you're living, brother.

[David Mamet]

That I'm living or.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, well, sure.

[Mike Rowe]

Who coined the expression the Great man in history.

[David Mamet]

Do you know it's probably Catherine the Great, because that's what she was looking for. But she expressed it not as the great man, but in Russian, it's a number of inches.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, you're just horsing around now.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

So, hey, thank you for making the time to do this.

[David Mamet]

You're so welcome.

[Mike Rowe]

I appreciate it. Like most of the people who interview you, I know enough probably to be dangerous, but I feel. Chuck, did you tell him that you were an American buffalo once upon a time?

[Chuck]

I did. When I was out of breath coming up the five flight of stairs. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

How many people have told you that over the years?

[David Mamet]

Oh, a lot. It's pretty. It's great. I was writing those two kinds of plays. There were one with the Apollonian and one with the Dionysian. And the Dionysian plays came out of my experience doing the kind of jobs you're talking about in Chicago. And one of them was Glengarry when I was working in a boiler room selling non existent land for a year. And one of them was when I was doing various things and hanging out in a poker game with a lot of thieves. And I wrote American Buffalo about that.

[Mike Rowe]

So great. That was at, I want to say, Fells Point.

[Chuck]

Fells Point Theater.

[Mike Rowe]

Fells Point Theater. Once upon a time in Baltimore. This is going to be difficult because I'm interested in really everything that I know of that you've done, which means there's a bunch of stuff you have done that I'd be even more interested in. But I don't really know how to ask you about that. And I would desperately like not a series of questions that you've already answered ad nauseam over the last two months in the course of promoting your amazing new book and the film Henry Johnson.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Which I've only seen the trailers.

[David Mamet]

Well, you got to see the movie. It's good.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm halfway through your book and I've only seen the trailer for Henry Johnson. And I'm just going to say, I was never opposed to Shia LaBeouf at all, but I never saw him as a great actor, and I'm starting to think he might be.

[David Mamet]

Oh, I always saw him as a great actor. Did you? Oh, yeah. If you look at him in Honey Boy or Peanut Butter Falcon, this guy says, I never work with a better actor. So he plays a convict in this. It's a stunning performance.

[Mike Rowe]

That's insanely high cotton. You've never worked with a better actor?

[David Mamet]

No, I've worked with actors who were as good. And I worked with everybody, but I never worked with a better actor. Wow.

[Mike Rowe]

You just made him feel in much the same way I bet you felt when you just read that five star review from the 47th president.

[David Mamet]

Well, the other thing is true too. It's the. When an actor says, give me this stuff, I'll say it all day, that's a spectacular compliment. When they say, my God, thank you. Glug, glug, glug. And that's pretty great. And that's what he said, and that's what Malkovich said to him. About to do another movie. Another. Another movie with John Malkovich and Al Pacino and Shia and Rebecca Pidge. Everybody's gonna be in it. Patti lupone and these are guys I've worked with forever. And when they say, yeah, like, I did a play with Malkovich in London in the West End, and I sent him the script one day, like 5 o' clock in the morning in Boston. He called me back two hours later, said, yeah, I read it twice, I'll do it. Where are we going? When. Which is the best thing in having a coterie and also having a certain.

[Mike Rowe]

Reputation regarding the coterie. I mean, it doesn't always happen, but it seems to happen a fair amount. You know, when you think of Scorsese and De Niro, et cetera, how does it happen? Like, is it the result of maybe the Spanish prisoner? I'm thinking of Rebecca Pidgeon. And like, when did you know that this was a group of people who you were absolutely going to.

[David Mamet]

Well, it was always a group of people. I mean, I started out in Chicago 50 years ago and more, on the stage with William H. Macy, and then it was Laurie Metcalfe and then there was Billy Peterson, and then it was Malkovich and his people came in and we were all part of a garage theater. And Joey Montagne and Dennis Franz, all part of a garage theater milieu. And we were all hard working. Is that French milieu? Yeah, yeah, that's right. A medium. A medium of French.

[Chuck]

That's what he does, man.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, wait a minute. Is Sinise in this orbit?

[David Mamet]

Sinise? Yeah. Gary and John came in with the Steppenwolf Theater. They're a little bit younger than we were, and they took over our space. We had this space in the garage on Halstead street around the corner from Wrigley Field. And then they took over before us. But Laurie Metcalfe had been working with us previously. It was a great time. See, the thing is, it's like what you Know is what you learn. So what we learned was get together with the people who say, you bet. And one of them says, you know what? I'm gonna write the next play. He said, yeah, sure, I'm gonna direct the next play. Yeah, sure. So that's how you build a theater company, and that's how you create not only actors, but.

[Mike Rowe]

But writers and trust, maybe.

[David Mamet]

Well, of course. Because, you know, the Chicago cops say of their partner, the best place. They say, you know what? Fuck it. You're right. And if you're not right, fuck it. Anyway, so that's kind of been like. I just called Patti LuPone. You know, I just called on the way up. I said, I'm doing this new thing. I need you to. Because with these people who are your brothers and sisters in arms, the answer, unless they're dead or otherwise engaged, is yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure, right.

[David Mamet]

So what could be better?

[Mike Rowe]

Not much, but philosophically, I did want to ask you because you kind of glossed over it when you were just talking about what an extraordinary time that was. Did you know it was an extraordinary time when you were in the midst of it?

[David Mamet]

Of course we did.

[Mike Rowe]

What do you mean, of course?

[David Mamet]

Because we were having the time of our lives.

[Mike Rowe]

But you hadn't lived enough to know that it was true. It was the time of your life up until that point. But you know what I mean. Like, you're older than you've ever been right now.

[David Mamet]

Aren't we all?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes, we are. But, I mean, I know that I've changed a bunch over the years, and the way I remember things seems to, oh, I don't know, fade in and out, like some things suddenly become more significant than I ever thought they would be. The way I heard it is why. It's kind of what inspired that whole sort of point. And when I think about your own life, not just as an artist, but as a person with ideas and opinions and strongly held beliefs and the way many of those changed and morphed.

[David Mamet]

Beliefs changed, certainly. But my dedication that I learned very, very young to. I hate to use the word art, but I guess I have to. To. Art has never changed. The idea was that's where the fun was. So to say, well, how could you say that was the best time of your life when you were young? Well, you could say that to the first time he falls head over in the heels with a girlfriend and they go off to the beach for a wild weekend. You could say. How could you say you didn't have enough experience to say that that was the most Magnificent thing. But being young doesn't debar you from having ecstatic experiences.

[Mike Rowe]

Of course not, but I'm just. I forget who you were talking to. But somebody asked a similar question, and you didn't say, because that's where the fun was. You said, because that's where the money was. And I think that person said, isn't that what. No, you said it. Willie, who was the bank robber?

[David Mamet]

Willie Sutton.

[Mike Rowe]

That's where the money is.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, but that's not where the money was. And that was part of the joy of being younger than Chicago. When they say, to be in England was a very dream and to be young was very heaven. We were all very young. We were working very hard, having the time of our life. And there was not only. There wasn't any money, there was no chance of any money because you couldn't make money doing theater in a garage. So what we were doing, just like those. That British group, the Beatles were, we were working day jobs in order to put on these plays at night because we were having the time of our life. I always felt after that, when I'm directing something, whether on stage or in the movies, if you're not having the time of your life, you're in a lot of trouble.

[Mike Rowe]

Joke's on you.

[David Mamet]

And the thing is, as a director, both on the stage and in the movies, there's a person who's in charge of seeing that everyone's having the time of their life, and that person's the director. And if something other than that is happening, someone is at fault, and it's the director, because why not? I mean, what's more fun than making a movie or putting on a play? Nothing.

[Mike Rowe]

But what's more different than making a movie or putting on a play? You know, one is rooted in. As we were making our coffee and tea earlier, we were talking about the. The business of live. You know, live an hour takes an hour, a half hour takes a half hour. My appearance on Trey Gowdy, you mentioned the other night, took 5 minutes and 40 seconds. And I knew exactly. I knew that's how long it was going to take before I sat down. There's no cut. In other words, movies are all just cuts, right? And so how do you think when you're writing a play versus writing a screenplay that you know is going to be filmed?

[David Mamet]

Sound is very important, because when you write a screenplay, the sound that comes from the screen is going to have to compete against the sound of people eating popcorn. But when you write a play, the sound that comes from the stage is going to have to compete against the sound of the people turning their programs because they're bored out of their fucking mind.

[Mike Rowe]

The audience then is not too dissimilar. You've got people who are fidgeting. It's a war for their attention, essentially. But there's a sparseness about the stage, I think that you can get away with that. You can't necessarily in film, although sometimes your stuff migrates pretty well. But when I think of the Fantastics or Our Town, right, Or some of these great plays that were written, I guess, before you were writing, I think maybe close to it. Wilder and Tom.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, our tone is in. I believe it's in the 30s in the Fantasticks. I actually worked in the first production of Fantasticks off Broadway and that was 1967. Had been running part a year, ran for 40 years more. And I was a house manager and usher and assistant stage manager. So I had to see that frickin thing eight times a week.

[Mike Rowe]

So you hate it now or no.

[David Mamet]

No, I hated it then.

[Mike Rowe]

My point is, what the heck was that in the way of a set? And how important is a set?

[David Mamet]

Very good point. A set is not important. Here's how we know that. We can listen to a great play on the radio when we lose nothing. So the question is, can you do a play on a bare stage? And if you can, it's probably a pretty good play. The next question is, is it possible to create a scenic environment that's better than a bare stage? And the answer is yes. But it takes a lot talent.

[Mike Rowe]

Writing talent, directing talent, acting talent.

[David Mamet]

No, it takes a designing talent to do something that's better than a bare stage. Because what you want to do is engage the audience's attention and you want to engage their. Suspension of disbelief is one way to say it. But the other things you want them to say, yeah, okay, tell me a story. So most of the things that are called production values in the theater are garbage. They're trying to gild the lily, right, Rather than to focus the attention.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you believe production is the enemy of authenticity?

[David Mamet]

Well, no. You got to produce a play. The question is, what are you going to. You're going to make choices whatever you do. The question is, as they say, first, do no harm. Even if it's a play on stage with three chairs, you got to pick the chairs, you got to pick the costumes, and you got to pick the lighting. But the question is, what do you do next? And the answer always is maybe something and maybe not nothing. But what you don't want the audience to do is leave a play or a movie talking about the production values, because that means they had a wretched time.

[Mike Rowe]

Where does that leave musical theater? Where does it leave Moulin Rouge? Where does it leave the spectacle of all of it?

[David Mamet]

I don't know. See what's happened in theater that Broadway became a tourist destination. And so what the tourists want to say legitimately is spectacle. People don't want to go to Las Vegas and see the Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky. Right. They want to see a spectacle. They want to see, you know, Cirque du Soleil. Well, of course, as the French taught us, they want to see tits and ass and they want to see lights and they want to see people jumping off of things. That's a spectacle. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not the business I'm in.

[Mike Rowe]

What business are you in?

[David Mamet]

I'm in the business of plays and movies. I'm in business telling a story. So if you can tell a story, it's like telling a joke. There's no difference. Right. If I say, you know, an ostrich, a priest and a whore go into a laundromat. Doesn't matter what costume I have on. Right. I've just almost semi hypnotically induced you to go along and enter into my family.

[Mike Rowe]

It does beg a series of questions that I'm going to insist on, of course. On answering.

[David Mamet]

Yeah. Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, when you say an ostrich, are you talking the Asian or the African? This is a cassowary, I assume, with two, not three, claws also.

[David Mamet]

Oh, okay. This cassowary is very, very different than an ostrich, which is very different than a kiwi. A lot of people would consider that a microaggression. I'm one of them.

[Mike Rowe]

I saw an ostrich once.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Charge an open door on an F150 and tear it off its hinge. These things could go from zero to 40 miles an hour in about six steps. Their breastplate is so thick, you could shoot it with a.38 caliber and the slug will bounce off their knees. Are all, you know, jacked up. Crazy power. Their eyes are bigger than the eyes of a shark. Their brains are about the size of a mar. These are dinosaurs. They'll kick in the next year.

[David Mamet]

Pug ugly. But did you know that an armadillo can beat an ostrich over 100 yards?

[Mike Rowe]

Been a foot race.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Stamina. Like the ostrich peaks to. That's what.

[David Mamet]

No, I just made that up.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh. See, well, there you go. That's not really a story so much.

[David Mamet]

As that's a lie.

[Mike Rowe]

A prevarication.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Is it okay to lie to the audience?

[David Mamet]

No, of course not. Listen, how would one lie to the audience? One can abuse the audience. One can. Very easy to abuse.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, let's say this ostrich, this priest in this whore didn't go into a laundromat. Have we just been lied to? Or is that some sort of literary permission you've given yourself?

[David Mamet]

Here's how you abuse the audience. I'll show you how.

[Mike Rowe]

Believe me, listeners of this podcast know.

[David Mamet]

Oh, good. So I say, what, an armadillo, an ostrich and nun go into a whorehouse. So you're waiting. You've given up your reason. For example, you parked it over there, say, no, no, I haven't lost my mind. I'm just giving it up for a second. You are going to tell me a story, at the end of which I'm probably going to laugh because something was revealed to me about myself, my thought process. I didn't know. Ha ha, ha, ha ha. But if I say an ostrich, an armadillo, and a priest go into a whorehouse and you say, yeah, and I say, how dare you respond like that? I mean, why would you think a priest would go into a whorehouse with.

[Mike Rowe]

An armadillo or possibly an ostrich or the aforementioned nun? What you're saying is we buy the premise, whatever it is. Unless you happen to come across a person of extraordinary skepticism or disag, immediately jump and go, wait a second. Ostriches don't walk into laundromats and priests don't walk into whorehouses, at least not in normal business hours. So to accept the premise on its face, that's a really interesting relationship.

[David Mamet]

Well, exactly. So because you've set the boundaries, you've said, I'm going to tell you a joke. You can park your reason for a second. You don't have to say, is it a conservative or a liberal ostrich? You can park it for a second. It's not going to hurt you. Because when you're listening to a joke or when you're listening to a play or a movie, you say, I get it, I've parked my thing, because you aren't going to take advantage of me. Most of the political and quasi political garbage that's in movies, television, and plays is we park our rationality and then people try to sell us something. It's as if you went to the dentist and he put you under nitrous oxide and then fucked you right?

[Mike Rowe]

I did not pay for that.

[Chuck]

I'm not gonna let that happen again for sure.

[Mike Rowe]

Takes a whole nother dimension to turn your head and spit. Oh, see what I did?

[David Mamet]

Yeah, I did.

[Mike Rowe]

I took it from merely unerrable to promotable.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Now it gets cut into the open.

[David Mamet]

Oh, great.

[Mike Rowe]

What's the funniest thing you've ever written? Do, do, do, do do do do do do do. It occurs to me that David Mamet, like many other guests on this podcast, is a true American Giant. Arguably, he's our greatest living playwright, and his legacy in that regard is already assured. For that reason, I probably should have given him an American Giant sweatshirt as an expression of my thanks for talking to me for 90 minutes today. In fact, I should probably start giving all of my guests an American Giant sweatshirt because frankly, I can't think of a better expression of gratitude than a high quality garment made here in the USA. For 15 years now, American Giant has been delivering on a pledge to make American clothing spun from American cotton, crafted by American workers who live in the American towns where American Giant decided to build their factories and invest their resources. Today, they're not just cranking out quality sweatshirts and T shirts and jeans and all the other essentials, they're creating jobs in this country, reinvigorating towns in this country, and proving that it's still possible to make quality goods at a fair price in these United States. This is why I encourage you to support American Giant and all the other sponsors of this podcast who insist on making their stuff in America. The better way is never the easier way. And if we want to be truly independent, we can't depend on other countries to grow our food, mine our energy, provide our timber, manufacture our medicine, or make our clothes. So do me a favor, go to american-giant.com mike and buy something awesome. Use code mike to get 20% off your order. American-giant.com mike American Giant. American Made. American Giant. American made.

[David Mamet]

The funniest thing I've ever written was a book called Wilson, which is, curiously about a time 3,000 years from now when all the knowledge has been put onto computers and the computers have crashed. And so people are trying to reconstruct the 20th century from artifacts. And the most precious artifact to them is a note written by Edith Wilson, who was the President's wife. She was the actual president. Good. When he was out of his mind. In her own Europe.

[Mike Rowe]

1917. 16.

[David Mamet]

17, yeah, 1918, I think. In her own Urine. And so there's a thousand years of scholarship about what this note meant. And. That's a pretty funny book, Wilson. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I haven't read it. That's one of your.

[David Mamet]

Well, nobody's read it.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what makes it funny. Actually, I have an ostrich friend who read it and said it was just a kick, so. Glengarry.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Have you seen the. The current version?

[David Mamet]

Yeah, it's great. Yeah, they're doing great.

[Mike Rowe]

Why is it great?

[David Mamet]

Well, it's a terrific play and terrific cast. I mean, what else you want? They could pass out little things that say, if you collect 14 of these, we'll give you 10% off on Rinso White and Rinso Blue. But they don't got to the thing that's.

[Mike Rowe]

Forgive me again, you've talked about it a thousand times. But, Chuck, I even remember back in the day when you were doing American Buffalo. That was maybe your second play.

[David Mamet]

Something like that. I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a long time ago. Yeah, but even then there was like a weird. Forgive me, not weird, but there was a reverence around the words. And I remember the guy who was directing that. Was it Walter Huber, maybe, or.

[Chuck]

Walter Huber actually played Teach.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Right. And you played, like, Bobby.

[Chuck]

Bobby, that's right. I played Bobby.

[Mike Rowe]

I remember going out for drinks with these guys while they were rehearsing, and the conversation was, we just can't mess with any of it. Right. What's he mean here with this dash versus this ellipses? What's he mean here? And so that was really the first time I heard actors talking with that level of reverence. Yeah. And care.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So what the. How did that happen with your second. I get it now, but, I mean, there's just this eternal struggle, it seems, between actors who want to make things their own, directors who might want to take a spin, versus writers. Right. Who'd normally take it in the neck, but occasionally, one comes along who you dare not screw with.

[David Mamet]

Well, they finally gave Henry Fonda an Oscar for all of his great work. It was a lifetime achievement. Oscar meant, thank you, go die now. So he said he wanted to thank all the directors who broke him of his good ideas.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow.

[David Mamet]

Nobody ever liked my work. Except two groups. One is the actors, the other is the audience. So an actor who sees the worth of my work, which is very flatteringly. Most of them wants to do that work. They don't want to use it as an excuse. Right. To, quote, be themselves or to, quote, investigate the character. All I have to do is get up there and the great ones realize that and say the stupid fucking words. Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[David Mamet]

Because that's all there is, right? There isn't any character beyond that.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, if you take your finest script and compare it to, I don't know, Mozart, you know, something that's been written, it's just language. Right? Notes over here, words and letters over here.

[David Mamet]

Well, exactly. It's the same thing, you know, you don't want to take Mozart and say, you know, mind if I improvise? You know, mind if I, you know, do it or don't do it?

[Mike Rowe]

And yet. Have you come across John Batiste before?

[David Mamet]

No. Who's that?

[Mike Rowe]

He's a piano player and a singer. I first found him when I heard him playing Beethoven fer Elise with a ragtime Scott Joplin take just kind of creeping into it. And it incited between my mother and I, a real conversation about heresy, art, inspiration. Good, bad, right, wrong, stupid, pointless. What do you do with that? And I don't have a good answer. I mean, I.

[David Mamet]

Well, why not, you know? Yeah, it's easy to play for releases, for ragtime, but it's harder to write the lyrics. And my daughter Clara did it. Well, it was furry, furry, furry, furry, furry, furry, furry fur Elise.

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck making note. Turns out that Wilson wasn't the funniest thing David Mamet ever did.

[Chuck]

It was that noted.

[Mike Rowe]

What's fur Elise mean?

[David Mamet]

It means for Elise. He wrote it for some broad name. Elise.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you sure Elise wasn't covered in hair?

[David Mamet]

No, I'm not. This went on a furry leash, right? Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Did you write Always be closing, or was that already an idiom?

[David Mamet]

Oh, that's an idiom. That's ancient. That's ancient.

[Mike Rowe]

I thought so, too.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But back to Glengarry. That. That stuck. But what really stuck for me, and what I should have asked you about initially, because you brought it up, was just the business of. What is the business of lying? Its cons. It's grifters and thieves you described in your poker game and, you know, writing about, you know, petty crooks in American Buffalo and maybe bigger crooks. And Glengarry House of Games directed that, I believe. Right. Yeah. So, you ever been swindled? You've been.

[David Mamet]

Of course.

[Mike Rowe]

Me, too.

[David Mamet]

You ever go to the doctors?

[Mike Rowe]

I have, I have, yeah.

[David Mamet]

You ever buy a car in a car lot?

[Mike Rowe]

I have, yeah.

[David Mamet]

Okay, so what's that about? Anyone who walks onto the car lot wants to get swindled or say, my God, where'd you get that shirt? And where do you work out? Your wife is so pretty over there. What are you driving? Oh, that's a very, very good car. I'm glad you came over here because I got a special thing right. Ha ha ha. This guy really loves me. Any car you drive off the lot next week, it's a hunk of junk. It's a frickin car, right? So somebody said a crush is an absence of information, right? That's good, isn't it?

[Mike Rowe]

A crush is an absence of. Wow. I mean, that's pretty fatalistic. You're saying the more you know, the less you love.

[David Mamet]

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. The information might be good or bad, but a crush is an absence of it. You get the endorphins, bam. Now all of a sudden, wow. You know, please take my money, I'm going to leave my wife and blah blah blah, and lose my thing. My kids will never talk to me, but hi honey, what are you doing tonight?

[Mike Rowe]

So how does that translate to your work? I mean, if the audience starts out with an absence of information, of course they must be ignorant because the play hasn't begun yet. But then you tease them along.

[David Mamet]

Well that's the whole point. And that's what most people, very few people understand. It's very hard to write a play because most people just don't have. Most people can't tell a joke. Did you ever notice that?

[Mike Rowe]

I have.

[David Mamet]

There were apparently these two Irishmen. Oh. And the one guy says, he says to his, you don't know how to tell a joke. So if you don't know how to tell a joke, you don't know how to write a play because the play is basically a joke. I want to get your attention. I'm going to lead you along, make you wonder what's going to happen next, and then pay it off in a way you didn't understand. There's no difference between that, that a joke and Othello.

[Mike Rowe]

Except for maybe two and a half hours.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, that's right. But also it's possible to condense plays and part of the problem is they're overwritten. I wrote a 10 second version of Oedipus Rex. So it takes place on a windswept mountain in Thebes, at Rise.

[Mike Rowe]

Uh huh.

[David Mamet]

Oedipus and a kindly shepherd, right. Oedipus says, ho, kindly shepherd. What news? Shepherd says you fucked your mother.

[Mike Rowe]

Jocasta, as I recall.

[David Mamet]

That's right. You bet.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, one of the greatest. Peripetias, I think Aristotle would have called it. Right. And I mean maybe one of the first ones, that whole notion of. I riffed on that years ago when somebody invited me to do a TED Talk, of all things. But Anagnoresis and Peripatea and the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy vis a vis dirty jobs struck me as an interesting way to maybe string out a story. Maybe surprise.

[David Mamet]

Well, you know what Aristotle says? You don't want to string out the story, you want to condense it, right? Single action, single place, day and a half. You want to condense it, you don't want to stroke it.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, condense the time.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But the story itself, I guarantee you, you do a 10 second version of Othello at Broadway, they're gonna be calls for some sort of refund.

[David Mamet]

I like Shakespeare very much, you know, for many. First off, he was like me, he was a Jew. And secondly, he was a terrific writer. But I think it's very easy. The one bit that I'd put in if I could fix Othello, right, is Othello turns to Iago before the fact and he says, iago, where's my lucky pillow?

[Mike Rowe]

Where's my lucky pillow?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

No, no, no, that's. That's Macbeth. Yeah, Othello, Iago. Oh, I got nothing I want so bad to have a pithy thing, but no, I don't have it. Crap, I got some Macbeth.

[David Mamet]

Do not say that word.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, right. That's a theater thing, right? Yeah, but we're not before a performance, are we?

[Chuck]

We're not in a theater.

[Mike Rowe]

We're not in a theater.

[David Mamet]

No, it still counts.

[Mike Rowe]

That's interesting. Explain that old. What is that?

[David Mamet]

I can't and I won't. But the Greeks, right, spent a great deal of time talking about the honored ones. And the honored ones are the Eumenides, who are the Furies. And they say you really don't want to attract their attention. So I'm going to apologize to the honored ones and let's move on.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you suspicious?

[David Mamet]

Everybody's suspicious. The only problem is very few of us are suspicious of the things we should be suspicious of.

[Mike Rowe]

Now we're getting somewhere.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

How does suspicion inform your worldview? Your work, or. Fill in whatever, fill in the blank, however you want, but I'm really interested, and that's really because it gets to your book and it gets to your work. And whether it's suspicion or skepticism or doubt, all those things feel adjacent. And you seem to be either afflicted or blessed with all of it.

[David Mamet]

Well, the thing is, you know, anyone who's ever worked for A living. Who's ever sat down at the kitchen table and said, here's a piece of yellow paper, here's a column of how much we're making, here's a column of how much we're spending. What do we do? Has to become a reasonable person, right? And because they have to ask that as of everything, right? As Tom Sowell says, it's just not that complex. You know, as Hayek says and as Milton Friedman says, it's just not that complex. What do I want? What do I actually want? What is it actually going to cost? How will I know when I'm done? How will I evaluate if it was worth it? What do I do then? Because that's how the people who actually work for a living and the people who actually sit down at the kitchen table rule their lives. They don't have time to say, you know, please piss on me and tell me it's raining. Because I want to take my time up with putting men in men and women's sports and I want to open the border because that makes me feel good. So the Constitution is basically a guide to sitting down at the kitchen table and saying who gets to do what to who. What happens if I don't like it? What happens if they don't respond to the Constitution? What are my options? Because I want to be in charge as a voter. I don't want to give anything up. It's enough that I have to give up my hard earned money. I don't want to give up my self respect and put my reason in my back pocket to somebody who's the best idea they can come up for a slogan for their 2024 run is Joy. I mean, what does that mean, right? So this person is saying, if you believe this, if you vote for this, you will vote for anything. Which is all about what? All of the obscenities we see today, like letting criminals in, letting them out the back door, denigrating the police, letting men into women's sports, letting Harvard say kill the Jews. And in fact, what the left is saying, constantly, constantly, if you believe this, you believe anything. Because guess what happens if you don't Even John Fetterman, right, terrific. He's calling out, he's a good man. He happens to be a Democrat. He's a good man. He comes out and says he wants to support Israel and say, oh, you know what, he's obviously lost his mind, right? So we have to keep our head when all about us are losing theirs and blaming it on us. As Rudyard Kipling said.

[Mike Rowe]

So it really, it's a kind of plea for reason. I think what you're talking about, if you're suspicious and skeptical in a healthy way, and by the way, you would probably know this. Somebody told me that the quote from Descartes has been mangled. Ergo cagito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. I read somewhere that the better translation, or maybe the more accurate one, was I doubt, therefore I am. So his whole existence is either rooted in his ability to think or his decision to doubt. I like the decision to doubt more. But regardless if it informs a plea for reason, whether it's in a budget from a kitchen table or a kind of explanation that you offer in this book, this enlightenment at base, it's. It's an explanation.

[David Mamet]

Well, yeah, you got to say what's actually happening. But if someone says, oh no, who are you going to believe, me or your lion eyes, you're in a lot of trouble.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, but what's actually happening is different than like all those things you just mentioned, which are now their own separate headlines. And it leads a lot of people to want, you know, how like, Riley Gaines has sat here. And so we have this conversation about how in the world did the frog stay in the boiling water so long as to make that power because it can't get out.

[David Mamet]

That's the thing that someone who's tripled down on a whole life of believing one thing and they formed a coterie which they can't leave. Someone who's on the left says, oh my God, if I allow myself to perceive this nonsense, I'm probably gonna have to speak out or lose my self respect. But if I keep my self respect and speak out, I'm going to lose my wife, my job, my friends and my livelihood, and perhaps my kids. So people get so formally entrenched, for someone to actually break free is called heroism, which is what the Jews did leaving Egypt because they didn't want to leave. 80% of them stayed behind. They said, I'm happy here. And as soon as they left, they said, I want to go back. But the thing that I think is interesting about a Descartes, I think therefore I am, is it was taken up in the original version of the Little Engine that Could Remember, the Little Engine that showed us the cry, I think I can.

[Mike Rowe]

Think I can. I think I can.

[David Mamet]

Exactly. But the original version, he's saying, I think I can, therefore I am. I can.

[Mike Rowe]

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[David Mamet]

He gets the goods across the mountain to the good little children in time for Christmas.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, by way of comparison, the person who ran on Joy thought she could too. She thought she could. She thought she could. And the people around her thought she could.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And that engine couldn't.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So I think it's important. I mean, whether it's positivity or belief or. Or whatever it is, in the end, it is Hamlet, right? I mean, it's. You lose the name of action. It's not what you think. It's not even what you say.

[David Mamet]

Well, see, that's why Hamlet's such a great, great play, is the greatest play in the English language. Greatest piece of literature in the English language. Because it's not that he's indecisive and it's not that. It's not because, you know, it's someone. Ernest Jones, It's Hamlet and Oedipus. It's not that he wants to screw his mother and blah, blah, blah. It's that his whole world fell apart. He came home from college, his dad's been murdered. Kamlet should Be king. And everyone's turning against him. He doesn't know what to do. And everything he seems he wants to do is wrong. He wants to kill his uncle. How's that going to help? He wants to tell off his mother. How's that going to help? Polonius seems to be against him. And Polonius daughter, who's Hamlet's girlfriend, seems to be in league with her father. His two best friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenston, want to kill him. This guy's in a lot of trouble. Many of us have been in that place in that long night when everything that you knew falls apart. And you're involved. That's what PTSD is. You're involved in cognitive dissonance such that ghosts are talking to you, for Christ's sake. So it's another part of your mind saying, get a hold on it, get a hold on it. And they're telling you things you'd rather not know. Hamlet would rather not know that his mother and uncle conspired to kill his dad.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. Okay. There's a lot there. But the business of rather not knowing the business. Back to your ostrich for a moment, all right? He didn't walk into a laundromat. He just walked down the beach and stuck his head in the sand and stayed that way. How much of that is in this book? Our unwillingness to look squarely at a thing?

[David Mamet]

Well, it's all in that book. That's what the book is about. To a large extent, it's about repression, because all of drama is about repression. Because if it weren't repressed, it wouldn't be drama. People come in and say, oh, you got a black hat, so you're the bad guy. I got a white hat, so I'm a good guy. You say things. Everyone says, oh, that's the bad guy. That's bullshit. That's melodrama. Right, but in drama, each person acts for the reason he thinks is best. And the audience has got to say, in the best of all possible worlds. Yeah, he's got a point. The other guy's got a point, too. How are they going to work it out?

[Mike Rowe]

Isn't that the cognitive dissonance you're talking about? When you put the bad guy in the white hat, the guy in the black hat.

[David Mamet]

No, no, what that is, is repression. It's saying, I want to take your time. I'm not going to tell you. A rabbi, a priest and a minister go in to a laundromat. So you see that it's possible to have ecumenical differences and still get together to engage in a task which is common to us all, which is doing our laundry. Everyone has to do laundry. We may have someone do it for us, that one removed. But there's a bunch of bullshit. But that's what most things passing as drama today are.

[Mike Rowe]

But that's the. I mean, the brilliance of that joke and whatever iteration it is. Let's just go with the ostrich and the whore and the priest.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay. Now, the fact that these three are together is implausible. And the fact that they're walking into a laundromat is statistically impossible. But the fact that the laundromat itself exists as a place into which they can walk. Well, we've all done that. You've given me something real to hang onto. I know what a laundromat is, and I know what these individual three disparate things are, But I've never, ever, ever imagined them together before.

[David Mamet]

But you can.

[Mike Rowe]

I can.

[David Mamet]

Ah. On the other hand, if I were to say to you, God created the heavens and the earth and everything that's in them and blah, blah, blah, and then God took a rib from Adam's side and made a woman and blah, blah, you say, what the fuck? This is nonsense. Right? One would say of that myth. It's nonsense. But one doesn't say either of the ostrich myth or of the myth of wokeism. This is absurd. In addition, it's blasphemous.

[Mike Rowe]

Some did.

[David Mamet]

What?

[Mike Rowe]

Some did.

[David Mamet]

That's correct.

[Mike Rowe]

Some did. That's the great story. That's why this book is kind of important. And like so many books, the subtitle might even be better than the title. But I mean, politics, horror and entertainment. An ostrich, a priest, and a. Three things that normally aren't grouped up together. You do that a lot.

[David Mamet]

Oh, thank. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You know, I started realizing, Shelby, check that Tom Soule did one of his wonderful books about 10 years, 15 years ago called Dissolving America or something like that. I'm so sorry. I put up. It's a great book where he describes everything that's happening today.

[Mike Rowe]

This is Tom Soul you're talking about?

[David Mamet]

Tom Soul? Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

The best.

[David Mamet]

Let's find the name of that book. Does Dissolving American.

[Mike Rowe]

Dissolving America.

[David Mamet]

It's better than that.

[Mike Rowe]

Just so people know. He must be. He's got to be in his 90s.

[David Mamet]

I think he's 90 or 90.

[Mike Rowe]

And he's out of the Chicago school.

[David Mamet]

Yes, he's out of the Chicago School in Moulton Freeman and interesting. Out of the Chicago school in 1914. One of the precursor great economists was a progressive, was Thorsten Veblen. And he of course is famous for writing Theory of the Leisure Class, Social justice. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Dismantling America.

[David Mamet]

Dismantling America. That's what it is. Thank you. Dismantling America.

[Mike Rowe]

Look at that, five stars, of course. Oh, it's 774 ratings.

[David Mamet]

It's magnificent book. The guy, he writes, he can't write a bad book. Well, I mean, people like that and people like Doug Murray and people like Abigail Schreier, I mean, they're so. And Bari Weiss, they're such an inspiration to me. Say, can you be more concise, Dave? Can you write better? Can you write clearer? Can you take all the nonsense and get to. To meet? So anyway, Thorsten Veblen is an economist at the University of Chicago in 1914 and he wrote a book called the Higher Learning about colleges. It was originally called the Higher Learning An Exercise in Depravity. And so this is 110 years ago. He says the colleges are corrupt. He says the higher learning is selling nonsense. What they're doing is they're taking people who are and they're saying, rather than learning a trade, this is what you talk about. Fuck it. They don't have to learn a trade. What they'll have to do is broaden their mind. So what they start doing is they're selling extra things, extra credit for as we see as we go along the years, life experience, or extra credit for writing an essay, or in effect, they're selling a diploma. So what he says is that what happens is people get out of an underground graduate degree, they don't know a fucking thing. So then they go to a graduate degree, and that's the first time that they're going to start to learn perhaps something applicable to their life. But the problem is that they've already been warped by four years of saying you have all the knowledge inside of you, right? Discover yourself, write a journal, right? So here's where we end up that colleges, first they start sewing football, right? Okay. Then they start selling individual study. Then they start selling wokeism, right? They're constantly, as Florestan Veblen said in 1914, giving you a come on, a special treat in the box of Cheerios, right? To induce you to come. So what's the latest treat that they're selling?

[Mike Rowe]

Do you know on the college side?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

The latest treatment in terms of. To get you to enroll or the promise of getting the diploma.

[David Mamet]

No, fuck the diploma.

[Mike Rowe]

The place is okay. So the inducement, the latest treat, I mean, if it's not the student union, if it's not the football, it's not the shared experience of cohabitation and all the normal stuff. Tell me, what is it?

[David Mamet]

Kill the Jews. Oh, that's the latest treat that these swine are selling. Come and yell free Palestine from the blah blah blah. Burn stuff down, disrupt everything, make the Jews feel blah, blah, blah and dare us to take arms against you, which the schools won't do because that's what they're selling. They aren't selling education, right? They're selling obscenity. They say, yeah, you bet.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, well, let's go there. Let's talk about Harvard and whatever other hotbed you want. I think I'm most interested in understanding what disgusts you more. Is it the existence of people calling for this kind of insanity? Is it the tolerance of the people who should be running that asylum to allow it to happen? Or is it the silence?

[David Mamet]

Well, it's the whole thing. We either have laws against hate speech or we don't. We either have laws protecting students or we don't. Everybody on those campuses is violating the Civil Rights Act. The only reason they aren't enforced is because they're against Jews. Someone who can show me the error, write me a letter. I'll be glad I don't find it so that the one. There's a couple things we can do. One is I'm going to speak to my fellow Jews. Two things. First, take your school, your kids out of those schools. Just take them out. What are they going to learn other than that you, the parents and the government and the schools are willing to see them abused? That's what they're learning, that they better keep their fricking head down or they're going to get hit on the head. What are they going to do with the degree from that school other than go to work for somebody who likes that school who's going to believe in the same thing? So the first thing is take your kids out of school. Just take them out. So the question, what do I do next? Is exactly the same question that the slaves had to ask when they left Egypt. They didn't want to leave. 80% of them stayed behind because they said, wait a second, what do I do next? What do I do next? Well, you ain't going to find out what you do next till you leave Egypt. And you're not going to find out what you do Next. Till you take the kids out of the school. Take them out of school for love of God. The second is, for the love of God, stop voting for the Democrats. It's not Franklin Roosevelt anymore, and he hated the Jews. He sent them back to die in the concentration camps. For God's sake, stop voting for. What do you think that you're doing? Voting for these people who don't like the state of Israel. They refused to meet with the Israeli ambassador, Kamala Harris, who went to a sorority meeting rather than preside over the Senate, which was her job. They're just willing to sell you out. Why? Because they know that for 100 years, my fellow Jews have voted for the Democrats, whatever they do. And now they're killing us again in the streets of America. So just stop voting for them, for God's sake.

[Mike Rowe]

Can I ask you a personal question?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You're out of Fs to give, as they say. I get that. You live right up the road from here somewhere. Somewhere between Sodom and Gomorrah. There you are in the belly of the beast.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In fact, you wrote a terrific book, Oink, Oink.

[David Mamet]

Oh, yeah. Everywhere in Oink, Oink.

[Mike Rowe]

Everywhere in Oink, Oink. Which was really an indictment on and of Hollywood.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I guess I'm just asking the obvious question. When did you stop being a liberal and when did you stop caring about who knew it?

[David Mamet]

Well, the two things happened independently, I think. I was doing a play in New York with Nathan Lane. It was a political comedy, very funny, called November. And I wrote an article called Political Civility for the Village Voice.

[Mike Rowe]

Was this about Lincoln?

[David Mamet]

No, it was about a. No, no. It was about a contemporary president who gets jammed up because nobody likes him, and so he has no money left to buy his library. And so it's Thanksgiving, and so these guys come to him from the turkey lobby and they say, Mr. President, da, da, da. We'd like you to pardon a turkey as you always do. We always give you 50. 50 grand to pardon a turkey. And he says, well, yeah, I could use the money. They say, good. This year we want you to pardon two turkeys because we have an alternate because the last year's turkey got sick. So he says, well, two turkeys, that would be like 50 grand. A turkey, that would be 100 grand. They say, no, we ain't giving you 100 grand because you're a loser. Your poll numbers are lower than Gandhi's cholesterol with 50 grand. Take it or leave it. So he thinks about it and he says, wait, A second. Do I have the power to pardon turkeys? So as a yes man says, yes, Mr. President, you do. He says, good. Get those guys back here. Tell them I want $300 million right now. I'm gonna pardon every fucking turkey in the United States of America. So that's the premise of the play. I wrote an article about political civility. I said, we gotta be civil to each other. I said, I'm not even civil to myself. I always refer to myself as a brain dead liberal. So the Village Voice comes out, whole front page. Mamet says, why I am no longer a brain dead liberal. Boom. Everybody loses my number.

[Mike Rowe]

Where are we now? What year?

[David Mamet]

I don't know, 25 years ago, something like that.

[Mike Rowe]

25, okay, so around 2000, right? Around the.

[David Mamet]

I think so, yeah. So I looked around, I said, oh, well, that's interesting. It's like Sarah Silverman said she got whacked for some other. She said, it's my own party. And I wanted to say to her, dude, that's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. So you lost friends for real?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, or you. Or did you?

[David Mamet]

Well, I lost acquaintances, yeah. But on the other hand, I made friends.

[Mike Rowe]

Like who?

[David Mamet]

Well, Shelby Steele was one. Tom Sowell used to hang out with him. Victor Davis Hansen. Abigail Schreier.

[Mike Rowe]

Terrific.

[David Mamet]

Barry Weiss.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[David Mamet]

Nelly Boyle.

[Mike Rowe]

Susie Weiss, now Barry Weiss. That's Free Press, right?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And don't you write a cartoon for them like every week now or something?

[David Mamet]

I do a cartoon for them every week. And I'll tell you my best. One of my best cartoons, I'm gonna see it. It's Benjamin Franklin, and the title is When Benjamin Franklin Realized he had to Stop Smoking Pot. And Benjamin Franklin is saying, and for America's national bird, I suggest the turtle. But the other one, I mean, how raunchy can we get on this program?

[Mike Rowe]

That's. It's your sandbox.

[David Mamet]

The other one, I think even better was it's about me too, right? It says, when will it end? When will it end? And it's a picture of the Cookie Monster, right. And the caption is, he didn't realize the mic was still hot. And he's singing P is for Pussy. That's good enough for me. So these are the kind of cartoons I do every week for the Free Press. Check them out, people.

[Mike Rowe]

I will. Now, what's interesting, though, I mean, Barry Weiss, female, seems to be, or have gone, undergone some sort of, I don't know, similar transformation, revelation. Have you guys talked much about that?

[David Mamet]

Well, yeah, it was very famous. Famously, she and Nellie, her wife, were the apex reporters and columnists for the New York Times and were adored by the New York Times as they should have been. And then Barry said something that didn't hew to the party line and they said, no, give me your retraction or you're fired. And so she wrote a letter. You should all look it up. Beautiful letter. Where she resigned from the New York Times and with nothing. And so then she and Nellie created this magnificent newspaper called the Free Press, which is now extraordinarily successful.

[Mike Rowe]

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[David Mamet]

I talked to a long time. I'd love to talk to her again. I talked to her, you know, two iterations ago. She's great.

[Mike Rowe]

I think you guys would get along terrifically. I know she and Barry have become close, but back to the book and back to Harvard. In a way, the point I was trying to make, and I'm not sure I did it justice, was that while Abby Schreier's story is going on and we're talking about men and women's sports and asking ourselves, how could that possibly be happening? We're seeing this kind of thing happen in Harvard and we're wondering how in the world can we tolerate that kind of naked anti Semitism while at the same time we're dealing with whatever we've been dealing with, with the border and trying to understand how we can be told that that's a secure border while we're looking at 10,000 people coming across it. Your book outlines a dozen of these different things, and they're all seemingly unrelated because they have their own little brilliant essays, but somehow or another, there's grout that connects them.

[David Mamet]

Yes, that's right. It's in the book.

[Mike Rowe]

What is the grout, though, is the very fact that these things all happen contemporaneously. The point like, could they have not happened individually? Would they have garnered enough attention and skepticism and doubt that they would have been shouted down?

[David Mamet]

Well, when I come to end of the book, as I say, I asked myself the same question. I said, I don't understand. Why do we have people who want to free Palestine and we have people who are queers for Palestine, and at some point they're connected when they want to kill each other. Why at the same time do we have people who want to open the border and at the same time we have people who want to give money to who have anti Semitism, and they're all part of what seems to be the same movement. What do they have to do with each other? I list a lot of the enormity. Who in the world would stand up for women playing against men's sports? It's absurd. And yet those same people are in line with the people who want illegal alien criminals to come in. What does it all mean? And the answer is, I said, I've seen this before. So if people say of chess, how many moves can someone think in advance? A great chess player is someone who can think three moves in advance. That's not true. Nobody can think three moves in advance. There are billions. But what the great chess player can do is recognize a similarity of situations, say, ah, this looks just like that. I get it. I see what that is. So what we're looking at is a civilization which has been abandoned. Like Obama gets out of office. Trump, what's his name, Biden comes in, and after Trump, and things start to go to hell. In whose interest is it? And the answer is it's in the interest of various groups.

[Mike Rowe]

Ki Bono.

[David Mamet]

Various groups who come into an abandoned city. So I'm saying we're looking at it as an abandoned city. Just like Moscow in 1812, just like Paris in 1944, like Milan in 1940, Naples, 1943, 1943. The invaders, the Bidens, the Obamas, have retreated. And the new administration, in this case Trump, has not yet taken power. So you got four years. Nobody is in power in the White House. So in that vacuum of power, you get staffers and you get ideologues and you get anti Semites and you get all sorts of racists and so forth. Each one says, you know what? Give me that auto panel. Jimmy, you got to get out of Afghanistan. The other day. I let you get that. It was fucking stupid. But you said, I want to get out overnight. Okay, here's what I want to do. Okay? You owe me now. I want to not only open the border. That's great. I want to fly people in and pay for them to come into this country. Right? That's what I want to do. And you owe me because I did. Wait a second. Jenny says, wait a second. What about me? I didn't get to use that auto pin lately. You know what I want to do? I want to put men playing in women's sports. I say, well, Jenny, that's fucking stupid. He's like, yeah, I don't know if it's stupid or not, but so is opening the border, and so is getting out of. That's the fuck what I want to do. Billy says, wait a sec. It's an open city. So just like Paris in 1944, you got the Marxists, the communists, the Trotskyites, the Lovestoneites, you got the resistance. Everyone is getting together for the moment, if that works. But on the other hand, they're saying, fuck you now. I'm gonna go loot over there. The other thing you get into in an open city is people's settling scores. Things fall apart. Then someone who says, well, yeah, I get it. You get to do this. You get to do the border, you get to do minimum. You know what? I don't like that motherfucker Trump. Here's what I'm gonna do. Da, da, da. Okay, okay, we're all. Huh? He's got that right. You know, when I'm. Oh, da, da, da. I'm going to give. What's her name? Stacey Abrams. I'm going to give her a couple bucks. Well, okay. How much? Well, what the fuck difference does it make? $2 billion out the door? So what we're looking at is an open city.

[Mike Rowe]

Things fall apart.

[David Mamet]

Things fall apart.

[Mike Rowe]

The center cannot hold.

[David Mamet]

Cannot hold. Well, that, you know, he was the greatest poet. Yeats, the greatest poet since Shakespeare.

[Mike Rowe]

Mere anarchy loosed upon the world.

[David Mamet]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Is that. What rough beast has hour come round at last?

[David Mamet]

The blood dimmed tide, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born. Great stuff.

[Mike Rowe]

Pretty great.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, that was out of. He also Crazy Jane Talks to the bishop.

[David Mamet]

Whole series.

[Mike Rowe]

So great. Yeah, so that's a lot too, Dave. I mean. Yeah, to my earlier point. Well, here it is, the subtitle staring me in the face. Politics, Horror and Entertainment. Here's the thing that was. Everything you just said was political. Horrifying and entertaining.

[David Mamet]

Oh, thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

You're welcome.

[David Mamet]

Thank you very much. So with Trump, who's, you know, I worked with a lot of geniuses in the arts and so forth, but genius, as far as I understand it, is talent beyond my ability to understand it. Right. Somebody can be greatly talented, like Shakespeare. Yeah, I get it. He's a genius. I get it. I'm a writer, too. But Trump has a genius for politics that it's beyond anything I've ever seen that I would like. I and my, like, you know, getting into the final boarding process, got our heads down during the Biden administration and said, in effect, I hope it lasts out my time because there's nothing to be done. And Trump says, well, no, that's actually not true. Right. You got a fucked up situation and it's a Gordian knot, but we're going to untie it. How are we going to do it? One thing at a time. Because it's very, very easy to say, oh, there's so much to do, I can't do anything.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the time, though, David. It's like, I mean, is, is he really a political genius or is he. That's what I meant earlier when I talked about the great man theory in history. If they're out of their time, they're just men, of course. But if things triangulate in such a way that all of a sudden I want to kind of pivot a little bit and talk about all of this through the lens not of belief, but of persuasion. Like, what do you find persuasive and do you care? Honestly, I think that the country basically has two kinds of people in it, and it's not Republican and Democrat. It's persuadable and unpersuadable. And whether it's advertising or entertainment, I think it feels anyway like you have to know at least that Much. Are the people in your audience persuadable? And if they are, do you wish to persuade them, or do you simply want to take a position, say a thing and let the. What's the Latin for let the heavens fall? Whatever that. Yes, let the heavens fall. That's where I feel like you're coming from. I'm not saying you're not persuasive.

[David Mamet]

I'm not trying to persuade anybody because. Did anybody ever persuade you of anything? Nobody ever persuaded me of anything.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you know what? Hold on, I'll tell you. I'll speak for Chuck, who was a. May I?

[Chuck]

I can't stop you.

[Mike Rowe]

I do believe you were fairly dyed in the wool, a liberal young man, once upon a time, who. Drip, drip, drip. It took time.

[Chuck]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

But, you know, was it Larry Elder? Was it Dennis Prager? Both the right. So it takes time.

[David Mamet]

That's the answer is drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. Yeah, sure it is. Drip, drip, drip. Because I think I went a little bit nuts for the first couple of years after I got blacklisted. I actually knew I did, because nothing. I was like Hamlet. That's the first time I understood Hamlet. Because I was out of my fucking mind. Everything I believed in was wrong, though. Everything that I. All the people I thought believed in me tossed me to the wolves. I didn't know what the fuck was happening. I thought, Jesus Christ. You know, here I am, just a guy. I just write stuff. People laugh, people cry. Give me a couple bucks. I give it to my wife, she buys shoes.

[Mike Rowe]

Come on. Wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's got to be some other alternative. I mean, like. You know, this sounds so supercilious. Forgive me, but. I mean, if you don't think of yourself as the greatest living playwright, a lot of people do. And so you surely must be aware of that at this time, when you feel as though you have been blacklisted and that. That's different than just some guy who writes words, right?

[David Mamet]

I think so. No, here's the thing. It's like they said, the whatchamacallit is always the last to know. Getting betrayed is one of the least enjoyable of human experiences.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a drag.

[David Mamet]

Yeah. When you give someone you trust and you think that they admire you or they believe in you and you would support them, and then all of a sudden, you found out that they've betrayed you. That's really taking it down to the metal. And so that's. So I went.

[Mike Rowe]

It's operatic is what it is.

[David Mamet]

So that's what I was going through for a couple of years. I said, I just don't understand. Was I wrong? What in the world is going on? And so for answers, I went to Dennis Prager and Larry Elder and Victor Davis Hansen and Tom Sowell and Tom Payne and J.S. mill and Locke. And I just read and read and read and read and read. And eventually, eventually, like the dripping, it began to make sense that what we're looking at here is an ancient human problem.

[Mike Rowe]

So you were persuaded. You simply. You weren't sold. You bought something, to take your metaphor. You went on to the used car lot and you told the salesman to pound sand. And you said, I'm going to take my time. I'm going to walk around, I'm going to kick the tires. I'm going to think about it. I might go home, have a meal, come back the next day, maybe test drive it. I knew we'd get to it. It took an hour. But when we talk about skepticism and persuasion and all of these things together, and then look back at your work and the role of the confidence man and the idea of betrayal, you just said it perfectly. There's no more exquisite pain than to be betrayed, whether you're swindled by a trusted financial advisor. Been there. Or whether true love didn't turn out to be all that true or all that lovely. Right. We've all kind of felt those things. The degree to which that exists in your fiction and your nonfiction, that's your. Since we're doing French stuff, your raison, raison d' etre.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, that'll do.

[Mike Rowe]

Tell me. I'm close.

[David Mamet]

Perfect.

[Mike Rowe]

All right.

[David Mamet]

Perfect.

[Mike Rowe]

Perfect.

[David Mamet]

Also, I'll tell you what made a huge impression on me. When I was first saying, I don't understand. I don't understand. I met some people at my synagogue, one of them wonderful men named Andre Bellow, who is a very close friend of Dennis's, and so forth. And he started talking to me very gently, and I was so impressed by his demeanor that I think that's what helped me turn the corner, that he wasn't didactic. Right. And that he wasn't bombastic. He just said, well, here's what I think. Here's a couple books you might want to read. You got any questions, ask me. I said, whoa, that's not. How dare you, or certainly you can't mean all this nonsense that seems to be the left's only riposte to a request to explain their religion. Oh, what are you, a Trump lover?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[David Mamet]

One of the things I realize people Say, you know, you can't say that. What they're doing is they aren't objecting. They're warning. They're saying, don't you know that you can't say that? Right, Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Let me help you. Let me give you a helpful little tip.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, really.

[Mike Rowe]

So you won't. That sound you're hearing is the ice cracking beneath your feet. You know, nobody was talking about cancellation back when you were describing it just now. Maybe that's part of why your brain was, like, struggling to make sense of the fact that, why would friends turn their backs on me? Why would. Why is any of this happening? We just didn't have the right word for it. Or maybe it just hadn't happened to a degree where you could see it as a. As an inevitability.

[David Mamet]

But the pro duomo, since we're talking Latin, was when I first started hearing people say, this may not be politically correct, but. So that went on for 20 fucking years.

[Mike Rowe]

But everything before.

[David Mamet]

But this may not be politically correct, but why does one think one has to introduce a statement of one's position by acknowledging that there's an alternative?

[Mike Rowe]

That's brainwashing or a bungled attempt to be persuasive? The faked expression of reasonableness. Right. All of that stuff that precedes but really is bullcrap 99% of the time. It's just. It's the stuff of confidence. You know, the truth comes after, but. Or at least the truth of what you mean to say.

[David Mamet]

Well, you know, Abraham Lincoln, one of our presidents, apparently said, you can fool some of the people some of the time. Fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time. And I thought, Abe, you didn't live through this time. But it's true. It's true. I mean, the Risorgiamento of Maga and Trump proves it's true, whether or not, whatever happens next. Oh, hey, rest in peace. You cannot fool all the people all the time. Wonderful.

[Mike Rowe]

You gotta help me with that. Resurgio. What?

[David Mamet]

The resurgence.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, but give me the Latin again.

[David Mamet]

Resurgio mento. That's Italian.

[Mike Rowe]

Pretty close, though.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Interesting call back to Lincoln. As I recall, it was he who ushered in the pardoning of the turkeys.

[David Mamet]

Oh, that's true. That's true. Is his son.

[Mike Rowe]

It's his son.

[David Mamet]

Yeah. They want to kill the turkey. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a loose translation, I think, of the original text.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Last thing I'm going to do is rewrite David Mamet.

[David Mamet]

No, not at all. I mean, there's a famous story that a kid has a pet.

[Mike Rowe]

Armadillo ostrich. We're working our way through the whole freaking animal kingdom here.

[David Mamet]

He's got a pet turkey and he loves the turkey. And it comes to be Thanksgiving. He loves the turkey. Loves the turkey. Loves the turkey. That probably fucked this joke up. You know what? Ask me back. Ask me back next time and I'll finish that joke.

[Mike Rowe]

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[David Mamet]

Oh, yeah. Good, Excellent. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

You got somewhere to be? Are we done? Can I plug your book a little bit?

[David Mamet]

Are you kidding? I'm just here, as my wife said, I should begin every sentence by prefacing it Whore that I am.

[Mike Rowe]

Your wife said that?

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

She sounds terrific. What's her name?

[David Mamet]

Her name is Rebecca Pigeon. She is terrific. I'm crazy about her.

[Mike Rowe]

You married Rebecca Pigeon?

[David Mamet]

You bet I did, about 35 years ago.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, that explains why she's in all your fricking movies. She was now. Was that around the time Spanish Prisoner, Steve Martin?

[David Mamet]

Before that she was doing a play of mine in London called Speed the Plow, which you eventually did here, and she was in that. And then I did a play with her and William H. Macy, off Broadway, ran for about a year and a half called Oleanna, which is a very politically upsetting play. And then we've been working together ever since.

[Mike Rowe]

Congratulations.

[David Mamet]

Thanks.

[Mike Rowe]

What'd she think of your book?

[David Mamet]

She loves it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah?

[David Mamet]

Yeah. She's a great pal, Great supporter.

[Mike Rowe]

The book is called the Politics, Horror and Entertainment. All I can tell you is it's. I'm about halfway through and. Oh, I wanted to ask you about essays and about short stories and how you think about those. I dabble and I find it super satisfying, partly because, you know, a beginning and a middle and an end, and you can damn near write one in a day or two, I think, anyway. Is it a dying form, the short story, the good ones?

[David Mamet]

The short story is a very late occurring form. You know, it starts out in the 19th century with the growth of late 19th century, with the growth of magazines. They needed filler. And then people started writing short stories for magazines, I think first in France, kind of de Maupassant, then. And then in England, people started writing short stories for magazines for filler. And then it became a form, blah, blah, blah. And it was taken up by magazines over here.

[Mike Rowe]

Did the pulps come out of that?

[David Mamet]

Maybe? They maybe did. The pulps are actually very old form. And it started in again in England, late Victorian. There were two things. There were the penny dreadfuls, which were long, basically romance novels about Slice and Dice and Jack the Ripper. And then there were a lot of magazines. And then a lot of the great authors wrote in serials. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Bradden and so forth. They wrote for the magazines in serials. They would say, here's two chapters, here's two chapters. Then it came up over here when we had magazines and we don't got magazines no more. So there's really no place that I know of to put a short story. I like short stories.

[Mike Rowe]

I believe it ain't got no magazines no more. I was reading the other day one of my favorite writers, John D. MacDonald started writing these short stories to his wife when he was in the war because his mail was so heavily censored, and she started submitting them into some of these magazines that you're talking about. And when he came home, he found he had a toehold anyway and then started writing, like, the Travis McGee Mysteries and all that.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, great stuff. Came to me a couple times over 20 years. He said he had the rights to Travis McGee and would I. Would I want to write it as a movie?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, my God. What'd you say?

[David Mamet]

I said, yeah, sure. It never worked out. He said, well, we got this idea for this and this idea for that. We have to put in bright yellow for the shroud and ba ba da ba ba ba and all that shit. I said, yeah, no, I can't work that way, you know. I said, you want me to write a Travis McGee novel, a movie, I'll be glad to do it. And he said, well, what about the ongoing creative process? I said, what did we just have?

[Mike Rowe]

But that didn't happen, I think. I mean, Chuck's sick of hearing me talk about it, but Travis McGee was maybe the most important thing I ever read because of the time when I read it and the way I found it. Like, I truly just Forrest Gumped my way across the deep blue goodbye and picked up this time capsule, this boat bum in 1965. Right. Going after confidence men.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Helping people recover that which was illicitly taken from them and keeping half for his trouble and always paying a price and always a consequence. And he was. He was Paladin plus Quixote, the classic knight errant. And I was at a time in my life when I'm like, my God, I'm about to base my business on this guy's worldview, Take my retirement and early installments and.

[David Mamet]

Oh, it's great.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, I just. I was so impacted by a fictitious character.

[David Mamet]

It's very cute stuff, lovely stuff. Always got the girl, got a different girl, and got like a girl and a half in every book, but he.

[Mike Rowe]

Always paid for it. MacDonald never let him. You know, he got what he got, but he also got a broken nose and a black eye and a limp and. Right. And blood in his stool.

[Chuck]

It was always a broken girl, too, and was always.

[David Mamet]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

He was always picking up the little damaged birds with a broken wing and ultimately. Ultimately healing himself.

[David Mamet]

Well, interesting that you brought that up, because, you know who picked that up was in the God I'm Burning down is one of the techno thrillers, has got this Character who is a Navy SEAL and who am I talking?

[Mike Rowe]

Jack Carr?

[David Mamet]

Yeah, yeah, it's Jack. What's his name? But it's the other thing. He's got a guy who was a Navy SEAL and he. It was without mercy, without remorse.

[Mike Rowe]

Without remorse, yeah.

[David Mamet]

By.

[Mike Rowe]

By Big Dick Brannigan.

[David Mamet]

By Tom Clancy.

[Mike Rowe]

By Tom Clancy.

[David Mamet]

Tom Clancy writes this wonderful book about a minor character. He's got his own book, Without Remorse. He lives on a boat and he's in ex Navy SEAL and blah blah, blah. And then without remorse he does the same thing. He picks up this girl on the boat and takes her on the boat and she's a junkie and he gets her all cleaned up and blah blah, blah. It's a good book. Without rumors. It's the same thing. Obviously influenced by John D. MacDonald.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, there are only what, seven stories out there anyway. Really? Something like that, yeah. But yeah. I'm so glad to know that you. That you were touched by him. What about George MacDonald Fraser? Have you stumbled across the Flashman Chronicles?

[David Mamet]

Oh, sure, he did some marvel. He also wrote a wonderful. More book called Quartered. Safe Outcome.

[Mike Rowe]

Quartered. I've got it.

[David Mamet]

It's a great book.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a terrific book.

[David Mamet]

The Flashman books are just superb.

[Mike Rowe]

He was in Burma, I think he was.

[David Mamet]

And there's. He's so freaking funny. God, he's funny.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, talk about politically incorrect. That book doesn't get published. Flashman, Flashman today. No way.

[David Mamet]

What gets published? I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you should because the disenlightment just came out somehow or another. Unless you're going to tell me that you and Rebecca like publish this yourself or something.

[David Mamet]

No, no, no. It was published by some guys and blah blah, blah.

[Mike Rowe]

No, who. Who publishes this thing? Seriously?

[David Mamet]

Well, you have to tell me.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh no, I'm looking inside. David Mamet is a fantastic. Right. Mark Levin. That's nice. Yeah, look at Ben Shapiro. Says some nice things. Who publishes this thing? I'm only asking because I can't figure out who published your movie. Henry Johnson, who produced it? Like how'd that happen?

[David Mamet]

Well, we found some people wanted to put it in like a Harper Collins.

[Mike Rowe]

Thank you.

[David Mamet]

Harper Collins? Yeah, Henry Johnson. You can find that henryjohnsonmovie.com and it stars Shia LaBeouf and Evan Jonikite.

[Mike Rowe]

Terrific.

[David Mamet]

Pretty good movie.

[Mike Rowe]

What are you reading now and what do you recommend?

[David Mamet]

Well, I've been reading lately a whole bunch of books by Sanche de Gramont. Sanche de Gramont was a French count, but he was from poor. From the poor branch. And they were intermarried with the Rispolis and the Rothschilds. We didn't have any money. So he came over here from France and he worked as a journalist. And then he went back and he was drafted into the French army for Algeria. And he came back and he worked for a lot of publications. And he changed his name from De Gramont to Ted Morgan, which is an anagram of De Gramont. And he wrote spectacular nonfiction. A biography of mom, biography of tr, biography of fdr, a biography of Roosevelt. And he wrote a wonderful book about the Red Scare called Reds. And he wrote a book about Lovestone, who was the Communist Reds that turned.

[Mike Rowe]

Into the movie Reds.

[David Mamet]

No, no, it's something else. No, it's about the Red Scare. And then he wrote a couple of great novels. One of them is called the Way up, which is a fiction about his forebears during Louis xv. And he wrote a very, very, very important book that asks you all to read called Lives to Give. And it's about the French Resistance in Paris during World War II. And he was in Paris as a kid during World War II. And it's about an open city. It's about everyone fighting with each other. And it's not quite an open city. The Nazis are just leaving, and so the Resistance and the Communists and the collaborators and the Nazis. And it's really stunning about what people.

[Mike Rowe]

Will do to kiss ass, because power hates a vacuum.

[David Mamet]

Power hates a vacuum. And people got to get along. But the question is, when does getting along become complicit? Which is the question that all of us, I think, face in our political lives, if not in our daily lives. At what point does going along being complicit? You know, you're seeing young women get kicked off the podium because some kid says, a guy says he can't make it among the men. You see Harvard saying, well, you know, we're not sure that it rises to the level of hate speech. At what point does it become complicit? That's an open question. It's not an open yes or no question, but it's a question that many of us might do well to ask. Is it time to ask it?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, the way you put it before, in fact, it's funny. Tim Allen sat right there not long ago and said, ki Bono, who benefits? Who profits? Of course, you've said the same thing. And I think maybe I mean, to land this plane on something that's. I guess that's Latin. Kibono must be Latin.

[David Mamet]

You Bet.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep. Okay, good. I thought. I'm sure he was gonna say, no. It's Italian, dummy. Just get something right. That truly might be the shortest, most succinct way to reframe the conversation. And every essay in this book, right. If it's preceded or followed by that query kind of starts to take on a different weight.

[David Mamet]

Well, yeah, I mean, the question is home. And at the beginning of that poem, Yeats says, how can you compete being honor bred with one who were it known he lies were neither shamed in his nor in his neighbor's eyes. So a congressman gets up, senator gets up, and the foxwoman says, well, when did you know that Biden was demented? And the guy says, we're going forward. And she's stunned. She's absolutely speechless. And she says, that's it. And he says, that's it.

[Mike Rowe]

That guy is Chuck Schumer, I believe.

[David Mamet]

Oh, was it?

[Mike Rowe]

I believe so.

[David Mamet]

In any case, that's a quote for someone who is not shamed in his own eyes and does not fear being shamed in his neighbor's eyes. So that's civilization in decline.

[Mike Rowe]

You've used the word whore. I've been counting four times.

[David Mamet]

Whore.

[Mike Rowe]

Whore.

[David Mamet]

Oh, whore.

[Mike Rowe]

W h o R e it pops up. A whores profession.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Is that a play or a book?

[David Mamet]

It's a book.

[Mike Rowe]

How did Rebecca encourage you to introduce yourself? Whore that I am. Whore that I am, Chuck. Which may be the title that we need to go with.

[David Mamet]

It may be, but listen, also, I wrote Diary of a Porn Star, which is a very funny book. And I wrote it just at the time that Stormy Daniels was coming out. And I tried everything to get in touch with her and her people. Her people?

[Mike Rowe]

A lot of them.

[David Mamet]

This is a great deal. I tell you what, put your name on it, we'll split the profits. Diary of a Porn. It's a very funny book. I think. Diary of a Porn Star by Stormy Daniels. A lost opportunity.

[Mike Rowe]

It really was.

[David Mamet]

Then I went out to Elizabeth Warren and.

[Mike Rowe]

Go ahead, say it.

[David Mamet]

No, no, that's as far as.

[Chuck]

I guess you had your own punchline to that.

[Mike Rowe]

I had my own punchline. I'm not going to say it, but that's great.

[David Mamet]

Elizabeth Warren reminds me of my son's Noah, who's 26. The first time he was a hysterically funny kid. The first time I ever reduced him to screaming laughter was about this guy at a bar, right? And he's a lonely guy, and every night he sees another guy at the end of the bar and he sits down next to a beautiful woman. And she slaps his face. And then he says, wait a second. Wait a second. And they start laughing, and they go off together. Every night. Guy sits down next to a new woman, she slaps his face. He says, something, slaps his face. They laugh, they go off together. So after like, a week, our guy comes over to the guy says, excuse me, I gotta have a. Every night you seem to insult this woman, and then you laugh and you go home together. What is it? The guy says, well, he says, I'll tell you. He says. I sit down next to them and I say, tickle your ass with a feather. And the woman says, what? And she slaps me. And I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What did you think I said? And she said, well, what did you say? He says, I said, particularly nasty weather. So they laugh. They laugh, they go home together. So the next night, our guy goes to the bar, he gets drunk out of his mind, right? Gets his courage up. There's a nice woman sitting down in the Dubai, comes up. He says, ticket your ass with a feather. And she slapped me. He says, what? He says. I say, you want to shove a fucking feather up your ass? You may ask.

[Mike Rowe]

Raining like a bitch.

[David Mamet]

Yeah. You may ask why. Why Elizabeth Warren made me think of that. I think that the answer is clear.

[Mike Rowe]

I see what he did.

[Chuck]

I heard it differently. I heard it that he says, hey, lady, shove a feather up your ass. And she says, what? And he goes, Raining like a.

[David Mamet]

Well, then, I gotta tell you, my son's the time. He made me laugh because we trade jokes all the time. That's what we do in my family. I'm still telling them jokes. Jokes that my father told me. I said, noah, here's my favorite joke my father told me. He says, okay. He says, guy says, hey, the eliz. The invisible man is here. The other guy says, tell him I can't see him. So Noah says, yeah, Dad, I got him approved, that joke. Well, wait, I got to tell you, the improvement.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, hit me.

[David Mamet]

No, he says, okay, dad, here goes. Guy comes up, he says, the invisible man's here. And the guy says, tell him to go fuck himself.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, here's one that most people wouldn't get at all today. But it kind of proves the whole, you know, man, in time or out of time. But in the. I think it was the second season of mash. Hawkeye and Hot Lips, rest her soul. Loretta Sweat just lost her. They're sitting around talking, and they're in a tent and it's windy outside. And the flap blows open and then blows close, and everybody just kind of looks at it. And it was an improv line. Alan Alda just looked at it and goes, claude Rains, right Now, Claude Rains, of course, played the Invisible man back in the. What is it, the 50s or 60s. And I had to ask, like, before there was an Internet. I saw that and I knew it was funny, but I had no idea why. And so I had to go figure out.

[David Mamet]

Good for you.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. Drip, drip, drip. The joke finally lands a day and a half later when I'm in the library and I'm like, oh, oh, well.

[David Mamet]

See, that's the problem when you get too old and nobody gets the jokes anymore. There's another example of my son, Noah. Am I eating up your guys?

[Mike Rowe]

No, no, we have. Don't worry. None of this will be used.

[David Mamet]

Excellent. So the joke. I tell him this joke from show business, from these two people who. Max Factor invented makeup. He didn't just invent a makeup, he invented the idea of makeup.

[Mike Rowe]

Most people, I bet, don't even know that was a dude.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, it was a guy. Max Factor.

[Mike Rowe]

His name was like a name.

[David Mamet]

Myron Faktorovich. And he was Polish. And the other woman who invented inert face cream was Helena Rubinstein, and she was Polish, too. They were both Jewish. And Max Factor was working for the movies, inventing makeup. Then he went from there to not only doing makeup for the stars, but inventing the idea of makeup. So the old joke was, how did Helena Rubenstein get pregnant? Do you know?

[Mike Rowe]

No.

[David Mamet]

Max Factor. So my son says, this little piss cutter, God bless him, he says, no, Dad, I can make that joke better. I say, okay, let's do it. How did Max Factor get pregnant? How? Helena Rubenstein.

[Mike Rowe]

Was that. The Rubenstein was John Rubenstein, her son.

[David Mamet]

Maybe it's a common Jewish name.

[Chuck]

He did Pippin, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Well, I mean, since you invoked Yeats and whores. I'll leave you with. If I remember it, this is one of that crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop series. A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent. But love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be whole or sold that has not been rent.

[David Mamet]

Well, that. The old joke about engineers. These three engineers are talking about what's the stupidest? What's the best kind of engineers? And one guy says, well, the best kind is God, because God created this incredible electrical system that is the electrical impulses which allow us to. So obviously, God is an electrical engineer. And the guy says, yes. He says, but God is all powerful and great because obviously God created the veins and the arteries. So God is actually a fluid engineer. And the God. Yeah, he says, but on the other hand, it's possible that God is a civic engineer because he put a playground next to a sewage disposal plant.

[Mike Rowe]

All right, I see where this is going.

[David Mamet]

Okay. You know, you brought out the worst of me. I hope you're happy.

[Mike Rowe]

Look, man, I. Like I said, who in the world is going to rewrite David Mamet? The book is the Disenlightenment. The movie is Henry Johnson. You can Download [e-mail] you can henryjohnsonmovie.com henryjohnsonmovie.com thank you so much. And you can pick up the book wherever Harper Collins sells his books these days. What Imagines pretty much everywhere. Thank you for signing my stupid release. I gotta tell you something, man.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

My relationship with releases over the years has probably been similar to yours.

[David Mamet]

I know you wrote that.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, well, yeah, but that was my first draft. He shouldn't have said, just so the listener understands. We've got the same bullcrap release that every other person hands out. And some people, myself included, read these things and they see all the legal mumbo jumbo and they're like, you know something? I just. Why does it have to be this way? So David Mamet sends back our standard release, and he's taken the time to read it, and he's crossed out certain. Certain sentences and, you know, this paragraph. Not here, this doesn't quite work. And I just looked at it and I was like, I can't believe I'm collaborating with David Mamet on something written. This is amazing. So, anyway, you inspired me.

[David Mamet]

You want a new release?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, you don't have to sign it, but if you do, if you do, I want you to know that I've titled it Where'd I Put It? Here it is. It's the David Mamet release now for everyone. And it's the friendliest way I could come up with to say the same pile of crap. Did I meet people?

[David Mamet]

You should have seen this release. It says we get to use your likeness in anything I know now invented or forever invented. Yeah. I said, okay.

[Chuck]

Throughout the universe.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then until the end of time. Then it says we get to alter it in any way possible till the end of time. Well, you're going to Lola me and make me look like a beagle. I don't know about that. And it says we get to make love to your wife on alternate Saturdays and piss in your mouth. And she voice. I said, you know what?

[Mike Rowe]

I just can't do it. Well, first of all, I read the. Fine. I read everything. And obviously you do as well. And what happened was, when the lawyer sent it back, I looked at it and I said, look, I understand what we're trying to do, but I'm offended, too, and I'm embarrassed on behalf of myself. And I'm sorry that you had to read a bunch of nonsense. And all the lawyers think. Tell me is, look, it's just the way it is. I'm like, but no, it's actually not just the way it is. There's a way to talk to people like they're human beings and just to step away from the precipice, you know? So, I mean, I literally spent. Like, I'm still messing with it because I just. Look, it's a really hard thing. Like, these things are leaps of faith. You're basically like, if you don't know somebody, you're basically saying, I need you to trust me with your name and likeness forever in the future to help promote whatever this thing is. And that's a hell of a thing to ask.

[David Mamet]

Well, that was. Yes, I understand.

[Mike Rowe]

But if you're going to be interesting, get the mic on your.

[David Mamet]

I understand. I get it. That's a little bit excessive, but it's completely understandable. The part that I found egregious was you're saying, and we get to alter.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what I. And they're like, well, it doesn't mean we're going to do that. I'm like, then why would you say it?

[David Mamet]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

And the answer is, because it's better to overreach. So on your way home, did you drive yourself here?

[David Mamet]

Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Look at you. That's amazing.

[David Mamet]

How about that, huh?

[Mike Rowe]

You know who else did that? Gene Simmons. Came in here two months ago, got stuck in traffic. Took him an hour and 45 minutes to get here from Malibu. It's unbelievable. That guy I saw.

[David Mamet]

She's still stuck in the garage.

[Chuck]

Different Gene Simmons.

[Mike Rowe]

She's still stuck in the. I'm talking about the rock star from.

[David Mamet]

Kiss, that Gene Simmons.

[Mike Rowe]

He's still in the garage, too. Tragically. All I would ask is that you read it and if I have your permission to call my releases.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

From this day forward. The David Mamet release.

[David Mamet]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the release that inspired me.

[David Mamet]

So what's in it for me?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, aside, you know what I predict how many of these books you think we can sell? Like, if I really lean into it?

[Chuck]

Oh, if you really lean into it, maybe 5,000.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what I would think. Yeah.

[David Mamet]

Sold.

[Mike Rowe]

Folks, this book, Whore that I Am, by David Mamet and Mike Rowe, it's a pop up, and I think you're gonna. I think you're gonna love it. The book is great. It's called the Disenlightenment. Obviously, I'm at your disposal. I owe you one for what this is worth. No, I do.

[David Mamet]

Wait, didn't I already sign this stupid fucking thing?

[Mike Rowe]

That's what I'm saying. Don't. I mean.

[David Mamet]

Oh, I just couldn't.

[Mike Rowe]

If you read it and like it, then sign it. But what I'm really asking you to do is, if I have your permission, I want to call this new release.

[David Mamet]

Oh, yes, please. I'm honored. Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

The David Mamet release.

[David Mamet]

You bet.

[Mike Rowe]

Because it's the thing that inspired me to get all the legal mumbo jumbo forever.

[David Mamet]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

Out of my. Out of this little part of my life. I couldn't have done it without you.

[David Mamet]

Yeah. Thanks for having me. And thanks, Chuck.

[Mike Rowe]

Really an honor, a privilege, a pleasure, truly.

[David Mamet]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

All that stuff.

[David Mamet]

Okay, Chuck.

[Mike Rowe]

Going, going. You have one question for David Mamet.

[Chuck]

Yes, I got one question, and it really is. I just want to know if you're aware of this joke, because you're in it. I'm sure you are. Where a drunk is on a subway, and a Methodist pastor is sitting there quietly, and the drunk is just going from side to side, and the. The Methodist pastor is thinking, please don't sit next to me. And the drunk sits right next to the Methodist pastor, belches right in his face. The Methodist pastor looks down his nose and says, you know, cleanliness is next to godliness. That's John Wesley. He goes, oh, fuck you, David Mamet.

[David Mamet]

Yeah, you know, truer words were never said.

[Mike Rowe]

Ki Bono, everybody. See you next week if you like.

[Chuck]

What you heard and even if you don't.

[Mike Rowe]

Won't you please, won't you please, pretty.

[David Mamet]

Please, pretty please subscribe?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please, pretty freaking please, please, oh, please subscribe. Hi, Zoe Saldana.

[David Mamet]

Welcome to T Mobile.

[Mike Rowe]

Here's your new iPhone 16 Pro on us. Thanks. And here's my old phone to trade in.

[David Mamet]

You don't need a trade in.

[Mike Rowe]

When you switch to T Mobile, we'll give you a new iPhone 16 Pro. Plus we'll help you pay off your.

[David Mamet]

Old phone up to.

[Mike Rowe]

To 800 bucks and you still get to keep it.

[David Mamet]

There's always a trade end. Not right now.

[Mike Rowe]

At T Mobile. I feel like I have to give you something in return for karma. That's okay.

[David Mamet]

I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see.

[Mike Rowe]

Hand sanitizer.

[David Mamet]

It's lavender.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm good. Seriously. Let me check this pocket. Oh, mints. Really, I'm fine. Oh, I have raisins. I'm a mom.

[David Mamet]

Wait, wait one sec.

[Mike Rowe]

I've got cupcakes in the car. It's our best iPhone offer ever. Switch to T Mobile. Get it? New iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on us. No trade in needed. We'll even pay off your Phone up.

[Chuck]

To 800 bucks with 24 monthly bill credits.

[Mike Rowe]

New line 100 plus a month on experience beyond Finance Agreement 999.99 and qualifying.

[David Mamet]

Ported for well qualified plus tax and $10 connection charge. Payout via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days credits end in balance due if you pay off earlier.

[Chuck]

Cancel ct mobile.com Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host.

[Mike Rowe]

You seek it out and download it.

[Chuck]

You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.

[Mike Rowe]

And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention?

[Chuck]

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