The sparks, opinions and anecdotes fly as David Mamet tackles his 40 years in Hollywood in ‘Everywhere an Oink Oink’

CHICAGO -- My first encounter with David Mamet was not a pleasant one.

It began on the night of May 25, 1979, when I watched in increasing dismay, the world premiere of his latest play, a musical called “Lone Canoe.” Back at the Chicago Sun-Times offices, I typed my review, which appeared in the next day’s paper with the headline “Lifeless and full of holes, Mamet’s ‘Lone Canoe’ sinks.”

I was not alone in my critical contempt. Linda Winer of the Tribune wrote that the play was “about testing, exploring, and really getting lost. And so, for the moment, is Mamet.” Other critics were equally dismissive.

But time passes, bygones become bygones and over the next decades, not only did Mamet become the country’s leading playwright and a Pulitzer Prize-winner, he and I became pals and I have read or watched everything he has created since “Lone Canoe,” which he has long considered one of the few failures of his writing life and career, which are actually one in the same.

For the record, Mamet is Chicago-born and first became famous here for such early plays as “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and “American Buffalo” and then a couple dozen more, including “Glengarry Glen Ross” (winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1984); nearly 50 films such as “The Verdict,” “Wag the Dog” and “Hannibal,” 20 or so which he also directed (among them “House of Games,” “Homicide” and “The Spanish Prisoner”); some TV work and more than 20 books.

He does not use a computer. He has no website. No email. Twitter is out of the question. He doesn’t text. He does most of his writing in a multilevel townhouse that functions as an office that he comes to five or six days a week. It is near the home he shares with British American actress-singer Rebecca Pidgeon. They were married in 1991. They have two adult children and Mamet has two older daughters from his first marriage.

Now, sitting on my desk is his latest work, dedicated to his wife. It’s a nonfiction book titled “Everywhere an Oink Oink.” It carries the subtitle “An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood.” Like most everything Mamet has ever written (and said publicly for that matter), it has attracted attention, controversy and wildly divergent opinions.

Its first sentence sets the tone: “I am willing to think ill of anyone, so I suppose I have an open mind” and the final sentence of its prologue informs us that its pages will contain “salacious gossip posing as information, and reminiscences that may astound and disturb and, should you love the movie, bring to your lips a wry, sad smile.”

True enough but a number of early reviews have not been kind, none harsher than that of local critic/editor Hugh Iglarsh, who writes in a recent issue of Newcity that this is “largely a book of (mostly nasty) anecdotes … [The book] sounds less like a memoir than one of those rambling farewell messages discovered too late on the mass shooter’s computer ... hostile and downright toxic.”

Ouch. But there has been some praise, such as this from Library Journal: “Mamet’s staccato, derisive, episodic, war-language writing will enchant fans.” And this from Kirkus Reviews: “Come for the celebrity anecdotes; stay for the cartoons.”

The esteemed critic Dwight Garner paints a full critical picture in the New York Times, writing of Mamet’s “mind on shuffle” and calling the book “under-argued, rabid in its anti-wokeness and haphazardly written.” But he goes on to write that his “review is going to be a bonsai-size rave, because I have a soft spot for this kind of throwaway, variety-hour book …”

Mamet’s relationship with and in Hollywood began in 1980, shortly after the “Lone Canoe” fiasco, when he bluffed his way into his first screenplay, the 1981 remake of “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” The following decades would not only give us more theatrical works but also a steady stream of movies, some as screenwriter and nearly a dozen as both writer and director. He worked in television. He wrote books.

You will read about his hatred for producers and his love of old films; his views on just about anything. We read about why he turned down Martin Scorsese’s offer to write the screenplay for “Raging Bull”; his friendship with director Stanley Kubrick, who told him what a pain Kirk Douglas was during the making of “Spartacus”; the joys of working with Joe Mantegna and Don Ameche on his “mob comedy” “Things Change”; about a might-have-been “crooks and lawyers and cops” TV drama with James Gandolfini; and why Danny DeVito is to him “a prince … no greater gentleman has ever lived.”

Famous names pop from every page, wrapped in Mamet’s honesty and storytelling skill. I was less drawn to his political asides but did enjoy many moments of self-reflection, as when he writes, “I’ve always been built like a mailbox, and from earliest youth was likened to a bear.”

The book also features some lively footnotes and 40-some cartoons; my favorite is one with the caption “Who was the most fetching female in film history?” accompanying a drawing of Lassie.

There is a certain anger and disappointment shadowing this book, reflecting what he feels is the ruination of Hollywood. I hope he is now sitting in his Santa Monica office writing more screenplays, maybe even more plays. He’s still growling, this lion in winter (he’s 76) and has given me, in my latest Mamet encounter, pages (with cartoons) packed with fun, frustration, provocation, entertainment, anecdotes, worries, insights … and many of the other things that comprise life itself.