David Mamet

David Alan Mamet (born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author.

Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Lenore June (née Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, a labor attorney.

He is Jewish.

His paternal grandparents were Polish Jews.

Mamet has said his parents were communists and described himself as a red diaper baby.

One of his earliest jobs was as a busboy at Chicago's London House and The Second City.

He also worked as an actor, editor for Oui magazine and as a cab-driver.

He was educated at the progressive Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo.

Mamet is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company; he first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross, which received its first Broadway revival in the summer of 2005.

According to Joe Mantegna, Mamet worked as a script doctor for the 1978 film Towing.

His screenwriting credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Verdict (1982), The Untouchables (1987), Hoffa (1992), Wag the Dog (1997), and Hannibal (2001).

Mamet's first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, based on James M. Cain's novel.

He received an Academy Award nomination one year later for the 1982 legal drama, The Verdict.

He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988).

Feature films that Mamet both wrote and directed include House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), and his biggest commercial success, Heist (2001).

He also wrote the screenplays for The Untouchables (1987), Hoffa (1992), The Edge (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), Ronin (1998), and Hannibal (2001).

He received a second Academy Award nomination for Wag the Dog.

In 1987, Mamet made his film directing debut with his screenplay House of Games, which won Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival and the Film of the Year in 1989 from the London Film Critics' Circle Awards.

The film starred his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, and many longtime stage associates and friends, including fellow Goddard College graduates.

Mamet was quoted as saying, "It was my first film as a director and I needed support, so I stacked the deck."

Mamet's books include: On Directing Film (1991), a commentary and dialogue about film-making; The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business; The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011), a commentary on cultural and political issues; Three War Stories (2013), a trio of novellas about the physical and psychological effects of war; and Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood (2023), an autobiographical account of his experiences in Hollywood.

Mamet himself wrote the screenplay for the 1992 adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, and wrote and directed the 1994 adaptation of his play Oleanna (1992).

After House of Games, Mamet later wrote and directed two more films focusing on the world of con artists, The Spanish Prisoner (1997) and Heist (2001).

Among those films, Heist enjoyed the biggest commercial success.

In 2002, Mamet was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

He created and produced the CBS series The Unit (2006–2009).

At the Chicago Public Library Foundation 20th anniversary fundraiser in 2006, though, Mamet announced "My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign".

After a move to Chicago's North Side, Mamet encountered theater director Robert Sickinger, and began to work occasionally at Sickinger's Hull House Theatre.

This represented the beginning of Mamet's lifelong involvement with the theater.

His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.

His play Race, which opened on Broadway on December 6, 2009, and featured James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas in the cast, received mixed reviews.

Mamet later received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for Grand Master of American Theater in 2010.

His play The Anarchist, starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, in her Broadway debut, opened on Broadway on November 13, 2012, in previews and was scheduled to close on December 16, 2012.

His 2017 play The Penitent previewed off-Broadway on February 8, 2017.

In 2017, Mamet released an online class for writers entitled David Mamet teaches dramatic writing.

In 2019 Mamet returned to the London West End with a new play, Bitter Wheat, at the Garrick Theatre, starring John Malkovich.

In 2023 it was announced Mamet was writing a new play entitled, Henry Johnson.

The production is announced to debut in Los Angeles starring Shia LaBeouf.

Mamet's first film work was as a screenwriter, later directing his own scripts.