EVERYWHERE AN OINK OINK

The frequently misbegotten experiences of a playwright in Hollywood.

"I did ten features as a director, the world’s best job; and wrote forty or so filmscripts, half of which got made," reports Mamet. His directing credits include House of Games and Oleanna, and he wrote screenplays for Wag the Dog, The Verdict, and the film version of his Pulitzer-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross. He has rubbed elbows with several generations of Hollywood stars, from Myrna Loy and Billy Wilder to Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer, along with off-screen figures like David Geffen and Mike Nichols. The author’s anecdotes and ruminations on filmcraft are peppered with a constant fire of jokes and one-liners, many of them dated. Early on, Mamet offers a cold assessment of his memoir: "My life form, having succeeded in Hollywood and then aged out, scavenges some benefit from tell-alls, cartoons and captions." The cartoons, the most endearing parts of the book, include posters and storyboards for Hollywood brainstorms like "The Little Engine That Could Meets Anna Karenina"; a sequel to Titanic (“but this time, it's not the Titanic that sinks, but the iceberg—so: the story centers around two penguins!"); and a film called "Mutton for Punishment,” which "raises the baa on the sheep-action genre." Mamet characterizes his book as "a descendant of the Movie Mag," but if it is, it's one with quite a bit more attitude than its predecessors: Audrey Hepburn was "the sole actress more beautiful than Gary Cooper"; and F. Scott Fitzgerald, “who wanted to be liked by rich people,” also “wasn’t fit to puke into the same toilet as Hemingway." In general, a lot of Mistakes Were Made, some of which, the author acknowledges, were his own fault.

Cantankerous, scattershot, and often funny. Come for the celebrity anecdotes; stay for the cartoons.