Does it have to be an Old Mill?

Love him or hate him, David Mamet remains one of the most influential American dramatists of the time. Even if you find the "Mametspeak" style of dialogue too highly stylized for your tastes, I still recommend reading his scripts as exemplars of lean, visual writing. State and Main and Wag the Dog, both skewering Hollywood and politics (large and small), stand out for me. And his book, On Directing Film, is valuable even to screenwriters for understanding why, in theory, a perfect script could be written containing no dialogue at all. Mamet will be making an in-store appearance at Book Soup in West Hollywood on Tuesday, February 6th, to present and sign his new book, Bambi v. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business. A unique opportunity for those in the L.A. area.