This week’s “Stage” page features an interview with Dana Schultes, a longtime Fort Worth actor at Stage West who directed the company’s current production of David Mamet’s November. Two short video promos – one here, the other here – give you a taste of this biting comedy about political corruption and partisan divides.
Mamet, of course, came out of the closet as a rather prickly conservative with his 2008 essay Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ But a Nutbag Rightwinger Instead. (Okay, I invented the second half of that title). Mamet isn’t just a “keep government lean and efficient” conservative, but the kind that says public funding of the arts is “totalitarian” and building an Islamic center near Ground Zero in NYC is “a cultural obscenity.” Oh, well. Given that he hasn’t written a script of any consequence in about two decades, he certainly needs the publicity.
But instead of getting all divisive, let’s enjoy one of my favorite scenes from the 1992 movie version of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross — Alec Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” speech. It was not, btw, in the original play. And since this is Mamet – potty mouth alert!
