by David Mamet
In the publicity process the subject and the interlocutor both pretend to be disinterested. The interviewee is constrained to adopt some version of a humble demeanor (“Who me …?”), and the interviewer poses as an honest seeker after truth—either for his own edification or on behalf of his readership.
In truth, the subject is trying to flog his wares, his ideas, or himself, and the journalist is—usually—hoping to “catch him out,” as it “makes better copy.” And I can’t say that I blame the journalist. Which, if we’re looking for a villain, leaves the subject, which, in my case, was myself, which is why I stopped doing interviews. For it did seem to me to be two overweening ids—the Chorus Girl and the Producer; and the Chorus Girl said, “I am going to bed with you because I am taken with your kindness and your generosity—two qualities I find attractive in a man”; and the Producer said, “I respect your honesty and your integrity in going to bed with a man old enough to be your uncle, and, further, I am impressed with your fortitude in withstanding the sure-to-come barbs of those deluded souls who might say that you are going to bed with me just to get the part, and, in spite of them, I am going to give you the part, which I was going to do anyway.”
And then we have the superego of the Bellhop, who says, “Oh, please.… Whyn’t’cha just hop in the sack and get on with it.”
So I said a prayer that I would not make a fool of myself, and reminded myself of the supposed benefits of publicity, and went forth. I talked to a couple of journalists in the morning and then went over for the press conference.
Hundreds of thousands of journalists, so it seemed to me, had just been shown the film in a special press screening, and they were arrayed in a conference hall. The producers of the film and Miss Pidgeon and I were ushered into the conference hall and onto a stage. Many photographers took pictures, we were introduced by Henri Behar, the moderator and translator, and the press conference began.
People asked me questions, and I responded to them. People took pictures, the press conference ended, and we were ushered along by a nice burly Frenchman whom I took to be the director of security. We went through various passages of the Festival Hall, flanked by the burly man’s myrmidons, who were all wearing madras jackets reminiscent of the fifties.
We ended up on a terrace at the side of the Festival Hall. There were, arrayed on bleachers on the terrace, three hundred photographers popping off pictures. Flashbulbs kept going off, and people were screaming at me to look at them.
I would turn to look at them, and people from whom I had turned away would begin screaming that perhaps I should look back in their direction. This went on for the longest time. Twice I waved good-bye to the photographers and made as if to leave, and twice I was rebuffed by the festival officials, who indicated that they’d “be the judge of that.”
Finally it was determined that all had gone correctly, and that the photographers on the bleachers were done.
My party was then directed to turn around, which we did, and found another hundred photographers on another terrace some fifty feet away, and then it was their turn and they took pictures for a while. Finally we were allowed to leave. A car drove us back to the Carlton, and I suggested to the driver that he have his wheels aligned, but he politely remonstrated that the offending oscillation was caused by myself, who was shaking like that which we in Vermont have come to know as “a leaf.”
And I talked to some more journalists that afternoon, and then it was time to prepare for the big night.
Which of us has not confronted that tuxedo? Yes, our loved one is in the bathroom, engaged in god knows what procession of ritual preparations, and oblivious to all else. There is a spiritual apartheid between the bathroom and the bedroom. The usual connubial co-spiritedness that informs the happy home has ceased. One is alone.
I’d bought a new tuxedo, and was about to don it for the first time. The clothier suggested that I let out the waist a half-inch. I declined, as the waist fit right fine, I thought, and told him so. He suggested that as I was going to wear the tux with suspenders, rather than with a belt, I would be more comfy having the waist a bit looser. I knew, or thought I knew, that he was only being kind to me—and that, if I assented, he would let the waist an inch and a half and leave me, in my delusion, to believe he had let it out merely the promised half-inch—all of the above suspicions being justified by his use of slimming mirrors in his store.
So I told him not to let out the waist, and I started getting into the tux, and it fit just fine and rather loose around the waist, so I felt superior to my clothier, and then I thought that he had probably let the waist out anyway, and I suppressed an impulse to take the pants off and hunt for marks of the same.
Yes, my mind was racing.
I got into my tux by stages. There was a cunning little arrangement whereby the front of the stiff-front shirt was meant to attach itself through the inside of the fly of the pants, so as to keep the shirt nice ’n’ neat and prevent its riding up. I finally got the arrangement to work, and then could not straighten up, so I redid it and got the bow tie tied and the whole nine yards and looked in the mirror and thought I looked pretty good.
Miss Pidgeon had bedecked herself in a stunning, very tight sequined dress and put on high-heeled shoes, and I lost my self-conscious vanity for a moment while I understood myself to be quite the luckiest man alive.
Down we went, we two fashion plates.
We went down into the lobby, and there were a load of paparazzi, and they took our picture.
One of the festival functionaries took us out the back door, where it was still pissing down rain, and escorted us into one of the festival cars.
We made our way down the main drag at a footslogging pace. There were gendarmes with their cinematogenic kepis at the intersections, and there were two solid walls of folks from the hotel down to the Festival Hall, all along the blocked-off street. When we came abreast of the festival, the line of traffic halted completely. We stopped for several minutes at a time, and then inched forward a car length.
Ahead of us, at some unknown distance, cars were stopping to disgorge their precious cargo at the foot of the ceremonial red carpet of the Festival Hall.
We were in an overarching tunnel of people. They pressed up against the car, and the two sides seemed to reach over the top of the car and meet in the middle. People were popping flashbulbs and pounding on the car, and put their faces up against the windows.
They asked one another who it was in the car and, I must say, displayed rather good humor when they realized they did not recognize us.
We inched forward. The driver asked us to check to see if the rear doors were locked. This frightened me a bit.
I’d been to the Oscars twice, and thought them rather smashingly pagan, but this festival could give them Cards and Spades; the onlookers at the Oscars were just bored and vicious Americans like me, but these folks were interested in “film.”
We arrived at our destination—the end of the red carpet. The doors were opened and we stood out under an insufficient canopy while it rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock, as they have it in Vermont.
We were held back from our ceremonial entrance as various Continental celebrities went forward to the delight of the crowd. Then it came to be our turn. Up we went. Out from under the canopy and into the rain for fair. People took our pictures. I think the staircase was lined by double rows of someone or other.
I think that, after the fact, I was told there were trumpeters in Napoleonic livery, but I don’t remember it.
I remember the gendarmes, who were all very young and very fit and stood quite still, with their hands clasped behind their back in parade rest, and they were very impressive. And I remember the troop of plainclothes bodyguards, who had changed their madras jackets to white-and-gray seersucker, and who looked very dap.
We went up the wide staircase of the Festival Hall (one of my film’s producers likened the hall to the library of some midwestern university with a little too
much money); up, I say, we went, and into the foyer and through that foyer into the vast auditorium. We were ushered to our seats.
On the stage, Geraldine Chaplin was speaking to the compere, a very relaxed and distinguished heavyset man in his sixties.
They called Roman Polanski up from the audience and introduced him as the chief judge of the festival this year, and he called the subordinate judges up, and they joined him on the stage.
I didn’t know who many of them were, and my attention wandered. One of my film’s producers introduced me to several of the Japanese backers of the movie, and we bowed and shook hands. Robert Mitchum was called out onstage, and he came flanked by two of his sons, and, in his quality of Prestigious Representative of World Cinema, he declared the festival open.
The compere asked for our, the audience’s, forbearance, as the television equipment that had been obtruding on the stage was removed.
We, in the audience, chatted among ourselves for a while. Then the lights dimmed and the audience hushed.
We were shown a trailer for Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, which was a nice historical touch; and then we were shown a trailer for Citizen Kane, which trailer starts and finishes with Orson Welles’s trademark “Mercury Theatre of the Air” logo:
Limbo. A man’s voice calls for a microphone. The mike swings in on a boom. A man’s hand adjusts it, then retires from the shot. The voice (Welles) speaks, introducing the project we are about to see.
This trademark appears at the end of the Mercury films, too. Welles reiterates various facts, the casting of the film and other information, and the mike swings away and into limbo.
I’ve always thought that this trademark is one of the most classy things in the world. It fills me with both delight and envy each time I see it. I find myself not only impressed, but regressed, and the ultimate laurel of my youth escapes my open lips: “Cool.”
Rest in peace, Mr. Welles, and I wish I had been privileged to know you.
And so we quieted down, and they showed my film.
My film was preceded by the “computer art” video logo of the festival. We see various free-floating steps, as if they are a staircase without the risers. We see that the steps are under water. The “camera” rises up the steps, and the steps emerge from the water and into the air. The steps keep rising through the air, and into the dark starry firmament. The top step tilts to the camera, and reveals, embossed, the palm-leaf colophon of the festival. This golden palm leaf takes leave of the step, which sinks away. It is then joined by various typography that tells us what we are looking at, and then it is over. I hate computers. I think they are the tool of the devil. In any case, they then showed my movie.
It was the first time I’d seen the film with a real audience.
I saw it for six months on the screen of a Steenbeck editing machine—this screen is about the size of a paperback book. During the editing process, I saw it a couple of times in a screening room with an audience of thirty or so handpicked folks.
Now here we are. The screen is 180 feet across, and there are twenty-five hundred folks like myself—jaded, blasé, anxious, and demanding—looking at my film.
Well, it did real good. Various people said various things about it afterward, but twenty-five hundred people paid attention for one hour and forty-two, and the film reflects my intentions as completely as I knew how to express them at that time, and it holds their attention, which indicates to me that, at least on a technical level, I did my job adequately well, and, beyond that, everything is with the gods.
Now, this whole issue of popular reception is a curious thing. I’ve been staging my work, plays and films, for twenty-some years. During that time I have striven to come to terms with the phenomena of popular and critical reception.
Popular reception is the easier to become comfortable with. I started out writing plays for my own theater company, and my relation to the audience was fairly clear—if one did one’s job well, they paid attention, if not, then not. If it was funny, they laughed, if it was sad, they cried; if it was not funny, they did not laugh, and a person who persisted in the asseveration that his work was funny in opposition to the view of the audience might have a career in philosophy, but was not long for show business.
When the audience got out of the theater, another set of circumstances demanded recognition and understanding: the audience that perhaps did laugh and cry, might say, of the piece as a whole: “I didn’t get it,” or “I didn’t like it.”
In a theatrical environment, the audience signals this disaffection by staying away; if their presence at the play is paying your rent, you then starve.
So it is necessary to be very conscious of the audience, and work, I think, to help them understand your intention.
It is also necessary to learn to still the rancor that their lack of approval might create, and learn to evaluate this rancor and to respond to their opinion in one of two ways. One may respond to their disapproval either by saying (a) I see that I have not done my job sufficiently well—let me reexamine my work, and see if I could make it clearer; or (b) I, on reflection, think that my work is as clear as I can possibly make it, and I will resist the temptation to mutilate my work to please the audience.
If the work is paying the rent, one is, I think, fairly immune to the seductiveness of alternative (b), which goes under the name of Arrogance.
Dealing with critical reception is a bit more difficult—I think that critics are generally a bunch of unfortunates, and should be ashamed of themselves. Now, does this mean that I am philosophically immune to the desire for their praise? You may have already guessed the answer, which is no.
I have tried, over the years, to wean myself from this desire. I have repeated, fervently and oft, the wise words of Epictetus, who said: “Do you seek the good opinion of these people? Are they not the same people who, you told me yesterday, are frauds and imbeciles? Do you then seek the good opinion of frauds and imbeciles?”
Well, I guess I do. I’m trying not to.
For a few years I didn’t read reviews.
Most of us in the hurly-burly world of the stage tell one another that we don’t read reviews, and we all pretend to believe one another. But, for whatever it’s worth, for a couple of years I didn’t read reviews, and was a much better man for it.
Now the reductio ad absurdum of the artist-critic combat is the juried competition.
It contains the worst elements of critical autocracy and committee compromise.
What can it mean that one film or actor or play is better than all the rest, and that we may rest assured of its distinction because of the imprimatur of a “group of folks”? What can that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean anything. Unless, of course, you win.
And that’s why I had fallen off the ladder and brought my film to Cannes, and that’s why I was sitting there, whore that I am, watching my movie with twenty-five hundred people dressed in what used to be called “formal wear.”
The film ended, and they hit the general area of my seat with lights, and the audience applauded. (One reviewer, whose work I am aware of through having read it, said that the audience gave the film a standing ovation. My memory runs to the contrary, but …)
I stood up and wondered whether to ask Miss Pidgeon to take a bow with me. I sat back down, the audience applauded some more, and I stood up again, all the time wondering if I should ask her to stand with me. I was of two minds about it. I sat down again. They turned the lights off. I should have asked her to stand with me. My party was ushered out of the main hall and into the foyer. There we were placed in a human square formed by gendarmes. These gendarmes, about fifteen on a side, stood with their backs to us and kept us separated from a group, the audience, who had no interest in us whatsoever.
The plainclothes bodyguards, who had changed their jackets again, and now sported very nice reddish plaid affairs, escorted us out some side way of the festival and down to the harborside, where a huge tent had been erected.
We went down into the tent, where there appeared to be seating for seven or eight hundred.
We were shown our table, and sat down. I had vowed, for reasons of general health, not to drink anything during the trip, but conceived an existential desire to nullify that vow, and I asked anyone who would listen if they knew where I could get a stiff double shot of something. Everyone said I was out of luck, but waiters started bringing wine to the table, and I started drinking it.
Jack Lang, the cultural minister of France, was seated down the table. My producer had given me a commemorative trinket from our movie, to present to him, but I never got around to it. Robert Mitchum was also at the table, and I went over and said how pleased I was to meet him, and he nodded.
I was seated between Miss Pidgeon and my good friend and agent, Howard.
Down at our end of the table were also a French movie star and his friend, who was a director of opera. This movie star was very taken with the film, and talked about it at length, and made me feel very good.
We sat around talking and drinking wine. The waiters brought the food, which was very French, and magnificent, and piping hot, which last was, I thought, quite a feat for a meal for eight hundred people in a tent in the rain.
Men I took to be producers began roaming from table to table and standing in the narrow and impossibly crowded aisles. Many of these men smoked cigars.
An African singer was introduced, and went up on the stage and played some very beautiful music on a native stringed instrument, and sang in accompaniment.
The atmosphere either became or appeared very smoky, and I felt a certain, dare I say, orgiastic undertone growing in the tent. We Levitical priests had performed our ceremony and retired into the tabernacle, which for the unanointed to approach was death, and we had taken our girdles off.
What strange, what wild and unforeseeable revelry would ensue as the evening continued its inevitable progress toward the dawn? With which of the young starlets would the producers retire?