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    Mike Nussbaum, Celebrated Chicago Theater Actor, Dies at 99

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    He appeared memorably in “American Buffalo” and in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” but gave up a career on Broadway for one in Chicago.Mike Nussbaum, an actor known as the dean of Chicago theater who found success during his early association with David Mamet, the Chicago-born playwright, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Chicago. He was 99.His death was announced by his daughter Karen Nussbaum, a labor organizer.For the last decade, Mr. Nussbaum has also been known as the country’s oldest working actor, a distinction that mildly irritated him. (For admiring journalists, he gamely performed his daily regimen of 50 push-ups, a practice he kept up until he was 98.) He often said he would have preferred to have been recognized solely for his acting skills, not the age at which he was acting.Mr. Nussbaum came up in Chicago’s community theaters, notably Hull House, an incubator of talent in the 1960s, while also running a successful exterminating business. When he was 40, he was tackling a wasp nest when he fell off a roof, smashing a kneecap and breaking a wrist. While he stewed on the couch recuperating, he decided it was the right moment to pursue acting full time.A pivot point in his acting career came in 1975 when Mr. Mamet, then a fledgling playwright, cast him in the role of Teach in an early production of the celebrated play “American Buffalo,” about a trio of hapless, double-crossing hustlers. The pair had met at Hull House, where Mr. Mamet had worked as a gofer when he was a teenager.“It was, for those of us who saw it, kind of an overwhelming, definitive experience,” Robert Falls, the former artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theater, told Chicago magazine in 2014. “Over the years I’ve seen actors like Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall play that part, and no one has ever played it the way Mike Nussbaum did. There was a Chicago quality to it in its voice, in terms of attitude, a sense of pathos and danger that he brought to it that’s never been really equaled.”Mr. Nussbaum won a Drama Desk Award for his role as George Aaronow, a beaten-down salesman, in “Glengarry Glen Ross.”When Mr. Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” another tale of desperate hustlers, opened on Broadway in 1983, Mr. Nussbaum, along with fellow Chicagoan Joe Mantegna, were cast as two of the play’s striving, venal real estate agents. Mr. Mantegna earned a Tony for his role as the slick Ricky Roma; Mr. Nussbaum won a Drama Desk Award for his role as George Aaronow, a beaten-down salesman with a nascent conscience; and the play would win Mr. Mamet the Pulitzer Prize in drama.“There’s particular heroism in Mike Nussbaum, whose frightened eyes convey a lifetime of blasted dreams,” Frank Rich wrote in his review for The New York Times. “and in Joe Mantegna, as the company’s youngest, most dapper go-getter.”The pair had performed years earlier in Mr. Mamet’s “A Life in the Theater,” a slight but biting two-man play about a young actor and an older one, goading and guiding each other, ego to ego. Mel Gussow of The Times praised their performances as effortless. “As the cynical old poseur, Mr. Nussbaum is a Jack Gilford with a touch of John Barrymore,” he wrote.Mr. Mantegna, speaking by phone, said that Mr. Nussbaum was “the role model for what everyone considers the Chicago actor.”“He wasn’t doing it for the end game,” Mr. Mantegna said. “In New York, there’s an end game: Maybe I’ll get to Broadway, get a shot at TV. It’s an industry. L.A. is an industry. In Chicago it was never an industry, we were doing it for the love of doing it.”He recalled Broadway producers urging Mr. Mamet to cast “Glengarry Glen Ross” with stars, and Mr. Mamet pushing back. “He said, ‘I’m going to do it with my kind of guys.’ Then there we were, this pack of unknowns, doing what would ultimately win the Pulitzer Prize.”Then Mr. Nussbaum walked away from it all.B.J. Jones, artistic director of the renowned Northlight Theater, in Skokie, Ill., which Mr. Nussbaum helped found in the 1970s, phoned Mr. Nussbaum during his run on Broadway to ask him to play the lead in a work by the English playwright Simon Gray.Mr. Nussbaum called out to his wife at the time, Annette, for advice. “Do it,” she said. “I’m tired of New York.”“Mike left Broadway to perform in a play for which we probably paid him a few hundred bucks,” Mr. Jones continued. “And when he did, they were scalping tickets in the lobby to see him. He was a Broadway star but he came home.”As Mr. Mantegna said, “We were on the carousel, and there was the brass ring and he could have grabbed it, but he decided he liked the carousel.”A slight man with a bushy mustache, Mr. Nussbaum could seemingly play anybody: He was a fierce Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” and a bawdy witch in “Macbeth,” two of his many roles for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He also worked steadily in film and television. He was a pompous school principal in “Field of Dreams,” the 1989 baseball fantasy starring Kevin Costner, and a chillingly gentle jewelry store owner in “Men in Black,” the 1997 sci-fi comedy with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.A scene from the film “Men In Black” (1997), in which Mr. Nussbaum played a chillingly gentle jeweler.Columbia Pictures, via Alamy“Mike was the consummate ensemble player,” Mr. Jones said. “And he had an inherent warmth that infused all his characters.”Mike Nussbaum was born Myron G. Nussbaum on Dec. 29, 1923, in New York City, and grew up in Chicago. His father, Philip Nussbaum, was a fur wholesaler; his mother, Bertha (Cohen) Nussbaum, was a homemaker. Mike was a skinny, unhappy child, beaten and demeaned by his father, “a man I did not admire,” he told Chicago magazine.He was 9 and at summer camp when he discovered acting,though he froze during his first performance and had to be carried off the stage. He attended the University of Wisconsin before dropping out and enlisting in the Army during World War II.He worked as a Teletype operator in France, first in Versailles and then Reims, and was on duty on May 7, 1945, the day of the German surrender. He sent out the announcement declaring the end of the war in Europe, signing it not with his initials, as was customary, but with his full surname. He kept a framed copy as a memento.He returned to Chicago in 1946 and married Annette Brenner, who later worked in public relations for the American Civil Liberties Union and elsewhere. He went into the exterminating business because he wanted a home, a family and a stable life, which he knew he couldn’t have as a professional actor. “I wanted the American dream,” he said. Mr. Nussbaum in 2019. “I’m lucky,” he once said of his long career. “Chicago has given me chances that I don’t think I would’ve gotten in New York.”Neil Steinberg/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressHis first wife died in 2003. In addition to his daughter Karen, Mr. Nussbaum is survived by his son, Jack, a writer and activist; his second wife, Julie (Brudlos) Nussbaum; seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Susan, a playwright, novelist and disability activist, died last year.“I’m lucky: Chicago has given me chances that I don’t think I would have gotten in New York,” Mr. Nussbaum told Patrick Healy of The New York Times in 2014. “There’s no real fame here, not like in New York. And your salary doesn’t go up when you win a Jeff” — otherwise known as The Joseph Jefferson Award, an honor given to the theater arts in Chicago — “not like when you win a Tony. But I’ve gotten steady work, great work, and all I ever wanted to do was act.” More

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      David Mamet Names the Books That Explain the Real Hollywood

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      What’s the last great book you read?“A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,” by Frederick Law Olmsted. Also note: “The Life of George Brummell, Esq., Commonly Called Beau Brummell,” by Captain Jesse, and “A Diary in America,” by Frederick Marryat. Enjoy.Can a great book be badly written?If it were badly written how could it be a great book? Perhaps if it contained Great Ideas? According to whom? The writer? Who died and left him boss? In the estimation of the reader? If I am he, nope, for why should I credit any ideas of a lox who didn’t realize he couldn’t write? Reading great prose is one of my chiefest joys. When I find myself rewriting the book I’m reading, I not only throw it away, I do not recycle it. What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?“The Wallet of Kai Lung,” by Ernest Bramah.Which novels or novelists do you admire for their dialogue?George V. Higgins.Which books best capture Hollywood and the challenge of making movies?The best book about Hollywood is my “Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood.”Here please find its like:“A Girl Like I,” by Anita Loos. She was the first of the great Hollywood screenwriters, and in it from the days of the silents. Her “Lorelei” stories became “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” See also “The Honeycomb,” an autobiography of Adela Rogers St. Johns. She started in journalism before writing for silents, and wrote many of the great “women’s” pictures of early sound.Jim Tully was a “road kid,” riding the rails, and washed up in Hollywood, where he worked, in various capacities, for Chaplin, of whom he wrote a short unauthorized biography. Also please read his “Jarnegan,” a roman à clef about a thug and criminal who comes to Hollywood, and becomes a great director.Another must read is Ivor Montagu’s “With Eisenstein in Hollywood.” He and Sergei wandered in, in the 1930s. They were flogging a screenplay for “An American Tragedy” and a gold rush drama, “Sutter’s Gold.” They had a few drinks, and had their lunch handed to them, and went home.Bob Evans, once head of Paramount, wrote “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” which is a laugh a minute, but one must read between the lies (sic). Scotty Bowers, a fixer, wrote “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars” with Lionel Friedberg. Are his accounts true? He only “outed” the dead, which indicates his intelligence, but gives no clues to his veracity. Hollywood has always been about sex, until just recently. Now it is about Attack-Decency; and, as with anything, those who know don’t tell, and those who tell don’t know. A note to those who might buy my book. In it I recount a talk I had with my old friend Noma Copley. She worked for Disney in the late 1940s, and told me, at their first meeting, he invited her into his inner sanctum, which was covered with murals depicting his characters in an orgy, and said, “Call me Walt.”What book would you most like to see turned into a movie that hasn’t already been adapted?The only book not adapted to the screen is the phone book. I tried, but only got as far as the title: “Funny Names, No Plot.”What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?”The Berenstain Bears Get Cancer.”The last book that made you cry?“Bambi.”The last book that made you furious?“The Wealth of Nations.”Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?My wife once threw a book at me.You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?Great work is a mystery to us, and, as it’s mysterious, we have no vocabulary for discussing it, really, let alone discussing it with its creators. The fortunate ones are dead, so that, for example, we could not ask of Winslow Homer, “What induced you to put that shark there…?” The best thing I could say to a writer is the best thing he or she, or you, could say to me: “Pleased to meet you.” More

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      Revisiting ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ on Their 30th Anniversary

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      These dramas, both known for distinctive (and salty) dialogue, didn’t make much of a box office impression in 1992. But their influence is still being felt.In October 1992, two startlingly similar indie dramas hit art houses across the country. Both featured all-male casts, sturdy ensembles of well-dressed men spouting tough-guy dialogue. Both would become notorious for their proficiency in profanity (one notched 269 instances of the F-word; the other, a comparatively tame 138). Both offered grim worldviews and 1970s-style bummer endings. And though both were ostensibly about a robbery, each carefully avoided showing the crime itself — to better allow their writers to withhold vital information until the conclusion.Neither “Glengarry Glen Ross” (released on Oct. 2) nor “Reservoir Dogs” (three weeks later) made much of an impression at the box office that fall. But their influence was heavily felt in the ensuing decades — and from this vantage point, 30 years on, they have much to tell us about the state of masculinity in America at the end of the (first) Bush era.Their origins couldn’t have been more different. “Glengarry,” which concerns a quartet of desperate real estate salesman and the theft of a cache of premium sales leads, was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play by David Mamet; the agent-turned-producer Jerry Tokofsky spent five years assembling the cast and raising the financing to turn it into a film, persuading such marquee names as Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin to slash their usual fees for the pleasure of mouthing Mamet’s distinctive dialogue.“Reservoir Dogs,” in which a crew of anonymous thieves assembles for a jewelry store robbery that goes badly and bloodily awry, was the debut film of the writer-director Quentin Tarantino. He penned “Dogs” expressly to be made on the cheap, planning to star in it with actor friends. But the script captured the eye of Harvey Keitel, who not only agreed to play the key role of Mr. White, but also to let Tarantino and the producer Lawrence Bender use his participation to attract a cast of up-and-comers, including Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen and Tim Roth.From left, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin and Ed Harris in “Glengarry Glen Ross.”Zupnik EnterprisesTarantino, a would-be actor in the 1980s, presumably read “Glengarry” and seemingly learned from it. In addition to the similarities, both scripts pivot on the shocking unmasking of a sympathetic character as a traitor (though the reveal occurs midway through “Dogs” and at the end of “Glengarry”). Both riffed on the moody nihilism of film noir. And both find conflict and drama in putting their characters together in one confined space after the crime (the warehouse in “Dogs,” the real estate office in “Glengarry”) and letting them bounce off each other, roaring accusations and suspicions, bellowing obscenities and insults.As is often the case when tempers flare and stakes are high, such unfiltered interactions give us a peek into the characters’ collective Id, and their common obsession is their own masculinity, the manliness of the work they do and how well they do it. That subtext is made text early in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in its most revered scene (one that Mamet invented anew and added to his screenplay adaptation). Alec Baldwin appears as the viperous Blake, a hot shot from the home office who schleps down to the Sheepshead Bay branch to lead a sales meeting that amounts to eight straight minutes of vicious verbal abuse. “You can’t play in the man’s game, you can’t close them, then go home and tell your wife your troubles,” Blake instructs the cowering sales crew. “Because only one thing matters in this life — get them to sign on the line which is dotted!” As Georgia Brown noted in her Village Voice review, “In the trade’s lexicon, the magic verb is to close. When Aaronow” — the sad-sack salesman — “complains he can’t close ‘em anymore, he’s confessing impotence.”“They’re sitting out there waiting to give you their money, are you gonna take it?” Blake taunts the busted-out Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon), later in his pep talk. “Are you man enough to take it?” The director James Foley cuts to an agonizing close-up of Lemmon, steaming; his subsequent actions can all be traced to, and perhaps blamed on, that moment of harrowing public humiliation. As if to somehow make the accusation more explicit, Blake concludes his tirade by brandishing a pair of pendulous orbs on a string, announcing, “It takes brass balls to sell real estate,” before tossing them back in his briefcase.Such hazing rituals are par for the course among the performative brutes of “Reservoir Dogs,” which is filled with male bonding rituals: playing the dozens, chewing the fat over coffee or beers, spinning tall tales about crime and sex, and, of course, breaking into dramatic near-fisticuffs at the slightest provocation. Yet the particulars of Tarantino’s men — their identical suits, their color-coded pseudonyms, their hidden identities — underscore the impersonality of their expected behaviors, rendering them interchangeable, and thus impotent, as the salesman of “Glengarry.”When Harvey Keitel, center, joined the cast, his reputation proved a draw to up-and-comers like Madsen, left, and Buscemi.Miramax FilmsBlake also peppers his speech with insults of implied homosexuality, further tying their sales shortfalls to their notions of traditional masculinity. But this vernacular is by no means exclusive to his scene or character; aside from calling their office manager a “secretary” (with all the gender connotations therein), the unprintable-in-a-family-newspaper insults wielded by the sales force include the most verboten four-letter epithet for the female genitalia. Yet the intricacies of male attraction and intimacy aren’t entirely eschewed. Ricky Roma (Pacino), the office’s only success, is seen landing a client with a pitch that sounds less like a sale than a pickup, assuring his mark of such unspoken truths as, “You think you’re queer, lemme tell you something, we’re all queer.”A similar dichotomy exists in “Reservoir Dogs,” where the other F-word is deployed freely, but outside the gaze of the group, an intimacy and even tenderness blossoms between Keitel’s Mr. White and Roth’s Mr. Orange. When the latter is shot in the stomach during their getaway, White holds his hand, wipes his face and gives him permission to “go ahead and be scared, you’ve been brave enough for one day.” And Mr. Orange, terrified for his life but moved by these gestures, asks Mr. White to hold him.Such chasms in thinking (and action) regarding masculinity were clicking through the culture that fall. A month after “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Reservoir Dogs” slipped into theaters, voters would eject the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush — a man branded by his detractors, during his candidacy and administration, as a “wimp.” Bush was so determined to shed that sneering indictment of his blue-blood upbringing that some pundits believed it influenced his decision to invade Iraq.His replacement, Bill Clinton, offered up his own contradictions. A baby boomer vowing kinder, gentler leadership, he promised an administration informed by the participation and influence of his accomplished wife, Hillary — all while dogged by charges of rampant infidelity, ultimately overlooked by voters, with a collective “boys will be boys” shrug. The ’90s would be a strange time for the American male, and the closing lines of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” delivered by Roma, would prove not only dramatically effective but also socially encapsulating. “I swear, it’s not a world of men,” he despairs. “It’s a world of clock-watchers, bureaucrats, office holders … we’re the members of a dying breed.” More

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      As Mamet Returns to Broadway, His Claims on Pedophilia Get Spotlight

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      The playwright fueled outrage with his claim on Fox News that teachers were “inclined” to pedophilia as he promoted a new book that decries “the Left’s anti-Trump psychosis.”David Mamet’s latest character describes an airplane pilot who gets lost because his map is incomplete. “The pilot’s answer to the question ‘where am I?’ lies not on the map, but out the windscreen,” says the character, speaking in the everyday language set to staccato rhythm that has come to be known as Mametspeak. “That’s where he is.”This new monologue is not delivered in one of Mamet’s dozens of plays or films, but in a friend-of-the-court brief that Mamet filed last month. He wrote it in support of a Texas law intended to prevent social media companies from censoring conservative voices. (The law has been challenged on the grounds that it could prevent private platforms from reasonably moderating content.) The legal setting helps explain the absence of one typical Mamet feature: profanity.With a revival of “American Buffalo,” his classic 1975 drama about small-time hustlers in a Chicago junk shop, opening Thursday night on Broadway in a production starring Laurence Fishburne, Mamet has been engaged in a blizzard of activities that are hardly standard fare for preshow publicity. But they are very much in keeping with his long history of pushing hot buttons — and with his late-career embrace of conservatism and support for former President Donald J. Trump.Mamet claimed on Fox News that “teachers are inclined, particularly men, because men are predators, to pedophilia.”In addition to the amicus brief, Mamet released an essay collection this month, “Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch,” in which he complains about the “plandemic” coronavirus lockdowns, decries “the Left’s anti-Trump psychosis” and suggests that it was Democrats and the media who threatened “armed rebellion” in the event that their preferred candidate lost the 2020 election.Then, over the weekend, Mamet fueled outrage by claiming on Fox News that “teachers are inclined, particularly men, because men are predators, to pedophilia.”He made the remark while discussing a Florida law prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in certain younger grades, a law opponents have labeled “Don’t Say Gay.”“If there’s no community control of the schools, what we have is kids being not only indoctrinated but groomed, in a very real sense, by people who are, whether they know it or not, sexual predators,” Mamet told the host, Mark Levin.“Are they abusing the kids physically?” Mamet added. “No, I don’t think so. But they’re abusing them mentally and using sex to do so.”In response, the Tony Award-winning actor Colman Domingo wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to another Mamet play, “Speed-the-Plow,” “American Theater. Do your duty. Take out the trash. Buffalo’s, Plows and all.” And the culture writer Mark Harris wrote on Twitter, “At a time of increasing threats to gay people, David Mamet has chosen to ally himself with the purveyors of a vicious ugly slander that will endanger teachers and LGBT Americans. It’s inexcusable.”Mamet declined through a representative to comment for this article; in “Recessional,” he dismisses The New York Times as “a former newspaper” and suggests that The Times and other media insist on works that “express ‘right thinking,’ that is, statism.”Mamet, 74, came to prominence in the 1970s with a series of plays including “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and “American Buffalo.” His 1984 play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” two acts of profane one-upmanship among desperate real-estate salesmen, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. He has worked extensively in Hollywood, receiving Oscar nominations for his screenplays for “The Verdict,” a 1982 movie starring Paul Newman, and “Wag the Dog” in 1997, which he wrote with Hilary Henkin. He wrote and directed a number of films, including “House of Games,” “The Spanish Prisoner” and “Heist.”He first announced his rightward turn in a 2008 Village Voice essay, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.’” (He said on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that he had intended the essay to focus on “political civility,” and had been surprised by the headline.) He wrote last year on the website UnHerd that he had been “elected a non-person by the Left many years ago,” and added: “It’s uncomfortable, and it’s costly and sad to see the happy fields in which I played all those decades — Broadway, book publishing, TV and film — fold up and Hail Caesar, but there it is.”The new revival of “American Buffalo” — one of his most admired works, and one often read as a critique of capitalism, in a production starring Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss — will test his ability to play on one of his main fields, Broadway. And it will offer an indication of whether, at a moment of intense political polarization, audiences are still receptive to works by artists they may disagree with.In his new book, Mamet is pessimistic on the market for challenging plays, warning that theater on Broadway has largely been replaced by pageantry, complaining of the “fatuity of issue plays” and bemoaning the demise of the “knowledgeable Broadway audience” in an era when its theatergoers are mostly tourists.The new revival of Mamet’s “American Buffalo” stars, from left, Darren Criss, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Rockwell.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“They come to Broadway exactly as they come to Disneyland,” he writes in “Recessional,” published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside. “As in that happiest place, they do not come to risk their hard-earned cash on a problematic event. (They might not like the play nor appreciate being ‘challenged’; they might just want a break after a day of shopping.)”His recent publicity (he “seems to be doing his best — or worst — to make headlines,” Deadline noted) may also affect the box office.When Mamet appeared on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” recently, Maher challenged Mamet on some of the views of the 2020 election he expressed in his book. “You think the attempted coup was from the Left; I think it was from the Right,” Maher said.“I misspoke,” Mamet said, urging people to skip that page of the book.But Mamet, for all the concerns he expresses in his book of being blacklisted, is unlikely to be canceled from the canon. “If I was teaching a class on contemporary American drama, I would teach Mamet,” said Harry J. Elam Jr., a longtime scholar of 20th-century American drama at Stanford University who is now president of Occidental College, speaking before Mamet’s most recent comments. “He has that type of importance.”Gregory Mosher, who has directed nearly two dozen Mamet plays — including the 1984 premiere of “Glengarry Glen Ross” — said that Mamet’s influence extended beyond his own plays and films to other spheres. He sees Mamet’s mark on works of prestige television such as “The Wire.”“Mamet made it OK to write about worlds that we now take for granted on HBO and elsewhere,” said Mosher, the chairman of theater at Hunter College, “and of course to say the word you can’t print.”The last two weeks of preview performances of “American Buffalo” played to houses that were 93 percent and 88 percent full, according to the Broadway League. (Through a representative, the production’s director, Neil Pepe, and producer, Jeffrey Richards, declined to comment.)Mamet embraced the Trump presidency; he told The Guardian earlier this year that Trump had done a “great job” as president and suggested that his defeat in 2020 was “questionable.” In “Recessional,” he writes that Trump “speaks American, and those of us who also love the language are awed and delighted to hear it from an elected official.”“One of the reasons my friendship with David has survived all these years,” said the comedian Jonathan Katz, “is we never discuss politics.”Much earlier, Mamet appeared to question the liberal outlook that he has said surrounded him in the theater world with his 1992 play “Oleanna.” Depicting a disputed sexual harassment allegation a female student makes against a male professor, it was read as interrogating political correctness. For Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, “Oleanna” — which Eustis saw in its original run at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village featuring Mamet’s longtime collaborator William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet’s wife — was evidence of a shift.Mamet’s early plays, Eustis said, are “tremendously morally ambiguous and complex.” With “Oleanna,” argued Eustis, who has never worked with Mamet, “he actually started to put his finger on the scale.”But Leslie Kane, an English professor emerita at Westfield State University who wrote several scholarly books about Mamet and said she grew close to him and his family, perceived a through line between Mamet’s long-held obsessions as an artist and some of his later political stances. “His concern is language and the ability to use language,” she said, adding, “I think that’s what he believes: In our current environment, restrictions on speech require that people in society must watch what they say.”But Mamet, who has made free speech a central issue lately, is not a fan of post-show discussions of his own works featuring members of the productions. In 2017 he made news with a stipulation that none of the discussions, known as talkbacks, could be held within two hours of performances of his plays, calling for a fine of $25,000 for each offense. In his new book he says talkbacks are “transforming an evening at the theater into an English class.”One person who thinks that the politics of Mamet’s plays — to say nothing of his punditry — are largely irrelevant to his plays’ success is Mamet himself.“For fifty years I’ve paid my rent by getting people into the theater,” he writes in “Recessional.” “There are several strategies for doing so, but from the first I’ve relied on the most effective I know: be good.”The technique was not infallible, he notes.“And the audience and I sometimes differed about its definition,” he writes. “I did, however, know one certain way to keep them away: tell ’em the play was good for them.” More

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      Laurence Fishburne Cools Down With Classic Jazz and Cashmere Blankets

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      The actor is back on Broadway for a revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” He discusses his other must-haves, like a chef’s knife, trampolines and crystals.“I have a working knowledge of what my gifts are,” Laurence Fishburne said. “I’ve been blessed with a wonderful voice. And I have a real innate sense of the dramatic.”Fishburne, 60, was speaking, in that velvet baritone, a few hours before his call at Circle in the Square for the Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” a brisk study in hustle and flow.Though best known for his film work (the original “Matrix” trilogy, “Boyz N the Hood,” the “John Wick” series), which trades on his sleek looks and natural authority, Fishburne is a Tony-winning actor. He has rarely stayed away from theater for long.He last appeared on Broadway in 2008, in the one-man show “Thurgood.” And it took him more than a decade to find another stage role that he wanted: Donny, the avuncular owner of a shabby junk shop. With his friends Teach (Sam Rockwell) and Bobby (Darren Criss), Donny agrees to a plan to rob a wealthy customer of a valuable coin.“He’s the father figure in this triangle of these three men,” he said of Donny. “He’s trying to guide them and protect them and school them as best he can.”“American Buffalo” was in rehearsals when the pandemic hit. Fishburne and his colleagues kept working on the play for months afterward, which Fishburne said had allowed him to dig into his role more deeply and better present the precise rhythms of Mamet’s language.“He works with these seemingly simple words that are loaded with a lot of tension, a lot of subtext, a lot of nuance,” Fishburne said of Mamet’s script. “It’s like a beautiful piece of music.”From his home, an apartment on the Upper West Side where he keeps a mini trampoline and assorted crystals, he discussed the items, artworks and philosophies that help him shake that tension off. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A chef’s knife I’m an only child and both my parents worked. Sometimes I had to fend for myself. So I did kind of grow up cooking. A chef’s knife with a great handle and a great edge, that’s what you need. It can chop your onions and your celery, smash your garlic, do all your prep work so you can eat well. I love to cook Caribbean-style food, Italian-style food, Asian-style food. There’s a fish I like to do with tomato and saffron, Cornish game hens, roasted with jam and port wine. I’m pretty good in the kitchen.2. James Allen’s “As a Man Thinketh” I was given this book when I was about 30, and it really changed my life. It’s a book about meditation and the power of thought and the reality of life and truth. I started meditating and my life got better. My life has improved.3. A good pair of shoes These feet, they carry us around. We’ve got to be good to them. It’s not a brand thing. The foot is as individual as the fingerprint. It’s just whatever feels right, whatever feels comfortable, whatever supports your foot well. Right now I’m wearing a pair of beautiful, lace-up wingtip boots. They fit great. And I have some shoes made by my friend Ozwald Boateng that are my dress shoes.4. My favorite music I listen to mostly music that was made in the last century. I’m not allergic to music that is being made today. I just need a booster. I need somebody young to introduce me to the music that’s happening now. Some of my favorite music would be Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman,” “Identity” by Airto Moreira, “Band of Gypsys,” Cassandra Wilson, the Beatles, the Stones. Howlin’ Wolf, Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson.5. A great neck pillow and a warm blanket I’m a good napper. Actors, we have to use our energy like cats — we lie around and sleep a lot and then we have to get up and perform. So having a little place to lay down with a pillow that cradles the neck, supports the head, keeps the spine in alignment, it’s all good. Cashmere makes a great blanket. I actually have one of those in my dressing room at the theater. It’s fantastic.6. Moroccan mint tea There’s a restaurant in Los Angeles that I’ve been eating at since I was a kid, Moun of Tunis. At the end of the meal, they serve mint tea and almond cakes. Mint is such a wonderful taste and smell, such a wonderful flavor. It just brightens everything up. Makes me happy.7. A mini trampoline It’s low impact, gets your blood going. Kind of like jumping rope, without jumping rope. You get to defy gravity, seconds at a time. I have a mini tramp at both my homes. I do a routine, but there’s nothing rigid about it.8. Crystals I got into crystals around 1988. My house in Los Angeles, I’ve got a bunch of crystals there. I only have a few here in New York. But I have a medicine bag of them that I sleep with. There’s a Herkimer diamond in it. There’s a piece of moldavite in it, a piece of smoky quartz, a piece of tourmaline. I get a good sound sleep every night. And my dreams can be very vivid. Crystals are medicine, man.9. Meditation A calm and serene mind is the product of calm and serene thoughts, positive thoughts. You can train the mind like you can train a muscle. I try to meditate daily for at least 15 minutes. I generally sit down in a sort of lotus position. Sometimes I lie down. When I started meditating, I became very centered and very grounded. I began to take responsibility for my life, for my thoughts, my words and my deeds. I’ve just gotten an Oculus and there’s a wonderful meditation app on it called Trip that’s just out of this world fun.10. Movies of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s In my library I have “Lawrence of Arabia,” “To Sir, With Love.” Another movie with Mr. Poitier, called “Brother John.” Another O’Toole film called “The Lion in Winter.” What else do I have? Oh, “The Man Who Would Be King.” Great movie. “The Fugitive Kind.” That’s with Marlon Brando. “My Favorite Year.” Seeing these movies makes me hungry. Makes me happy. Makes me hungry. More