Customer Reviews

Bambi Vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

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David Mamet is a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Glengarry Glen Ross" and an Oscar nominated screenwriter for "The Verdict" and "Wag The Dog." It is no wonder that, as a wordsmith, "Bambi vs. Godzilla" is a delight to read. This book is a series of opinated essays by a Hollywood insider who attacks the industry for favoring profits over art. There are times that the author overwrites a simple thought into a complex paragraph that leaves one shaking their head. It is still an entertaining read.

I love David Mamet's plays. He's an excellent writer. So I was enthusiastic about getting the chance to read his personal views of Hollywood. And while I agree with him that the studio machinery is all about profits and very little about art or craft - when was it ever different? - I was ultimately disappointed by his book. There were times when I just didn't know what he was talking about. I think his writing here is often inaccessible. I may not be the most erudite reader, but Mamet left me cold. I just couldn't get into the style of his writing. I felt distanced rather than drawn in. When I read a book like this, I want to devour it, not pick at its little pieces. You may feel differently, that's fine. The book didn't pull me in the way I'd hoped it would.

David Mamet knows how to write - for the stage, for the screen and for reading audiences. His grasp of how to construct dialogue is second to none. "Glengarry Glen Ross," won the Pulitzer Prize - and deservedly so. It is brilliant! I can't remember how many times I have seen "The Spanish Prisoner," and been astonished with each viewing at the way in which Mamet constructed the story. His play, "The Boston Marriage," contains two hours of delicious verbal ripostes and counter-thrusts. I happened to catch an evening performance of the play at the Hasty Pudding Theater in Cambridge on a night when Mamet himself was in the audience.

Mamet's latest literary project is his commentary on the current state of the movie industry: "Bambi vs. Godzilla - On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business."

Steve Martin's blurb on the dust jacket of the book, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, sums up beautifully the impact that this book will have among Hollywood insiders: "David Mamet is supremely talented. He is a gifted writer and observer of society and its characters. I'm sure he will be able to find work somewhere, somehow, just no longer in the movie business."

Mamet takes the reader behind the scenes of how a movie gets written, shot, edited, marketed and distributed. He gives his unvarnished personal opinion about actors, directors, producers and films he has appreciated - and those he disdains. The book contains a wonderful Appendix that is a compendium of thumbnail descriptions of each of the movies he mentions in the body of the book.

In the course of commenting about the status of the movie industry as business and as art, he offers some illuminating insights into the state of our society:

"The absence of a historical and universally acknowledged authority to which one may pledge fealty and against which one may rebel creates factionalism: the right moves toward fascism, the left toward chaos. Democracy - in extremis - seems capable of devolving to either tyranny or civil war, and America, maddened by unimaginable prosperity and safety, incomprehensibly powerful, and bereft of threats, splits down the middle on the issue of definition.

Is the good person one who will not tolerate a president's lies about sex or one who will not tolerate a president's lies about war? (Pages 33-34)

Touché! Mamet does not pull his punches, and both ends of the political spectrum are fair game for his analysis. The same goes for his deconstruction of the movie business. I walked away from reading this book with a deeper appreciation for the best films and film makers - and a better understanding of what makes/made them so good. The fact that Mamet is - to employ a technical sociological term - a participant/observer in moviedom, adds weight, texture, immediacy and intrigue to his commentary about the industry that both feeds him and frustrates him.

We are blessed to have Mamet - still in his prime - and still shining the light of his observation and analysis upon dark corners of our world that need to be brought out of the shadows.

Enjoy!

Al

David Mamet is a celebrated playwright, a renowned screenwriter and, for the last twenty-plus years, a director of his own scripts. He's taken the accumulated experience of his quarter-century in the film industry and distilled it into "Bambi vs. Godzilla."

Given that Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, known for his coruscating dialogue, and given also the fact that this book has a tone that can be rightly called conversational, you're surprised to find so much of the prose to be so sloppy - slovenly, even. Count the number of times he uses variations on the word "opine," for instance. Or consider the following doozy: "I myself don't respond to the Georgian in film and will addend a condign comment attributed to Harry Cohn." That's just bad writing. Or consider his use of the term "films noirs" on page 145, which is both illiterate and bad writing.

In addition, Mamet is more often than not sloppy with his facts. His confuses two different shots in Godfather II (on pages 94-95), and claims on page 110 that Don Ameche was "the world's biggest star in the early talkie era" which is just nonsense. He also claims that "The Birth of a Nation... helped endorse the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan" which, again, is both bad writing and historically inaccurate (change "endorse" to "inspire" and it's at least debatable, but both D.W. Griffith and Thomas W. Dixon went out of their way to repudiate the revitalized Klan). He disputes the claim of Robert Evans that the best films seem to come from the most troubled sets, when anyone with the slightest knowledge of film history (and who knows how such films as "Gone With the Wind," "Some Like It Hot," "The Godfather" and "Jaws," among countless other examples, were made) knows that Evans is just stating a fact.

There are some good points here (Mamet has an interesting take on Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt," for instance, and I was amused by his heterodox opinion of Laurence Olivier's acting), but all in all this is a sloppy, thrown-together book that could have been a lot better.

David Mamet is an excellent writer, one of our best. The prose in this book gleams. There's not a word out of place. Every aspiring essay writer should read it.

There's much outrage in "Bambi vs. Godzilla," primarily about the state of the homogenized, dumbed-down modern film industry, but the book never feels like a rant. Mamet's reflections on the movie industry allow him to touch on many, many other subjects - such the state of the unions in America, the importance of craft, Jewish identity in America, and so on. I don't think Mamet expects readers will agree with everything in the book. Likewise, I don't think he is being controversial for the sake of controversy.

His provocative ideas will stimulate some truly interesting discussions, as well as reflections on America, our big movie industry, and what is says about us.

Perhaps the best way to understand this book is to go see the cartoon Bambi Meets Godzilla. But if you haven't seen it. It opens with Bambi prancing and dancing through the forest. Then Godzilla big foot comes down right on top of Bambi. Bambi's legs twitch a couple of times and the credits roll -- that's the whole cartoon.

If this kind of humor suits you, or maybe the kind that's in 'Wag the Dog' you'll love this book. It's full of irreverence about the biggest names in the industry. Don't take the book too seriously, it's a romp through little stories about movies, people, and the industry. It's a light read, and isn't going to fill you with deep serious thoughs. But it is a fun read.

This book was so wonderful, I took it out from the library, read it, and then had to buy it. I never do that. It's a book you'll want to read over and over, have other people read (at least certain essays) and refer to the filmography repeatedly. Mamet is so amazingly astute about everything, but particularly about things relating to theater and the movie business. If you are a movie buff at all, read this book.

Mr. Mamet is erudite, cultured reasonable and very revealing. If you're a screenwriter
you'd be hard pressed to find a better book on dramaturgy.

Plus, I love the guys movies and plays.

Very genuine analysis of how things work in the the movie business.

David Mamet's "Bambi vs. Godzilla" is a hard-earned look at the collapse of the movie-making machine and its declining audience. The accomplished writer-director shares his experiences in the Hollywood jungle while offering valuable lessons in cinematic technique (further explored in his excellent 1992 book "On Directing Film"). Along with his admiration for legendary directors such as Preston Sturges and Michael Powell, he shows his disdain for Laurence Olivier's soulless movie acting, religious epics and film criticism. You may not agree with some of Mamet's observations, but you will understand why the popcorn tastes so bad these days - and why more viewers prefer to enjoy cinema in the privacy of their own homes.

Mamet offers surprisingly cliche Hollywood writer complaints. The writing is largely grandiose. Occasional dashes of humor and original insights but disapppointingly few.