House of Games [Paperback]

David Mamet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 1994

House of Games is a psychological thriller in which a young woman psychiatrist falls prey to an elaborate and ingenious con game by one of her patients who entraps her in a series of criminal escapades. Ties in with movie to be released in September. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the screenplay of the first film written and directed by David Mamet, the story of a well known psychiatrist seduced by an underworld of petty intrigue. Mamet is commonly--and wrongly--considered a writer who consistently litters his characters' speech with obscenities. There are a good number of tongue lashings in House of Games, but what this script really proves is that Mamet has an extraordinarily poetic grasp of human language and human psychology. Every word, every exchange counts in this twisty, suspenseful screenplay, one of those rare dramas where it is impossible to predict what will happen next.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (January 14, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802130283
• ISBN-13: 978-0802130280
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,177,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough, tense, gritty and terse. Pure Mamet., May 2, 2002

By 

Christian Engler (Woburn, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: House of Games (Paperback)

As far as screenplays go, House of Games is a work of great cutting quality; written in Mamet's recognized concise style, House of Games permeates with a foreboding, volatile aura. When a too structured and career-driven yet refined and scholarly Dr. Margaret Ford, psychiatrist and author of the best-selling self-help book, Driven, is duped into helping Billy Hahn, a young man with a gambling addiction, she gets more than what is bargained for. She is led into the seedy underworld of the con man and all the baggage associated with him: drinking, unabashed gambling, lasciviousness, intricately woven lies, extremity upon extremity. But it is all cleaverly camouflaged by the many defrauders whom she encounters as exciting danger, rebellion against the smothering laws that only "good" citizens adhere to and being on the outer fringes of decency, good breeding and highbrowism. Ford, who gravely lacks any form of enjoyment in her life, is immediately drawn to the pulsating raw truth and "think quick" lifestyle of the brazen swindlers, for they gradually convince her-through a series of cons-that all humanity are imbued-one way or the other-with absolute cold indifference, for if you get bamboozled, it's your own fault and you probably deserved it. Dr. Margaret Ford exemplifies that for everybody. But she does not merely epitomize as a victim, she typifies it, through her own unsettling metamorphosis, as a kleptomaniac, murderess, and ultimately, a con woman. She evolves from good, introverted intellectual and respectable doctor to a cunning, manipulative, vindictive killer with a proclivity for thievery. So then the question is posed: Was Dr. Ford inherently a repressed criminal or was she the product of the sleezy environment and those in it? As Ford penetrates to what she genuinely believes is the psychological core of the sharpie personality, she is led by the leader, Mike, into a smoothly orchestrated plot that eventually bilks her out of $80,000; soon after, the scheme goes terribly awry when Mike holds a mirror to Dr. Ford's face, a mirror that she long avoided looking into.

Mike: I "used" you. I did. I'm sorry. And you learned some things about yourself that you'd rather not know. I'm sorry for that, too. You say I acted atrociously. Yes. I did. I do it for a living. (He gives her a salute and starts for the door.)

Ford: You sit down.

Mike: I'd love to, but I've got some things to do.

She cocks the gun.

(Of gun:) You can't bluff someone who's not paying attention.

Ford shoots him. He falls.

Mike: Are you nuts? What are you...nuts...?

Ford: I want you to beg me.

A radical turnabout occurs whereby the aloof victimizer becomes the casuality of his own folly, only to be replaced by Ford, who progresses onward to hone and define his criminal teachings, meticulously making them more her own. Ford's criminality is even more severe, for she turns into one of the criminally addicted patients that she (by her medical practice) is designated to help; her overall presence is refined, classy, learned, delicate, vulnerable, unsuspecting. Those are the worst kinds of lawbreakers: A friendy face on the outside, and something entirely different on the inside.

1.0 out of 5 stars This is not the screenplay, December 10, 2011

By 

thedemonkilla - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: House of Games (Paperback)

This is the script for the stage play, which has been updated for modern times. If you are looking for the script for the 1987 film, keep looking.

5.0 out of 5 stars The script....., May 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: House of Games (Paperback)

There came a moment in House of Games, in the movie, where I knew I'd heard something. I rewound, played, heard it, rewound played, heard it, and found that about the fourth time around, I was patting my thigh, in tune with something or other; the Mamet-speak. It's rhythm.

And then the script. I read that same scene (it's the one: "you gotta tell. Your telling which hand the coin is in") and the same thing. Aha! yes. But I had heard the scene. I remebered the scene. What about the others? Back to page one. The same thing. And then it became not what they were saying, but how they were saying it, and then it became WHO was saying it. And sometimes I wished they hadn't said it. But then the thought occurs with starry eyes: "thank God they did".

You like the movie, read the script. There's soemthing to be said for just you and the pages.