Patrick Suskind and David Mamet

Patrick Suskind's "On Love And Death"

Suskind is cynical and presumptuous enough to reduce Jesus to a politician. He scoffs at the notion of dying for love, passes judgement on Goethe, and never quite gets around to stating -- or having? -- a point. One wonders if he really believes what he writes, or if he is just waxing controversial. The reflections on Orpheus, for whom the author appears to have an uncharacteristic soft spot, are all that saves it. The general tone of the book is arrogant, distantiating, and thoroughly depressing. Why is this guy so famous?


David Mamet's "True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor"

Oh my God, is this guy a dick! I'll never be able to admire his work again -- not without a painful consideration of the man, and his near complete lack of humanity -- not now that I've seen what bullish, lead-handed direction sufficed to produce the films that made me smile. They lose their lustre. Again, one has to wonder at the sincerity or disingenuousness of the author. Is this what he really thinks, or just some calculated experiment in vicious hyperbole? One could see how the "advice" given in the book might be useful for certain, firey, impatient and intuitive temperaments, and might provide a much needed counter-measure to the abuse of more digressive and intellectual acting approaches. But the all-or-nothing, categorical nature of the author's position, pompous and hot-headed in its conception, is, ultimately, short-sighted and irresponsible. The result is a bitterly narrow, one-size-fits-all manual on how to act, which is more interesting for the self-portrait it paints of a writer/director who has no patience for the creative process of the performer (which he claims to think is a load of crap; a mere excuse to avoid the confrontation with the scene), -- and who demands unconscious, unpremeditated performances from his actors. I think he would be very happy if the actors could be done away with entirely and replaced by robots; provided only that the robots know their lines and speak them clearly. What a jerk.