Bambi vs. Godzilla by David Mamet
Lessons on writing #112
It’s fun when a writer loves language.
Mamet’s essays on Hollywood are full of words I don’t know. He uses every stylistic, formatting, and punctuation mark you can think of, including em dashes, quotation marks, parentheses, line breaks, question and exclamation marks, colons, semi colons, lists, asterixis, and imagined dialogue in italics.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with him, his thoughts run fast down the page. But it struck me while I was reading it, this dude’s got style and I like it.
With the over-done, over-written, hyperbolic-ness of it all, it became a fun place to hang out, like a loud basement bar full of laughter where you gotta shout to be heard.
The Hollywood gossip, industry takedowns, and film criticism are interesting and amusing but I learned a shitload of useful lessons about technique, genre, and the craft of piecing together a few characters in a setting and running them through a set of events that a paying audience recognises as a plot.
His depth of knowledge, confidence and mastery of language (his also by page holds 50 titles, including plays, screenplays, nonfiction and fiction) had a couple of effects on me.
They made me feel like a) This guy probably knows a thing or two. b) This random book I found at my local library might not be the greatest thing he’s ever written, and c) All I need to do is keep writing and everything will be okay.
Some people are born to write. It’s obvious when you read a dude like Mamet. This guy would be writing if he was stranded alone on a desert island. I love reading books like this cause they make me feel like I’m not crazy. Writing, storytelling, the drama of our lives represented on screen, the stage and the page, these things are worth dedicating yourself to.
But it’s deeper than that.
Writers – some of them – have to write or they’ll explode/implode/self-destruct/turn violent.
It’s as simple as that.
What did I learn about writing? Some people gotta do it or else they’ll explode.
Further reading
If you're into books on dramatic writing, then check out…
How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James Frey
Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno
Screenplay by Syd Field
Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the 6-part Power of Myth documentary he did with Bill Moyers.
Lessons on writing
If you want more lessons on writing:
111: Absolute Power by David Baldacci
110: Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith
109: Vultures’ Picnic by Greg Palast
108: Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok
107: Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes
105: Chernobyl by Serhii Plokhy
104: Dragon’s Teeth by Michael Crichton
103: The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
102: Mustang Man by Louis L’Amour
100: Congo by Michael Crichton
99: State of Fear by Michael Crichton
1-98: Available as podcasts which you can listen to here.
House of Electric Sheep
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Or find my novels on Amazon:
Black Skull (coming soon…)
Team Human (2022)
Eden 2.0 (2020)
one time (2017)
Ravenstone (2015)
Conversations with America (2013)