Joe Mantegna, David Mamet Jump Back Into ‘Lakeboat’

One of the fondest dreams of people who stage plays in Los Angeles is that success on the boards will translate into a movie, but it doesn’t happen that often. David Mamet’s “Lakeboat” is one of the few plays in recent years to successfully navigate the difficult journey from stage to screen.

An outstanding production of L.A.’s 1994 theater season, this early work by the playwright-screenwriter was directed at the Tiffany Theatre by longtime Mamet associate, actor Joe Mantegna. Now Mantegna marks his feature film directorial debut with “Lakeboat,” which premieres Thursday at the Directors Guild of America, as the opening event of the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. The ensemble cast includes Charles Durning, Peter Falk, Andy Garcia, Denis Leary and George Wendt.

Based on Mamet’s own experiences with a summer job, the early 1970s comedy-drama portrays a group of men working aboard a steel freighter on the Great Lakes. It’s a contemporary Dudes at Sea, with a nod to Eugene O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape,” minus the heavy-handed politics but with a large dose of affection for a world clearly on the verge of extinction.

Instead of one brutish Yank, you get an array of Yanks of different ages and types. Into their midst comes a graduate student from an Eastern school who’s signed on for a summer gig. The subject is not male bonding but male anomie, and the tale is told in the kind of trademark early Mamet F-word speak that takes you back to a time when men were men and Mamet was Mamet.

It’s unusual material with a charm all its own, a far cry from today’s PC norm. “Here is this world of these men, for better or worse,” says Mantegna, seated in the backyard of his Toluca Lake home. Best known for his portrayals of Mamet men in such plays as “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Speed the Plow” and such films as “House of Games,” “Things Change” and “Homicide,” the darkly handsome actor has often been cited as the preeminent interpreter of the playwright’s work. “They’re dinosaurs. These guys are not going to change. That doesn’t make them bad people. They’re just not quite in step with what’s happening in this century.”

Mantegna’s association with “Lakeboat” actually began 25 years ago, when he was an actor at the Organic Theatre company in Chicago. Working with fellow actor Jack Wallace--who would go on to be in both the stage and screen casts of “Lakeboat”--Mantegna was looking for some scenes they might perform in an upcoming Equity showcase, an annual union event intended to call actors to the attention of casting directors and others.

“I called up my chum, David Mamet, who was an aspiring playwright at the time, and said, ‘Dave, you got anything?’ ” Mantegna recalls. “So he sends over a Manila envelope that had all these typewritten pages. And what they were was ‘Lakeboat.’ ”

Ironically, Mantegna and Wallace passed. “ ‘Thanks anyway, Dave. Nice stuff, but it’s not going to work.’ ”

Little did he know it at the time, but that material would keep coming back to Mantegna. Ten years later, in 1985, Mantegna was on tour with Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”--the play for which the actor won a 1984 Tony. “We were on tour in Los Angeles,” Mantegna recalls. “Jack Wallace and J.J. Johnson [who would also go on to be in both the stage and screen versions of “Lakeboat”] were also in the play.” One of the visitors backstage happened to be David Mamet’s younger brother, actor Tony Mamet. “I remember he was all excited and saying, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great someday if we can do the play “Lakeboat” and I could be the young kid and all you guys could be in it?’ ” Mantegna says.

Jump-cut another nine years. During this time, Mantegna had begun working in movies, including several Mamet films. Then one day he got a call from Tony Mamet, who apparently had never forgotten that backstage conversation many years earlier.

Tony had finally gotten together the funds to produce “Lakeboat.” “He asked me if I wanted to be in it, and I said I think I’d rather direct,” Mantegna says.

“Lakeboat” opened at the Tiffany Theatre in West Hollywood in 1994 and was an instant hit. The cast was headed by Ed O’Neill and George Wendt, and also featured Tony Mamet, Johnson and Wallace, among others. It sold out its seven-week run, and would have played longer had the venue been available.

But the men of “Lakeboat” were already seeing another future. “We just looked at each other one day and said this would make a good film,” Tony Mamet says. “It’s a great representation of my brother’s early style. Also, I thought it was hilarious.”

“From the day that play closed, Tony was hellbent on trying to make a movie of it,” Mantegna says.

Early on in the search for financing, Mamet and Mantegna agreed it was important to try to keep the cast intact. “A lot of people made me offers if I would put stars in the roles, but for years I said no thank you,” Mamet says. “Deal after deal fell through. Finally, I said uncle: [The Wallace and Johnson] roles have to be protected and the rest we’ll open up.”

Ultimately, Mamet, Wallace, Johnson and Wendt would be the actors who would carry over from the stage cast to the movie, which cost less than $5 million to make. O’Neill wanted to do the movie as well, but wasn’t able to, due to family obligations.

The script, adapted by David Mamet, didn’t change much from the play. But there are some important differences, including a sequence of scenes interpolated by Mantegna, in which the tall tales various men tell about a missing crew member are shown in a series of fantasy flashbacks.

“I thought, I can’t have two hours of guys on a boat,” Mantegna says. “And then I’m thinking, how do I get off the boat? Well, the most natural thing is this character. Every time they talk about him, he’s in bars, he’s with hookers, he’s in the street, he’s being interrogated. It’s a big part of the movie, but we didn’t add a line. It’s all visual.”

And that kind of inventiveness, after all, is what being a director is all about.

“It forced me to become that much more immersed in it, that much more responsible,” says Mantegna of his first time at the helm of a film. “Bottom line, if you’ve got the horses, you can run the race. One thing I have learned is cast it right and you can save yourself a lot of headaches. I had brilliant actors.”

* “Lakeboat,” Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Thursday only, 7:30 p.m., $50. For information on other screenings, seminars and other festival events: (323) 937-9155.