David Mamet and Hollywood: A Rocky, Fruitful Relationship

It never fails.

A reporter and a filmmaker, both Windy City expatriates, get together for a luncheon interview in a swank hotel restaurant in L.A., and what do they spend most of the allotted time talking about? Chicago. No matter what’s going on in Hollywood, or what project is being peddled, news from back home always takes precedence over whatever it is a publicist expects “the talent” to be explaining to “the media.”

Because the weather in the general vicinity of the Bel-Air Hotel that day is sunny and 80 degrees warmer than it is in the Loop, David Mamet wants to swap stories about winter in Chicago, not plug “State and Main.” The much-celebrated director-screenwriter-playwright-essayist-poker-player has just arrived in town from his New England digs to attend the gala premiere of his new fish-out-of-water comedy, but he seems intent on quickly wrapping up the interview so he can join his daughter in a long-promised swim in the hotel pool.

At one point, though, Mamet asks the reporter to explain to his Scottish wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon, exactly how cold it can get in Chicago around Christmas. Instantly recalled is a painfully frigid stroll from the Tribune Tower to Marshall Field’s, six years ago, with a mutual friend known in some circles as Dr. Nightlife. Everyone at the table performs a mock shiver and agrees California has its virtues after all.

“State and Main” describes what happens when the cast and crew of a tightly budgeted independent movie--”The Old Mill”--descend on a small Vermont town that’s only too willing to be co-opted by the experience.

Shortly after their arrival, the film’s producer (William H. Macy) is alerted to the fact that, despite an illustration on the cover of a tourism brochure, the nearest old mill burned down several decades ago. Because the production company can’t afford to build a comparably symbolic landmark at which the movie’s lovers can connect, it becomes the responsibility of the screenwriter (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to come up with a solution . . . pronto.

Meanwhile, the picture’s randy male lead (Alec Baldwin) compromises the virtue of a flirtatious local teen, and the female star (Sarah Jessica Parker) has changed her mind about going topless in a key scene. If that isn’t enough, the normally pragmatic producer has inadvertently managed to mess up a dinner arranged by the mayor’s star-struck wife.

Chaos and laughter ensue. Not surprisingly, everything that happens on screen--including the frustrated screenwriter’s romantic encounter with a bookstore muse, played by Pidgeon--somehow manages to ring true.

All the crazy stuff that happened to the writer of “The Old Mill” happened to him, the 53-year-old Mamet insists. “You get to a location, and things change immediately. So you have to make decisions, and you’ve got to get on with it.

“It’s like when Phil Hoffman says to Bill Macy, ‘Well, you know, maybe it would be a better movie with an old mill.’ Macy, who’s run out of money, says, ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s a better movie or not, we don’t have a choice. We’ve got to get it in the can and go home.’ ”

“State and Main” also pretty well describes how quickly a town can fall out of love with the Hollywood experience. Certainly, by now, it doesn’t take long for anybody whose neighborhood is overtaken by a film crew to start complaining about the inconveniences caused by a film crew, especially if a mobile dressing room or craft-services truck is taking up curb space usually reserved for the family car.

“It happens overnight,” Mamet adds. “That’s one of the great things about night shooting. The police will have cordoned off the street, and people immediately will cluster behind barricades. But, after a while, they figure out that there’s nothing to see. At 3 in the morning, there’s no one around.”

Mamet didn’t have to travel too far from his adopted home to find the quaint, little town that would serve as a location for “State and Main.” Manchester-by-the-Sea was 45 minutes from his and Pidgeon’s Boston pad, and not all that far from their Vermont retreat. Despite the Massachusetts setting, the characters in the film probably will seem as familiar to filmgoers everywhere as they are to New Englanders and vagabond production crews.

“Mark Twain said a great thing,” Mamet allows. “He’d be traveling around the world and meeting all these interesting people, in bizarre locations, and someone would ask, ‘What’s it like meeting people like that?’ He said, ‘I met ‘em before. I met ‘em on the river.’ That’s kind of how I felt, after 10 years or more of bumming around and doing every job in the world.”

‘These [Actors] Don’t Have Any Limitations’

The writer rarely worries about casting the movies he also chooses to direct. Newcomers Hoffman and Parker fit in well with the ensemble of Mamet veterans, which includes Macy, Pidgeon, Baldwin, Ricky Jay, Charles Durning, Patti LuPone, J.J. Johnston, Jack Wallace and Jim Frangione.

“The thing about this group of actors is that they can play anything,” Mamet says. “Obviously, I’m thinking as I’m writing if it will work with these guys. But the only reason I can think of to write for a certain person is to write for their limitations. These guys don’t have any limitations.”

In the past two decades, Mamet--who helped put Chicago’s theater scene in the international spotlight in the ‘70s--has contributed his words to Hollywood projects big and small. For every mega-budget “Hannibal,” “The Edge,” “Hoffa,” “The Untouchables,” “The Verdict” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” there were personal projects like “House of Games,” “Things Change,” “Homicide,” “The Spanish Prisoner” and, coming up, “The Heist.”

His Oscar-nominated work on “Wag the Dog” revealed a different side of Hollywood than the one exposed in “State and Main.” Last year’s “The Winslow Boy” stunned everyone by coming in with a G rating, and “Glengarry Glen Ross” may be best remembered for a speech not rendered on stage.

“I witnessed that scene, which was one of the few things in all my work that I actually saw,” Mamet recalls, when asked about Baldwin’s brilliant “always be closing” diatribe. “Producers are always talking about wanting extra material. [Director] Jim Foley said, ‘Alec adores your work and would love to be in your picture.’ I said, ‘This thing happened to me when I used to be in the real-estate business, let’s see if I can work it in.’ ”

Despite all the successes and accolades, Mamet doesn’t sound much like a person who has surrendered much of his heart and soul to Hollywood. In fact, as a writer, he finds it nearly impossible to spend more than three days at a time there.

“I’ve decided to stop being a screenwriter,” he announces suddenly. “I did it for 20 years--as part of a hobby--but I’m going to stop. I always did the best I could, and they paid me very well for it. But times change. Enough already.”

In an effort to explain the decision to his surprised guest, Mamet tells another story.

“I did a movie a while ago, and it came to a very famous actor, whose name I won’t mention,” he recalls. “The actor said, ‘Yeah, I think I want to do this movie, but I need a reading.’ I said, ‘OK.’ After the reading, he said, ‘It’s good, but it’s not great. I’ve only got so many left in me, you understand, and I really have to pick and choose. I think you’re a terrific writer. The movie’s really good, but it’s not great.’

“I said, ‘OK.’ He asked if I was mad at him, and when I said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Good, because I’ve got this crock of . . . I’m supposed to start filming in two weeks; do you think you could fix it for me?’ ” Hollywood, he concludes, “isn’t a good place for a writer to be.”

With that, he grabs his daughter’s hand and heads for the hotel’s pool. The local climate may not be right for wordsmiths, but apparently it beats slipping and sliding on the icy streets of New England in December.

Only time will tell if Southern California’s financial and meteorological sirens’ song will lure him back for more abuse. Many have tried to stay away . . . many have failed.