adaptive collaboration, collaborative adaptation filming the mamet canon

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T Auto 2010. Pub by Oxo Unvty P.

A gt v. Fo pmon, pa ma: [email protected] 82

AdaptationVo. 3, No. 2, pp. 8298

o: 10.1093/aaptaton/apq004

Avanc Acc pubcaton 8 Ap 2010

Aaptv Coaboaton, Coaboatv

Aaptaton: Fmng t Mamt Canon

ChrisTOPhe COllArd*

Abstract evy mgaton aco nta an xpv amwok nta oma, tuc-

tua, an cogntv conqunc too compx o a tatonat compaatv potu. Mo-

ov, t nttxtuaty an ntmaty o t tanma cnpay mak t ncompatb

wt tatc concpt uc a fty an ognaty pcy on ba o t fm mum

poy-ytmc natu. Bngng togt t anaogou concn o coaboatv caton, aap-

taton, an autop, t ay to cu dav Mamt cn aaptaton o p-

ona an ot wok om a process-ba ppctv a a man o attanng a mo

contuctv untanng o o-ca ntattc paag.

Keywords David Mamet, collaborative creation, adaptation, authorship, semiology.

All train compartments smell vaguely o shit. It gets so you dont mind it. Thats the worst

thing that I can coness. (Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross)

iNTrOdUCTiON

Every single lm producer, Hollywood veteran Art Linson has claimed, knows that at

the inception o the movie-making process stands an idea derived rom A book. A

play. A song. A news event. A magazine article. A historic event or character. A personal

experience. A remake o an existing movie. Any combination o the above (15). From

the screenwriters perspective, things look slightly dierent. Like playwright-turned-

lmmaker David Mamet so delicately observed, this adaptive authorship in practice

translates as Film is a collaborative business: bend over (1989: 311).1 Curiously enough,most o Mamets own screenplays are acknowledged adaptations, some even o his own

plays, as i he masochistically relished the power struggle between source text, Holly-

wood bureaucracy, and his aesthetic rst principles. Mamets creative journey across

media and genresranging rom experimental theatre over the hardboiledflm noirto

the novel, and rom radio plays over childrens literature to television dramaalready

suggests as much. This essay, in turn, brings together the analogous concerns o adap-

tation, authorship, and collaborative creation to gain insight into the complex negotia-

tionprocessesthat constitute these very concepts. Excursions into David Mamets adaptive

*Vrije Universiteit Brussel. E-mail: [email protected]. Christophe Collard is a research ellow at the

Language and Literature Department o the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University o Brussels) where he

recently completed a doctoral dissertation on the media and genre crossings in the work o David Mamet.

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Aaptv Coaboaton, Coaboatv Aaptaton 83

work or stage and screen will thereby serve to support the central thesis that adapta-

tion, authorship, as well as collaboration cannot and should not be treated as indepen-

dent rom one another.

FideliTY UNder PressUre

It seems a truism that adaptations adapt a text rom one discursive eld to another.

Simplied to the extreme, a communicative situation involves the presence o a text

(text), a series o elements that guarantee the communicative interaction (interactional

rame), a series o background discourses (intertextual rame), and a set o personal and

collective experiences that operate as a reerence (existential rame) (Casetti 84), accord-

ing to which the term adaptation would denote the explicit transposition o an ac-

knowledged source text. Unortunately, such a straightorward causality conficts with

the notion o discursive eld in which it is wont to occur. Moreover, the adaptation

presented as adaptation loses its reerential eectwhen the receiver is unacquainted with

the material transposed. Together both issuesthat is, linearity and reerentialityin

act account or most o the misconceptions about the paradoxical phenomenon that is

adaptation.

A palimpsest, the adaptation eectively stages multiple texts simultaneously. How-

ever, rather than to be lamented or its parasitical impurity, the double vision it

stimulates is generative at heart. Put dierently, instead o bickering over a lack o

originality or the ailure o representativeness at either end o the spectrum, it may

be better to account or the popularity and omnipresence o adaptations. William

Shakespeare, one o the Western literary canons towering gures, did not write asingle original play in the purist sense o the term, just as nowadays roughly 90% o

all Oscar-winning Best pictures and award-winning television series are adaptations

(Hutcheon 4). This appeal itsel relates to another truism: successul adaptations are

adaptive.

Historically adaptation-criticism has been plagued by the doctrine o delity and its

bafing reerences to a source texts presumed spirit which in Kamilla Elliotts seemly

words always retains an element oje ne sais quoi (137). To a certain extent this is un-

derstandable, since the cultural prestige o the acknowledged original is oten used

as legitimation or the new text and the medium in which it is produced. Films suchas Bram Stokers Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992), Emily Bronts Wuthering Heights

(Peter Kosminsky, 1992),Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994), or William

Shakespeares Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) all claim literary author-ity and

improvement through technological repurposing. It is a phenomenon that caused

Linda Hutcheon to relabel the Based on. . . label a ruse (18). Incidentally, their

narrow comparative posture accounts or most adaptation studies general lack o the-

oretical sophistication. Precisely their solipsistic character causes the ew critical princi-

ples deployed to ossiy into binary oppositions that poststructuralist theory has taught

us to deconstruct: literature versus cinema, high culture versus mass culture, originalversus copy (Naremore 2). Originals are unavoidably superior to their negatively

connoted derivatives, but only in the apodictic sense o yet another truism that source

texts will always be better at being themselves (Leitch 161). Robert Stam thereby rightly

noted that The question o delity ignores the wider question: Fidelity to what? (2000: 57).

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84 ChrisTOPhe COllArd

The migration across reerential and expressive rameworks entails ormal, structural,

and cognitive consequences. And whereas a certain core o meaning may indeed travel,

it can never be captured without its techno-cultural mediation. Thus, the so-called

spirit o the so-called source text is destined to remain an arbitrary construction, and a

reductive one at that.

Studies o interaesthetic passages pertaining to the perorming arts traditionally tend

to disregard the socio-semiological processes in avour o a static comparative approach.

Paradoxically, it is precisely their dynamic character that uels these complex transers

o creative energy. Because distinctions emerge wherever perception takes us, ailures in

communication are always possible where denotations, connotations, and interpreta-

tions meet. However, the tension the negotiation produces unmistakably carries genera-

tive potential. Varun Begley, or example, rightly remarked that it is an uncomortable

position to write in one breath about Mamets plays, the lms he has written and di-

rected, and the lms he has merely written because, the argument goes, To assume a

univocal identity, merely or the sake o simplicity, is to ignore the questions o medium,

mediation, and authority which the phenomenon o David Mamet has thrown into

relie (165). Indeed, Mamet debuted as screenwriter with the remake o an adaptation

(The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981director Bob Raelson2), just as his subsequent

lms ollowed in the wake o stage adaptations o canonical plays or were quite simply

adaptations in their own right.

Because adaptations are undamentally intertextual systems, reerential rameworks

paradoxically must be sel-relativising in order to be meaningul. In keeping with

Patrick Cattrysses ormulation, The unctioning o norms explains why communicativebehaviour shows system(at)ic characteristics. Norms and systems can thereore be seen

as two sides o the same coin (253). In this regard he noted a number o recurring

allacies in translation and adaptation studies, two o which are particularly relevant to

the argument developed in this essay:

The contradiction between a descriptive attitude with respect to translation as a fnal

product and the normative attitude regarding translation as process.

The conusion resulting rom terminology used once on the level o the object o study

(e.g., translation as a fnal product), and then on the meta-level (e.g., translation as a

process). (257)

Instead o ormulating misguided delity-rameworks based on static conceptions o

proto- and meta-text, the proposed comparative approach aspires to be both poly-

systemic and dynamicin other words:process based.

AdAPTiNG AUThOrshiP

A methodological ocus on the intertextuality and intermediality o adaptations almost

automatically draws attention to what Jack Boozer called the most consistent and cru-cial example o intertextuality at work, namely the writing o the transmedial screen-

play (1) because the process particularly problematises issues o authorship. To lm

producers, journalist reviewers, and academic critics alike, the script more oten than

not is considered an intermediary between source and nished product, subject to

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constant alterations in the course o a lms development. Nevertheless, those very

changes turn the screenplay into a liminal nexus where the lms poly-systemic consti-

tutive orces meet, as the composition o an adapted screenplay takes place not only

under the shadow o myriad narrative expectations but in a complex environment o

business, industrial, and artistic considerations (Boozer 5). Indeed, a closer look at a

screenplays semiology should support a revised equivalences-approach to adaptive

practice where a priori arguments are reuted in avour o process-based analyses.

When literary works are translated or lms dubbed, it is commonly assumed that the

translation concerns the same work. However, conceptions o what exactly constitutes

the essence that is being translated tend to be markedly less condent. Just so with

adaptations, be they explicit or implicit. Since the relation between actual/virtual/

potential and realised content that constitutes the adaptive process thrives on isotopy,3

all readings o transpositional texts must be pragmatic at heart rather than essentialist

or wholly relativistic. Given that a certain kernel o meaning indeed travels, it can never

be considered independent o any interpretative ramework, which in turn must be

unctional by deault. In act, the adaptations schizo-pragmaticintersemioticity, a con-

cept semiologist Andr Helbo developed in his Signes du spectacle: Des arts vivants aux mdias

(2006), should remind the interpreter that meaning is derived rom the interplay o

various signiying systems, hence that semiosis can never be nite (121).

Still the distinction acknowledged/unacknowledged is o paramount importance

when discussing intertextual relations. A certain text can adapt one or multiple

others, yet reerentiality is characteristic o semiosis itsel since even the simplest orm

o communication relies on recognisability in order to succeed. Accordingly, when everytext or discourse is intrinsically adaptive to some degree, the term adaptation may very

well be stretched beyond the point o meaning. Adding an adjective, on the other hand,

recongures the concept asintersemiotic translation while implying unctionality. The

(un)acknowledged degree o intentionality thereby rames the comparative analysis

while lessening its inveterate semantic conusion.

The adaptive screenplay, as Thomas Leitch noted, is doubly perormative (154) by

adaptinga source text while being itsel translatedinto lm. Yet interestingly enough there

is no Academy Award or Best Adapted Motion Picture although the Oscar or Best

Writing: Adaptation has been awarded since 1927 as counterpart to the Best OriginalScreenplay award. Until 1957, the Motion Picture Academy equally distinguished the

Best Motion Picture Story, which was discarded precisely to remedy the conusion

about the adaptive screenplays ambiguous status. As it is, the Hollywood lm industry

insists on this dualism along the tenets o American copyright law, dening adaptation

as a derivation that recasts, transorms, or adapts apreviously publishedwork (Boozer 13;

see also Hutcheon 89). What matters here is that the distinction only considers the

written text as the legal basis o authorship disputes. To summarise, then, a lms author-

ship traditionally is attributed to the director, and in rarer cases to the producer, though

the legal author o a lm adaptation remains the screenwriter. Bend over, indeed.In 1986, a lm was released whose credit titles are scored by similarly crude sexual

innuendoes in voice over. Sporting the epithet based on Sexual Perversity in Chicago [1974]

by David Mamet About Last Night (director Edward Zwick) still stages a boorishly

boastul Bernie Litkothe one character responsible or turning this experimental play

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into a succs de scandalebut (beyond the opening credits) deprived him o his zany abu-

lation by reducing his vulgarity. Likewise, the picture no longer ends with the obnoxious

ogling o scantily clad women, yet recycles the characters oolish uss into the adapta-

tions ormulaic able o moral redemption through conspicuous consumerism and cul-

tural conservatism. As its demotic dialogue nonetheless picked up an R-rating or being

risquwithout risking rejection, the movie made ew riends in the critical community.

Varun Begley even called it an adulterated, unabashed, unregenerate star-vehicle or

Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and James Belushi (167); a revision o Mamets dystopian

70s drama through the lens o the Reagan years [borrowing] snatches o dialogue rom

the play in a grand and unexpected sublimation o the entire ethos o sexual and eco-

nomic malaise (168) that validat[es] this specic 80s ideological program [by remain-

ing] naively, almost obsessively xated on the utopian possibility o integrated experience

and personal ullment (169).

Ironically, it was the very notion o closure that Mamet so vehemently opposed in

this early work, as well as in his own subsequent screenplay o Sexual Perversity. And nei-

ther Zwicks utopianism nor Begleys reading o dystopianism adequately refect

Mamets views on authorship ater his rst orays into Hollywood. In a pragmatic bid

to capitalise on his screenwriting successes with The Postman Always Rings Twice(1981)

and The Verdict (1982), Mamet had sold the rights o Sexual Perversity in Chicago to two

Chicago lm producers with the guarantee that he would be hired as screenwriter. It

was an attempt to broaden the works artistic reach at minimal aesthetic cost. Things,

however, turned sour when the nished script was rejected by several studio executives

who deemed it impenetrable and unlikely to replicate the plays breakaway success.Unprepared to compromise his creation into a conventional commodity, Mamet ended

up red and was replaced by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue. Fleshing out his

minimalist drama with reductive ormulae at this point still proved a bridge too ar.

Communicative bridges nonetheless constitute a cornerstone o Mamets aesthetic.

His rst screenplay cons the spectator into active collaboration with a quick ruse and

knowing wink to James M. Cains depression-era original (1934)a work itsel inspired

by Emile Zolas Thrse Raquin (1866). And as Mamets own novels The Village(1994) and

The Old Religion (1997) more than a decade later would attest, he cut right through all

the cinematically redundant (Mamet quoted in Porno 105) explanatory verbiage tozoom in on the negotiation at the heart o human identity and interaction. Cora, the

emale heroine o Cains Postman, suers rom the double vision o being an Iowa-girl

married to that Greek (Cain 11), just like Raelsons remake o Tay Garnetts 1946

lm version acknowledges its cinematic and literary predecessors by reproducing the

title while being perectly coherent in its own right. As intertextual nexus Mamets

screenplay in turn takes this schizo-pragmatism a step urther by reproducing the storys

hardboiled theme o killing and screwing and betraying (Nadel 2008: 113) in a rau-

cous atmosphere rarely relieved by the deadpan dialogue. More specically, he dis-

carded the doom-laden (T. Williams 35) extra-diegetic rst-person narrator o theearlier bookandlm or the least-patronising third-person narration, choosing at all

times the option o showing over telling. When at the end o Raelsons version the

car crash that killed Cora gives Frank Chambers a sincere sense o spiritual redemp-

tion, his insight is both surprising and inevitable rather than the excessive moralising o

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Cains and Garnetts improbable conession. I anything, Mamets screenplay is structure-

driven, and capitalises on the intertextual context merely or the sake o highlighting

theprocessualchanges to the amiliar plot. It is an approach quite unlike Garnetts tra-

ditional 1946-adaptation, which sports a copy o the original novel during the lms

opening and closing credits as means o achieving legitimacy by proxy. The source text

or Mamets second lm adaptation, Barry Reeds popular legal thriller The Verdict

(1980), resembles Cains Postman in its patronising characterisation conspicuous plotting

to secure its conclusions inevitabilityeven i it comes at the cost o surprise. Equally

unsurprising given his earlier screenwriting venture is that Mamet almost integrally

kept the one passage in Reeds book that directly deals with negotiation:

Its a medical malpractice case, Galvin began. I can see that! snarled Sweeney, slamming

back to earth. Good God, man, I can read! Now, you know what I mean. Have you boys

tried to resolve your dierences and save the Commonwealth the time and expense involvedin a long trial? Its an unusual case, Your Honour oered Galvin. I think both sides owe

a duty to the Court to negotiate. Sharpen the pencil. Give a little. Take a little. Have you boys

tried to do that? Maybe I can be o some help. As I said, Your Honour, this is an unusual

case All the more reason to negotiate. Compromise (Reed 135).

Yet whereas in the novel the passage supports the storys progression, in Sidney Lumets

lming o Mamets script the characterisation is o an entirely dierent order. As

Dennis Carroll noted, In Barry Reeds hands The Verdictis a rousing story o an underdog

lawyer winning out against a Bostonian proessional aristocracy; in Mamets and

Sidney Lumets hands it is a parable o a mans moral regeneration and renewal o aith(1987: 92). Aided by Andrej Bartkowiaks photography o a drab and subdued wintery

setting, our consciousness is thus steered towards the minute mechanisms that tenta-

tively turn Frank Galvin rom an alcoholic has-been into a stoic transgressor. In act,

Galvins moral ambivalence conceptually rames all o Mamets explicitly adaptive

screenplays. In The Untouchables(1986, director Brian DePalma) the orces o good even-

tually succeed by combining moral stamina with amoral knie-blade pragmatism

(Carroll 1992: 180) while the heroes o the generically hybrid Were No Angels (Neil

Jordan, 1989)a conused remake o the gooy 1955 Humphrey Bogart and Peter

Ustinov-vehicle directed by Michael Curtiz itsel based on Albert Hussons La cuisinedes anges(1955)combine the principles o aith, deception, and compromise to attain

their improbable objectives. Signicantly, in this ourth regular adaptation, Mamet

keeps denying his two protagonists, the escaped convicts Ned and Jim played by Robert

De Niro and Sean Penn, a successul crossing into Canada and reedom until they liter-

ally make a leap o aithJim by taking up holy orders and Ned by going ater an egy

o the Virgin Mary in a swirling waterall to save a drowning child. By analogy, this

tendency to embrace morality while eschewing moralising echoes what lm scholar

R. Barton Palmer considered to be the most productive quality o adaptive practice,

namely its joint embrace and transgression o divergent signiying systems and prac-tices in a composition that is at once constructive and deconstructive (259).

David Mamets adaptation (1988) o Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya (1898) marks a

case in point, especially because the Russian playwright had been a ormative infuence

on Mamet since the beginning o his career. In its 1972 opening season, the Saint

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Nicholas Theatre Company, which Mamet ounded together with Steven Schachter

and William H. Macy, produced three plays: Mamets ownDuck Variations, Chekhovs

The Marriage Proposal, and ONeillsAnna Christie(Nadel 2008: 61). At that time, Mamet

also taught acting classes based on the principles o Stanislavski, whose Moscow Art

Theatre owed part o its prominence to productions o Chekhovs major plays.4 During

another teaching stint in 1976, he became riends with Chekhov-expert Robert Brustein,

then Dean o the Yale Drama School. In 1983 Mamet adapted Pierre Lavilles Le

Fleuve Rouge(1980) or the Goodman Theatre, a play that discusses the aesthetic princi-

ples o Stanislavski and Chekhov. Two years later, Mamet wrote his rst two Chekhov

adaptations, The Cherry Orchardand Vint, a dramatisation o a short story about a card

game. A third Chekhov adaptation, this time o Uncle Vanyaollowed in 1988 and coin-

cided with Mamets beginnings as lm auteurdirecting his own screenplays.5 His sur-

prising move to Boston ater his early Hollywood successes with adaptations o popular

novels was partly related to a renewed collaboration with Brustein, by now heading the

American Repertory Theatre in nearby Cambridge (Nadel 2008: 140, 198). Despite

the critical disappointment over The Cherry Orchard, Brustein had been suciently im-

pressed with Mamets understanding o Chekhov to commission the adaptation o

Uncle Vanya.

The plays subtitle, Scenes rom Country Lie, resembles Mamet s earlyDuck Vari-

ationsin its apparent resistance o a generic ormat, as well as in its overtones o exper-

imentation ramed by analogy. Chekhovs characters, moreover, continuously waver

between pompous theorising and sel-contradictory actions, which creates a structural

rhythm not unlike the one deployed in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and transcending thecharacters ormal idiosyncrasies. Rather than moralise, Chekhov leaves interpretation

to the audience while resolutions are either delayed or reused altogether. Mamet him-

sel has conceded that Chekhovs infuence on his own dramaturgy related to the use o

minimal characterisation as a means o ocusing the audiences attention:

We, as audience, understand a plot not in terms o the supercial idiosyncrasies or social states

o its characters (they, nally, separateus rom the play), but only in terms o the action the

characters are trying to accomplish. (Set Hamlet in Waukegan and its still a great play)

(Mamet 1985: xvoriginal emphases).

At rst sight, Mamets ostensibly aithul actualisations appear to have been designed

to exhume the living energies o Chekhovs writing rom under the heavy weight o

masterpiece topsoil (Brustein quoted on cover o Mamet 1988). Yet Chekhovs work

is ar too conspicuous a presence in the rst two decades o Mamets career or these

adaptations to be reduced to either ormal or even structural updates. Ater all, this

view overlooks some o the dierences between both versions that refect deliberate

conceptual, even generic choices. Particularly, the missing repetitions o merciul di-

minish the impact o the nurses Mercy (Mamet 1988: 81) right beore the start o

Sonyas nal monologue, just as our perception is infuenced by the substitution odear uncle (Chekhov 230) with a sterner But what can we do? Uncle. All we can do is

live (Mamet 1988: 81). Cutting through what one critic called Chekhovs musty, dusty

verbiage [. . .] without losing the poetry (A. Williams) thus increased the structural

interplay o repetition and reversal. Mamet moreover singled out the moments o

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dramatic tension by marking them with his best lines, which allows the spectators to

anticipate the ending. His Vanyadoes actualise its predecessor but the perspective o-

ered by Helbos intersemioticity-concept indicates that a seemingly aithul adapta-

tion actually implies a preliminary deconstruction ollowed by a minute reconstruction.

Beyond ill-dened notions o delity, adaptation then primarily appears as a matter o

code-switching between reerential rameworks, so that comparative analyses based

on equivalences rather than dierences heighten attention to competing rames that

the processual relation between them appears open to negotiation. Such intensied

perceptibility ultimately broadens the scope and relevance o adaptation studies by di-

recting attention to the cognitive association o poetic patterns, contextual rames, and

personal connotations.

Louis Malles Vanya on 42ndStreet(1994), presented as a discreetly observed record o

a run-through in rehearsal clothes (French 183) o Mamets Vanya-adaptation directed

by Andr Gregory illustrates the schizo-pragmatic intersemioticity that historically

established the dramatic arts as the most popular vehicle or adaptations (see also

Hutcheon 4). By the time o the shooting, Gregory and his cast had already been prac-

ticing the play on and o since 1989 without ever producing it. Instead, the actors

welcomed these workshops as a break between commercial commitments that allowed

them to work on their technique, thereby echoing Mamets own parallel careers be-

tween on the one hand Hollywood and Broadway successes, and on the other his more

experimental work in various media and genres. The same applies to Louis Malle, re-

nowned or his work in both cinema and documentary lmmaking. His Vanyaopens

with images o West 42nd Street in Manhattan, cutting between shots o shabby hot-dog stands, run-down sex cinemas, and people moving about. Gradually, a number o

them stand out while meeting up with what soon appear to be other members o Gregorys

cast. In a seamless shit between ctional and documentary rameworks, Gregory and

playwright-actor Wallace Shawn are seen explaining to some visitors, who actually

serve as avatars or the lm audience, that they are going to attend a rehearsal o Uncle

Vanyain the run-down New Amsterdam Theatre, ormer home o the Ziegeld Follies.

With this inormation, initial generic concerns are momentarily relieved. However, the

production concerns Vanya, a play which thematically and structurally dramatises the

complexity o interpersonal relations. Moreover, the rehearsal takes place everywherein the building, exceptwithin the proscenium arch due to an impracticable stage and a

leaking roo. Hence, the casts use o the location literally theatricalises6 their own adap-

tation o Mamets script and Chekhovs play, as conrmed by one o the visitors when

noting that Its all crumbling, but its also beautiul. This character is listed in the credit

titles as Madhur Jerey impersonating a certain Mrs Cho. Shawn introduces her in the

lm as a oreign acquaintance whose grandather translated Uncle Vanyainto Bengali.

Bearing in mind that Vanya on 42nd Street is a reunion between Shawn, Gregory, and

Malle, ater their 1981 collaboration on a similar cult lmMy Dinner with Andre, pairing

the current adaptations transposition o intrinsic meaning-potential to thenotion o translation urther increases the movies epistemological tension. Moreover,

since this process is prolonged by the rudimentary stage props, the audience is called to

urnish both the New Amsterdam and the play with their own imagination. From such

liminal perspective, then, adapting a text transpires as, indeed, a schizo-pragmatic

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juggling act o moral responsibility to keep ideas circulating by highlighting their po-

tential or reinterpretation.

NeGOTiATiNG COllABOrATiON

I the principle o negotiation assumes a pivotal position in Mamets adaptive work, the

primacy o Glengarry Glen Ross(play 1983; lm 1992) is no coincidence. Not only is this

his most successul theatre piece to date, the play, set in the real estate world, dramatises

a gang o salesmens rantic compulsion to close contracts while relying on chicanery

andas Blake, the lm versions inernal7 emissary rom head oce so graphically puts

itbrass balls. In the dog-eat-dog world o Glengarry Glen Rosscommunication and

communion primarily serve as prelude to the sales pitch. And while Levenes thet o

the companys les is considered criminal, deceiving clients by selling them worthless

Florida swampland makes or good business. The play takes no hostages en routeto de-

picting a ruthless world where winners drive Cadillacs and losers get steak knives. To

New York Post-critic Clive Barnes, these men are simply crooks who have orgotten that

what they are doing is crooked because they are lost in the legitimate rituals o sales-

manship, with all its scoops, bonuses, and disappointments (B15). Glengarry Glen Rossis

no less than Mamets Lieo a Salesman, a coincidental condemnation and praise

(Hudgins 23) o individual pragmatism (Mamet quoted in Billington 15) in a hostile

context not unlike the world o predatory producers who would adapt Mamets Pulitzer

Prize-winning play. Considering the conrontations outcome, Mamet drove the Cadillac

all the way.

Hollywood, Mamet argued in his collection o essaysMake-Believe Town (1996), is astbecoming like any terminal bureaucracy [or] reward[ing] the bureaucratic virtue o

adherence to the system (121). It is a comment reminiscent o top salesman Ricky

Romas refection that his trade is no longer a world o men, but a world o clock

watchers, bureaucrats, oce holders (Mamet 1983: 64) where creativity and determi-

nation are marshall[ed] (46) into conormism. But no matter how corrupt the salesmen

and oppressive the system in which they operate, Mamet reuses to victimise them. For

their aculty o eeding constructively on contingent situations ultimately expresses gen-

erative potential. No wonder the Hollywood establishment smelled the artistic oppor-

tunity that an adaptation o Mamets quintessential power play represented. Veteranproducer Jerry Tokosky had seen the Broadway production o Glengarry Glen Ross in

1985 and promptly contacted Mamet to buy the lm rights. Mamet agreed to sell them

or $500,000 but, Zwicks debacle still reshly on his mind, brokered a watertight deal

that clearly dened his own authoritative power and secured his position as exclusive

screenwriter, a role or which he would be paid another hal million dollars. With such

a hety price or a quintessentially stagey play, Tokosky reasoned he needed an all-star

cast motivated to take on Mamets nest while taking a hety pay cut in order to keep

the project nancially viable. Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin immediately

endorsed the plan, while the likes o Robert De Niro and Bruce Willis were equallyeager to appear. Despite all this enthusiasm, the bleak economic situation made

nancing such a risky artsy lm problematic. At long last, ater 4 years o rejections by

major studios who considered it unlmable (Ebert 1992), a nancial construction was

set up through commitments rom cable and video companies, a German television

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station, an Austrian movie theatre chain, several banks, and the major independent

New Line Cinema (Weinraub 1991). When Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Kevin Spacey

equally joined the cast, the budget was nally balanced ater a urther injection o

private capital by Stanley R. Zupnik, a would-be lmmaker rom Washington who

ironically, yet by no means coincidentallyhad made his ortune as a real estate developer

(Powers 1992). The actual lming, directed by James Foley, proved a rewarding artistic

experience to all concerned, which prompted Mamet to express his gratitude and

admiration in a letter to Tokosky or giving him a thrill o what Hollywood could be

(Weinraub 1991).

Presented against the metaphorical backdrop o an el-train rumbling past in the

pouring rain, Mamets adaptive screenplay evokes at once transience and connement,

smooth improvisation supported by the jazzy Wayne Shorter soundtrack, i also conser-

vative authorship. Quick close ups relieve the stasis o the action, but cannot entirely

repeal the claustrophobic atmosphere. The tracking is omnipresent and telephones

initially abound to acilitate it. Still, not even the contingencies o an imposed sales

contest and the burglary can unsettle a world that remains limited to the oce, the

Chinese restaurant across the street, and a rare sit with prospective customers. Con-

trary to Mamets earlier screen adaptations, Glengarry Glen Rossat rst sight looks like a

literal transposition with some minor cosmetic alterations apparently intended to re-

duce the staginess. The meeting with Blake, however, creates a number o supple-

mentary arcs that greatly increase the lms dramatic intensity. What is more, the

dierent medium oers the opportunity to maintain the dramatic rhythm o the de-

livery while speeding up the structural progression. Blakes brass balls-monologue nowsets the scene, supplementary dialogues fesh out characterisation, yet with every scenic

shit the el cuts across the screen. Blake tells them they are all red, but have 1 week to

regain their jobs, which looks like a deadlock though it actually is an incentive to shake

them out o their lethargy. The oce burglar, by extension, steals all the leads o pro-

spective buyers as well as the phones in order to constrain communication and cock up

the contest, just as Mamets authoritative adaptation eigns aithulness to lower our

deences. And yet, when the police detectives seals o Levenes ate with Ricky cant

help you, pal all communicative constraints are symbolically released in almost

Brechtian ashion (Hudgins 27) through a delivery o new phones, clinched by the nalcredits rolling to the rhythm o an accelerating el, a transmedial symbol (Mohr 2008)

scored by Al Jarreau singing Blue Skies. I anything, the adaptation o Glengarry Glen

Ross shows that Mamet remained sensitive to issues o authorship while embracing

medial crossingsin the spirit o the ballsy salesmanas an opportunity.

The artsy Glengarry lm turned out to be a commercial and critical success as much

as a textbook example o what lm critic Richard Corliss two decades earlier had

called a productive intersection (20) o like-minded creative spirits in an eminently

constructivecollaboration. Mamets next in-house adaptation, this time o his provoc-

ative Oleanna(1992; lm 1994), proved more problematic processually. As a play on theindeterminacy o language and the attendant diculty o mutual understanding, it

was a promising platorm or urther inquiry into the processes o intersemiotic trans-

lation and transmedial authorship. With a title that is [b]oth elusive and allusive

(Murphy 124),8 an epigraph to the published version singing the praises o a ailed9

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utopian community rather than drag[ing] the chains o slavery, and a thematic insis-

tence on the Power. To deviate. To invent, to transgress. . . to transgresswhatever norms

have been established or us (Mamet 1992: 34original emphases) it certainly au-

gured well or an ambitious next step in Mamets career as adaptive auteurall the

more since this time he himsel would direct a cast made up o his usual cronies. The

experience admittedly [blew] a lot o [his] theories right out o the water (quoted in

Bragg 147) because until then Mamet had been concerned with broadening his artistic

range and making his work generally more accessible. In bringingOleannato the screen

he did neither.

Problems o authorship had begun with the plays rst stage production, which

Mamet himsel directed, both its premiere in Cambridge, MA, and during its New

York run. At the time, the ending consisted o several pages o dialogue ater John, the

university proessor, had physically beaten Carol, his student, into physical submission;

pages in which he gradually realises the enormity o his act. Carol, meanwhile, recovers

and orces John to read out the conession she and her group tried to orce upon him,

thereby causing his initial ury. As the play closes a broken teacher admits having ailed

in [his] responsibilities to the young while the activist student stands by, unfinchingly

(Nadel 2002: 122). Realising the endings lack o ambiguity, Mamet trimmed it down to

its current climax o aborted closure with John poised to crash a chair on a recoiled

Carol muttering the ambiguous phrase . . . yes. Thats right (Mamet 1992: 52). Mean-

while Mamet by mistake had sent the discarded version to Harold Pinter, who was to

direct the plays British premiere and who preerred the original ending over the short-

ened version. Mamet disagreed but eventually relented as it had already been per-ormed under his own direction as well, and settled or an explanatory statement printed

in the programme or the Royal Court production (Nadel 2002: 123). The New York

run under Mamets direction lasted or 513 perormances plus the 15 previews, inci-

dentally his rst venture into stage direction since the triple bill o Reunion,Dark Pony,

and The Sanctity o Marriagein 1979 (Nadel 2008: 181). Considering the plays tentative

improvement and its extensive popular success, it is not unlikely that when the produc-

tion transerred to the screen10only the emale lead Rebecca Pidgeon, then pregnant

with Mamets child, was replaced by Deborah Eisenstadt, her understudyMamet

had somehow lost sight o lms particular dramatic demands, as well as o its varie-gated chronotopic capacities (Stam 2005: 15).

Contrary to the collaborative production process o the Glengarry Glen Rossmovie, the

Oleannaadaptation proved very much a one-sided aair. A lm by David Mamet ater

a Screenplay by David Mamet, based on his play it exploited surprisingly little o the

mediums narrative possibilities, especially so when taking into account the increasing

lmic maturity o his three previous auteurpictures House o Games(1987), Things Change

(1988), and Homicide (1991)a progression moreover conrmed by the critical ac-

claim o his subsequent auteurpictures.11 Whereas the recent Homicidebanked on ge-

neric recognisability as communicative bridge across which the spectator could becoaxed into critical contemplation, Oleannastripped the stage version o its visceral dy-

namic while adding only eerily alienating transition scenes that do little beyond dimin-

ishing the claustrophobic eect. Dramatic progression is marked by Carols errands

around a remarkably silent university campus where students and aculty are seen

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working and walking but never heard talking. Metaphorically, this could have been an

interesting take on the plays theme o problematic communication, yet in order to

suggest misunderstandings there rst must be a plausible basis or interaction. As it

stands, the lm version o Oleannaintegrally reproduces the denitive play text with

minimal visual and structural compromises that hardly suggest the idea o movement.

It is almost as i Mamet in this third production o the play simply sought to acilitate

a certain interpretation through semiotic snippets, whether activist posters, a change o

clothing, or the pathetic allacy o pairing Johns mental disintegration to changes in

the weather outside his oce window. This impression is supported by the tendentious

tone o the movies press kit stating that There are two sides to every story and they are

both Carols (Ebert 1994). At heart, however, Oleannais a highly complex work that

thrives on theatrical liveness viscerally to inscribe its ambiguity. It provokes irrational

responses while just as soon undermining them, causing reactions very similar to the

coincidental condemnation and praise or the salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross. As a

lm, however, Oleannaturned out to be a muddled collage o contradictory aesthetic

impulses, simultaneously suggestive and patronising,12 minimalistic and simplistic, cin-

ematically nave and solipsistic in the extreme. And as the lm paradoxically ailed to

reach a wider audience than the stage version, it represents another instance o spec-

tacular misjudgement.

Even i Mamet would go on to write comparably aithul adaptations oAmerican

Bualo (Michael Corrente, 1996), Lakeboat(Joe Mantegna, 2000), and Edmond(Stuart

Gordon, 2005), Oleannaremains his only attempt as adaptor-director o personal ma-

terial, which qualies this relatively marginal lms importance in a process-baseddiscussion o the artists transmedial authorship. A ailed utopia in its own right as

every adaptation always must be, the screen version o Oleannamoreover remained

enslaved by its own textual chains. Or as Washington Post-critic Rita Kempley so aptly

put it, Like most plays transerred to screen, Oleannastill bears traces o grease paint.

Much the same applies toAmerican Bualo, arguably another hal-hearted and under-

powered (French 181) attempt at bringing a Mamet classic to the screen that once

more undercuts the [original] plays visceral tension (Holden 1996). Produced by his

compagnon de routeGregory Mosher and directed by a young and barely known Corr-

ente who hade made his debut with Federal Hill(1994), a black-and-white drama aboutsmall-time Italian-American hoods, the lm adaptation oAmerican Bualo repeated

Oleannas strategies or feshing out the play texts bare semiotic bonesreplete with

pathetic allacy and eerily empty streetsand added a hyperkinetic Dustin Homan

to general critical disapproval. Interesting touches like casting an Arican-American

actor (Sean Nelson) as Dons junkie gopher and visual reerences to Chicagos 1933

Century o Progress Exposition amid the rubble in the junkshop are insuciently

elaborated to make the adaptation a relevant reconceptualisation. This is all the more

surprising since, compared to Oleanna,American Bualo lacked the benets o nearly two

decades o artistic maturation and in 1975 had already been criticised or being toolong (see St. Edmund 1975). Still, length matters much, say in Don and Teachs circu-

itous argument about the authority o a numismatic book, which carries enough evoc-

ative potential conceptually to rame some o Mamets views on adapting his own

stage hit:

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Teach You got to have a eeling or your subject.

Don The book can give you that.

Teach This is what Im sayingto you. One thing. Makes all the dierence in the world.

Don What?

Teach Knowing what the uck youre talking about. And its so rare, Don. So rare. What

do you think a 1929 S Lincoln-head penny with the wheat on the back is worth?

Don starts to speak.

Teach Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! We got to know what condition were talking about.

Don (pause) Okay. What condition?

Teach Any o em. You tell me.

Don Well, pick one.

Teach Okay, Im going to pick an easy one. Excellent condition 1929 S.

Don Its worth. . . aboutthirty-six dollars.

Teach No.

Don (More?)

Teach Well, guess.

Don Just tell me is it more or less.

Teach What do you think?

Don More.

Teach No.

Don Okay, its worth, I gotta say. . . eighteen sixty.

Teach No.

Don Then I give up.

Teach Twenty ucking cents.

Don Youre ulla shit.

Teach My mothers grave.

Don Give me that ucking book. (Business.) Go beat that.

Teach This is what Im saying, Don, you got to know what youre talking about.

Don You wanna take the book?

Teach Naaa,uckthe book. What am I going to do, lea through the book or hours on

end? The important thing is to have the idea.

(Mamet 1975: 197198original emphases)

The authoritative text provides a basis or comparison. Unortunately, in the case o the

transposition the added value is commensurate to Teachs Twenty ucking cents,

unless o course Homan was right to argue that this lm, like Volker Schlndor s

no-rills teleplay o Arthur MillersDeath o a Salesman (1985) in which he played Willy

Loman, served as a record or posterity (Strauss 1996), a canned version o a

canonised theatre play.

Although reductive, Homans argument could very well apply to Mamets adaptive

authorship as a whole, were it not or similar exercises such as Lakeboatand Edmond.Both lms again are based on an ostensibly aithul screenplay, though more so in the

sense o a deconstruction ollowed by minute reconstruction through reconceptualisa-

tion. All low-budget pictures, the dierences in creative input are nonetheless vast. Dis-

regarding the rousing counterexample o Foleys Glengarry Glen Rossand, by extension,

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Malles Vanya on 42ndStreet, it would seem that Mamet had devised his own hierarchy o

canonical plays, in which the highest degree o textual delity is directly proportionate

to the works perceived status. Always a pragmatist, his disposition was likely more con-

structive than budgets oten permitted. Instead o adding anything, the adaptations o

OleannaandAmerican Bualo rather narrowed the plays interpretative range, whereas his

greatest theatrical success was delicately honed to be subtly opened up. Then again,

Oleanna, in the words o male lead W. H. Macy, was a little lm (quoted in Tzioumakis

2008) and admittedly a record or posterity as the plays third Mamet Maa (Nadel

2008: 19) production.

Just as adaptations are ormed through a matrix o poly-systemic constitutive orces,

texts, and intertexts, so, too, is the writer o the transmedial screenplay dependent on

the collaborative context in which it is to be produced. Ricky Roma, the top salesman

rom Glengarry Glen Rossalready knew as much when he asserted that All train compart-

ments smell vaguely o shit. It gets so you dont mind it. Thats the worst thing that I

can coness (Mamet 1983: 26). An adaptive artist himsel, Mamet understands that

aesthetic purity ts neither the businesses o selling real estate nor that o screenplays.

That, in other words, process-based perspectives prove more constructive than a priori

postures. Either way, when it comes to transposing his own aesthetic vision to another

medium Mamet is ar less ruthlessly creative than Roma in exploiting its expressive

possibilities. In talking about CorrentesAmerican Bualo, Dustin Homan recalled that

A lm script is basically an amorphous blueprint or a director to create rom (Strauss

1996). Systemically inchoate indeed, it oers nonetheless a conceptual basis. Ater

Oleanna, Mamet never directed another adaptation o his own work, though he neverstopped exploring the transmedial potential o his pieces across various ormats. There-

ore, the shadow oAbout Last Nightstill looms large over Mamets adaptive practice and

the theoretical tradition alike. David Mamets curiosity and eagerness to learn to this

day remain untempered, yet the integrity o each work to him clearly remains nonne-

gotiable. Perhaps, independent rom one another, these in-house adaptations constitute

a conceptually less interesting part o his work. The negotiation processes that shaped

them, however, transcend the comparison.

NOTes1 Noel Baker, adaptive screenwriter o Hard Core Logo (1996director Bruce McDonald), drew a similar

conclusion in his Hard Core Road Show: A Screenwriters Diary (1997): The contract lets you know where you

the writer stand in brutally rank legal language. You can be red at any time. You are powerless and or

the most part anonymous, unless you also happen to direct, produce, and/or act. Your credit can be taken

away rom you. Once your work is bought, its like a house youve designed and sold. The new owners can

do whatever they want to it, add mock-Tudor beams, Disneyland castle turrets, plastic ountains, pink

famingos, garden gnomes, things that satisy desires and contingencies that have nothing to do with you

and your original intent or your material (15).2 Three versions o Postman preceded Raelsons neo-noir remake, that is, Le dernier tournant(Pierre Chenal,

1939), Ossessione(Luchino Visconti, 1942), and The Postman Always Rings Twice(Tay Garnett, 1946).3 That is, here the analogical recurrence o semantic units across dierent semiotic levels or texts (see

Helbo 2002: e5).4 The connection extends all the way into the present since the American Repertory Theatre, which has

premiered many o Mamets plays, operates an exchange programme with the Moscow Art Theatre; see

the American Repertory Theaters website www.americanrepertorytheater.org.

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5 Mamet later also adapted Chekhovs The Three Sisters, which was rst produced by the Atlantic Theatre

Company in 1990 (director William H. Macy).6 To Chiel Kattenbelt, the process o theatricalisation derives its energy (tension) and dynamics rom the

continuously changing relationships between the spatial and temporal components, o which the theatre,

as a transitory phenomenon, consists (32).7 Philip French convincingly related this added characters name to the English poet William Blake (1757

1827), who was the author o The Marriage o Heaven and Hell(1790), a prose work that reverses normal

ideas and presents Satan as an angel (French 181), just like Blake in the lm version says he has come rom

downtown [. . .] on a mission o mercy.8 As Murphy species, Oleanna was a nineteenth-century utopian community ounded by the Norwegian

violinist Ole Bull and his wie Anna: thus Oleanna. This agricultural community ailed because the land

it had bought was rocky and inertile, and the settlers had to return to Norway (124).9 Alain Piette moreover demonstrated that a second epigraph to the play, a quotation rom Samuel Butlers

The Way o All Flesh(1903), directly links Oleanna to the anti-utopian and catastrophic currents o late

Nineteenth and Twentieth Century western literature, in which the idyllic communities ounded on the

best intentions o equality and raternity become hellish dictatorial anti-utopian societies negating all basicindividual reedoms (185) through the analogy with the oppressive atmosphere o academic political

correctness depicted here in Mamets work.10 This is an impression Mamet himsel created by labelling the lm in the nal credits as Originally pro-

duced on the stage by The Back Bay Theatre Company in Association with the American Repertory

Theatre and Originally produced on the New York stage.11 See in particular The Spanish Prisoner(1997), The Winslow Boy (1998), and Heist(2001).12 See also the soundtrack o quasi-hymnal songs with titles such as Long Ago and Far Away, Hail to the

Men o Merit, and Brie College Days, all written by David Mamet and sung by Rebecca Pidgeon.

reFereNCesAbout Last Night. Dir. Edward Zwick. Writ. Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue. Per. Rob Lowe, DemiMoore, and James Belushi. USA. 1986.

American Bualo. Dir. Michael Corrente. Writ. David Mamet. Per. Dennis Franz, Dustin Homan, and

Sean Nelson. USA, 1996.

Baker, Noel. Hard Core Road Show: A Screenwriters Diary. Toronto: Anansi, 1997.

Barnes, Clive. Mamets Glengarry: A Play to See and Cherish.New York Post7 Mar. 1984: B15.

Begley, Varun. On Adaptation: David Mamet and Hollywood. Essays in Theatre/Etudes Thtrales16.2

(1998): 16576.

Billington, Michael. Review o Glengarry Glen Ross.Guardian 22 Sept. 1983: 15.

Boozer, Jack. The Screenplay and Authorship in Adaptation. Authorship in Film Adaptation. Ed. Jack

Boozer. Austin, TX: U o Texas Press, 2008. 130.Bragg, Melvyn. The South Bank Show. 1974.David Mamet in Conversation. Ed. Leslie Kane. Ann Arbor,

MI: U Michigan Press, 2001. 14356.

Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. 1934. London: Pan, 1981.

Carroll, Dennis.David Mamet. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1987.

.The Recent Mamet Films: Business Versus Communion.David Mamet: A Casebook. Ed. Leslie Kane.

New York: Garland, 1992: 17589.

Casetti, Francesco. Adaptations and Mis-adaptations: Film, Literature, and Social Discourses.A Companion

to Literature and Film Ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Trans., Alessandra Raengo. Oxord:

Blackwell, 2004: 8191.

Cattrysse, Patrick. Media Translation: Plea or an Interdisciplinary Approach. Versus: Quaderni di studi

semiotici8587 (2000): 25169.

Chekhov, Anton. Uncle Vanya. 1898. The Major Plays (Ivanov, The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters,

The Cherry Orchard). Trans., Ann Dunigen and Foreword Robert Brustein. New York: Signet, 1964:

171231.

Corliss, Richard. The Hollywood Screenwriters. New York: Avon, 1970.

Ebert, Roger. Al Pacino Among Lost o Glengarry. Chicago Sun-Times27 Sept. 1992.

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.On Oleanna: The Plays the ThingFilm Cant Cut It. Chicago Sun-Times. 4 Nov. 1994.

Elliott, Kamilla. Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

French, Philip. David Mamet and Film. The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. Ed. C. W. E Bigsby.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004: 17193.

Glengarry Glen Ross. Dir. James Foley. Writ. David Mamet. Per. Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, JackLemmon, Al Pacino, Jonathan Pryce, and Kevin Spacey. USA. 1992.

Helbo, Andr. A propos de la traduction intersmiotique: La scne, le lm.Degrs112 (2002): e19.

. Signes du spectacle: Des arts vivants aux mdias. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang, 2006.

Holden, Stephen. Rasto Rizzos Long-Lost Son.New York Times13 Sept. 1996.

Homicide. Dir. and Writ. David Mamet. Per. Vincent Guastaero, William H. Macy, and Joe Mantegna.

USA. 1991.

Hudgins, Christopher C. By Indirections Find Directions Out: Uninfected Cuts, Narrative Structure,

and Thematic Statement in the Film Version o Glengarry Glen Ross.David Mamets Glengarry Glen Ross:

Text and Perormance. Ed. Leslie Kane. New York: Garland, 1996: 1945.

Hutcheon, Linda.A Theory o Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Kattenbelt, Chiel. Theatre as the Art o the Perormer and the Stage o Intermediality. Intermediality inTheatre and Perormance. Ed. Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006: 2939.

Kempley, Rita. Mamets Oleanna: A Stagy Fright. Washington Post11 Nov. 1994.

Leitch, Thomas. Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory. Criticism, 45.2 (2003): 14971.

Linson, Art.A Pound o Flesh: Producing Movies in Hollywood. 1993. New York: Avon, 1995.

Mamet, David. American Bualo. 1975. Plays: 1 (Duck Variations; Sexual Perversity in Chicago; Squirrels; American

Bualo; The Water Engine; Mr Happiness). London: Methuen Drama, 1996: 147257.

.Glengarry Glen Ross. 1983. Plays: 3 (Glengarry Glen Ross; Prairie du Chien; The Shawl; Speed-the-Plow) .

London: Methuen Drama, 1996. 166.

.Make-Believe Town: Essays and Rememberances. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1996.

.Notes on The Cherry Orchard.The Cherry Orchard. New York: Grove, 1985: viixv.

.Oleanna. 1992. Plays: 4 (Oleanna; The Cryptogram; The Old Neighborhood). London: MethuenDrama, 2001: 152.

.Some Freaks. 1989. A Whores Proession: Notes and Essays. London: Faber and Faber, 1994.

225339.

. Uncle Vanya. New York: Grove, 1988.

Mohr, Hans-Ulrich. The Implied 3-Acter: Glengarry Glen RossThe Drama and the Screenplay. David

Mamet Conerence, Brussels, 25 Apr. 2008.

Murphy, Brenda. Oleanna: Language and Power. The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. Ed. C. W. E.

Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004: 12437.

Nadel, Ira B.David Mamet: A Lie in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

. The Playwright as Director: Pinters Oleanna. The Pinter Review. 2002: 1218.

Naremore, James. Introduction. Film Adaptation. Ed. James Naremore. London: Athlone, 2000: 118.Oleanna. Dir. and writ. David Mamet. Per. Deborah Eisenstadt and William H. Macy. USA. 1994.

Palmer, R. Barton. The Sociological Turn o Adaptation Studies: The Example o Film Noir.A Companion

to Literature and Film. Ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Trans., Alessandra Raengo. Oxord:

Blackwell, 2004: 25877.

Piette, Alain. The Devils Advocate: David Mamets Oleanna and Political Correctness. Staging Dierence:

Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama. Ed. Marc Mauort. New York: Peter Lang, 1995: 17387.

Porno, Robert G. Whatever Happened to the Film Noir? The Postman Always Rings Twice(19461981).

Literature/Film Quarterly, 13.2 (1985): 10211.

Powers, William F. Pacino, Mamet, and. . . ZupnikWho? The Local Real Estate Mogul Behind

Glengarry. Washington Post. 4 Oct. 1992.

Reed, Barry. The Verdict. 1980. London: Granada, 1982.Stam, Robert. Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics o Adaptation. Film Adaptation. (2000). 5476.

. Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art o Adaptation. Oxord: Blackwell, 2005.

St. Edmund, Bury. Like a Play, Only Longer. Chicago Reader24 Oct. 1975.

Strauss, Bob. American Dream: Dustin Homan, Dennis Franz Talk About the Work That Has Taken

Them to Stardom, then Back to Their Roots. Los Angeles Daily News12 Sept. 1996.

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The Postman Always Rings Twice. Dir. Tay Garnett. Writ. Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch. Per. John

Gareld, Cecil Kellaway, and Lana Turner. USA. 1946.

The Postman Always Rings Twice. Dir. Bob Raelson. Writ. David Mamet. Per. John Colicos, Jessica Lange,

and Jack Nicholson. USA. 1981.

The Untouchables. Dir. Brian DePalma. Writ. David Mamet. Per. Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Robert DeNiro, Billy Drago, and Andy Garcia. USA. 1986.

The Verdict. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Writ. David Mamet. Per. James Mason, Paul Newman, and Charlotte

Rampling. USA. 1982.

Tzioumakis, Yannis. AdaptingOleannaor the Screen: Film Adaptation and the Institutional Apparatus o

American Independent Cinema. David Mamet Conerence, Brussels, 24 April 2008.

Vanya on 42nd Street. Dir. Louis Malle. Writ. David Mamet. Per. Phoebe Brand, Andr Gregory, Julianne

Moore, and Wallace Shawn. USA. 1994.

Weinraub, Bernard. The Glengarry Math: Add Money and Stars, Then Subtract Ego. New York Times

12 Oct. 1991.

Were No Angels. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Writ. Ranald McDougall. Per. Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and

Peter Ustinov. USA. 1955.Were No Angels. Dir. Neil Jordan. Writ. David Mamet. Per. Robert De Niro, Demi Moore, and Sean Penn.

USA. 1989.

Williams, Albert. Mahoney Finds Friend in Vanya. Chicago Sun-Times. 29 Apr. 1990.

Williams, Tony. Mamets Postman. Creative Screenwriting, 5.6 (1998): 359.

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adaptive collaboration, collaborative adaptation filming the mamet canon

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