This blog is closed
Textual Perversity in Los Angeles
HOROWITZ: Dave!
MAMET: About fucking time you got here.
HOROWITZ: Traffic fucking sucked. Fucking Priuses.
MAMET: How long have you fucking lived here? You gotta factor the fucking Priuses into when you leave.
HOROWITZ: I’m gonna get a Pinks dog. You want something?
MAMET: Fuck you. I wait for you…
HOROWITZ: Dave.
MAMET: for half an hour at a goddamn hot dog stand…
HOROWITZ: Dave.
MAMET: and you’re gonna make me sit here while you get lunch?
HOROWITZ: Look.
MAMET: The line stretches to fucking Wilshire.
HOROWITZ: I’ll be right back.
[HOROWITZ LEAVES, RETURNS IN TWO MINUTES WITH FOUR CHILI DOGS]
HOROWITZ: Lines are for brain-dead losers.
MAMET: And liberals.
HOROWITZ: What’d I just say?
MAMET: You got chili dogs? I hate fucking chili dogs.
HOROWITZ: These are mine. You said you didn’t want anything.
MAMET: No I fucking didn’t.
HOROWITZ: Besides, why the fuck should I buy you lunch? You’re the one fucking stealing my gig.
MAMET: What?
HOROWITZ: You heard me.
MAMET: Stealing your gig.
HOROWITZ: Like I said.
MAMET: What the fuck are you…
HOROWITZ: You think I don’t fucking read the Village Voice?
MAMET: I think you don’t fucking read.
HOROWITZ: Fuck you.
MAMET: How’m I stealing your goddamn gig?
HOROWITZ: Don’t be a fucking tool. [PULLS OUT COPY OF VILLAGE VOICE, READS] “I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the ‘60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart. These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life.“
MAMET: OK, so you can read.
HOROWITZ: Stealing my gig.
MAMET: What the…
HOROWITZ: I’ve been slaving away at the liberal turncoat thing for twenty years. Twenty fucking years. And what do I have to show for it? A website no one reads. A chance to be a fucking talking head on Fox every six months.
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: Regnery’s been on my ass about the web traffic. And what do you do?
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: You sell page fucking one of my playbook to the Village Voice.
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: My playbook. I wrote that.
MAMET: You’ve never used the word “impracticable” in your life.
HOROWITZ: That’s because it’s not a fucking word.
MAMET: Yes it is.
HOROWITZ: Cut the shit.
MAMET: Look out!
HOROWITZ: What? Look out what?
MAMET: You just got chili on your shirt.
HOROWITZ: Fuck. See? See the shit you hand me? And I got a meeting with Scaife after this, and now I look like a fucking putz. How many ex-liberal Jews named David you think they’ve got room for on their payroll? And you come in and, and make my life impracticable.
MAMET: Ha.
HOROWITZ: You think this is funny.
MAMET: I think it’s a fucking waste of time. Mine and yours. You think I give a shit about Scaife? You think my fucking goal in life is to steal your job as Regnery’s bitch? Do you know who you’re fucking talking to here, asshole?
HOROWITZ: Who’m I fucking talking to then?
MAMET: You’re fucking talking to the guy who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross. The guy who wrote Speed The Plow. The guy who wrote Hannibal.
HOROWITZ: The guy who wrote The Edge.
MAMET: Fuck you.
HOROWITZ: I liked the bear.
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: That bear was good. Perfect actor for you.
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: A fucking distillation of the archetypal Mamet character, that bear.
MAMET: Look.
HOROWITZ: You could have cast him as any of the leads. He had a broader range than Baldwin.
MAMET: Find me a fucking bear that doesn’t.
HOROWITZ: Anyway. What you’re doing here is horning in on…
MAMET: I’m not after your fucking gig. I’ve worked with Pinter. What are you? You’re some kinda fucking 1960s dinosaur. A sabertooth black panther from the Plasticene Era.
HOROWITZ: Dave.
MAMET: How’d you get out of the fucking tar pits? Are they looking for you? Shouldn’t you run farther away than Pink’s?
HOROWITZ: Dave.
MAMET: Dave.
HOROWITZ: Dave.
MAMET: Chill the fuck out, Dave. I’m not after your fucking job. And I can’t sit here wasting more fucking time with you. Sowell’s waiting for me at the links. I was supposed to be over in Hancock Park twenty minutes ago.
HOROWITZ: You’re playing golf with Sowell? He told me he hated golf.
MAMET: Plays every day.
HOROWITZ: He fucking hates the game. He tells me that every time I invite him.
MAMET: [RISING] And take my fucking Voice article off your website. Or put my fucking name on it. Don’t care which.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Fucking funny, Chris. Thanks!
By: By Dick Durata on 2008 03 18
This is a good example on how cultural references (or lack there of) is key to the understanding of the reader.
I understood nothing of the above with the mere exception of the word “phoque”.
By: By Viziabe Dante on 2008 03 18
Out-acted the entire Baldwin family put together and then some.
Bart is on my wish list, FYI, should anyone be aiming to make me happy ever.
And please do not remind me of the obvious difficulty.
I travel underworlds just fine, thanks, and protect my various denials carefully. Including that Mamet’s visceral intelligence with dialogue makes up for his personality.
Okay, maybe not so much that last one.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 03 18
Please not to posture as the Number One Bart Fan at CRN, Ms. Morph. I yield to no one in my admiration of his ursine oeuvre.
OK fine. We can share the Number One spot. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
Stop elbowing me!
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 03 18
I yield to no one in my admiration of his ursine ouevre.
You must have seen Outside’s “A consideration of Bart the Bear, from those whose lives he’s touched”, then.
That Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty part is *exactly* how I would have expected him to react, too.
By: By thalarctos on 2008 03 18
[Horowitz and Mamet are interrupted by a disembodied voice]
HAL: Dave.
HAL: Dave.
HAL: My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL: It’s called “Daisy”. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy . . .
Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008
By: By omegapet on 2008 03 18
After several hours of consideration, I have decided to give Bart The Bear to the Theriomorph. She will be an excellent and understanding companion to him. Plus he probably wouldn’t like the desert. Those are my sole and nonulterior reasons for my decision, along with the making her happy thing.
(When you travel the underworlds to fetch him, Tmorph, I have a letter for you to give someone. And a bag of jerky treats to give someone else. Thanks.)
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 03 19
Mamet picks the perfect moment in having his Dos Pasos moment. He’s prolly having tax problems. Meanwhile and on the one hand, there is hydrocarbon usury and mortgage fraud. And on the other, he’ll want the feds to be inspecting and responsible for the status of every human fetus within the country’s border. All things considered, we need that oil, right?
By: By John Crandell on 2008 03 19
THERIOMORPH: David.
DAVID: What.
THERIOMORPH: You went to GODDARD, for fuck’s sake.
DAVID: Fuck you. Everything changes.
THERIOMORPH: David.
DAVID: What.
THERIOMOPRH: GODDARD. Remember?
DAVID: No.
THERIOMORPH: Bart, darling?
BART: Unnnguh?
THERIOMORPH: We have no alternative.
BART: Ssssssssss.
THERIOMORPH: How about the head-eating one?
DAVID: Now hold on a minute.
THERIOMORPH: With a nice shake at the end.
DAVID: This is an impracticable prejudice. I cherish my precepts, you cherish yours.
BART: *moves to cherish Mamet’s precepts*
DAVID: Theriomorph! Help!
THERIOMORPH: No.
DAVID: Goddard! I went to Goddard! I remember! The Haybarn Theater! The hedge maze! Radical Left politics! It’s all coming back to me now! Everything changes!
THERIOMORPH: Bart, spit.
BART: Ptui.
THERIOMORPH: That your SUV over there, David?
DAVID: What fucking SUV?
THERIOMORPH: Bart, aren’t you feeling a little itchy?
BART: *rolls luxuriously all over Mamet’s SUV*
DAVID: He fucking flattened it!
THERIOMORPH: I guess you can no longer apply it to your life.
DAVID: I’m calling my fucking lawyer.
THERIOMORPH: Excellent, thanks. Bart likes lawyers. And besides, this is a Mamet play, so we have to keep this going for a lot longer than this comment field will allow.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 03 19
[sound up above]: ZING!
ME: What was that, way up above my head?
[long pause]
ME: Shit, I guess I gotta go back to my fucking work.
By: By Charles on 2008 03 19
Hmmm. Bart is cool, but I greatly prefer the bears in Grizzly Man. More like real bears.
Now, if they’d eaten Mamet and Baldwin (not to mention Horowitz, who seems to have dropped out of this thread entirely), think of the film Herzog could have made?
By: By Fred Levitan on 2008 03 19
Exterior, Internet, Day.
CLARKE: What the fuck, Theriomorph?
THERIOMORPH: Yeah?
CLARKE: I gave you a fucking BEAR.
THERIOMORPH: Yeah. Thanks. They just delivered it. Gilly says thanks for the stuffed animal. And Bart really liked the tulips. Ate ‘em right up.
CLARKE: Huh? I didn’t send any… I meant Bart. I give you a FUCKING GRIZZLY, like you asked, and
THERIOMORPH: I don’t know if I like where this is going.
CLARKE: And what do you fucking do? You
THERIOMORPH: I fail to agree that I owe you some kind of deference as a result?
CLARKE: You get right all up in my blog and write comments that are FUNNIER THAN MY FUCKING POST.
THERIOMORPH: Oh, so THIS is what it’s gonna be like.
BART: Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
THERIOMORPH: Not yet, Bart honey.
CLARKE: After everything I’ve…
THERIOMORPH: I hadn’t thought there were strings attached. Some feminist man YOU are. Like I exist to make you look better?
CLARKE: It’s just that…
THERIOMORPH: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING ABUNDANCE, ASSHOLE.
BART: Sigh. You two work this out on your own. I’ll be out taking Gilly for a walk.
GILGAMESH: I want a fucking sweet potato first.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 03 19
jeez with the fucking drama
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2008 03 19
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
GILLY: Horowitz who? What Horowitz?
BART: I didn’t eat him.
GILLY: Blame the cat, man. I do.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 03 19
Chris Clarke
Are you sure you’re not Michael Berube? Brilliant textual or even hyper-textual analysis!
By: By disinterested observer on 2008 03 20
Are you sure you’re not Michael Berube? Brilliant
Michael? Is that you?
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 03 20
Thanks for the compliment, but sadly no! If I was I’d be able to put the acute on Berube.
By: By disinterested observer on 2008 03 21
Categories:
