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• "David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'"
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Playwright-director explains how he used his jujitsu training in his new film "Redbelt." (5:13)
 

Full Interview. (10:42)
 

Tavis: Pleased to welcome David Mamet to this program. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright is also a very successful screenwriter and director. His film projects include, of course, "The Untouchables," "Wag the Dog," and the film adaptation of his play, "Glengarry, Glen Ross."

His latest movie is called "Redbelt," which stars Tim Allen and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The film opens in select cities this weekend. Here now, a scene from "Redbelt."

[Clip]

Tavis: David Mamet, nice to have you here.

David Mamet: Thank you.

Tavis: It's good to meet you.

Mamet: It's great to be here.

Tavis: When I first saw the play, "Redbelt," or saw the movie, rather, saw what it was about and saw that David Mamet's name was connected to it, I did a double-take.

Mamet: Oh yeah?

Tavis: Yeah. When I did the back story on how you got interested, it made sense to me. But it just seemed a little - I was trying to juxtapose Mamet and jujitsu. It didn't make sense.

Mamet: Well, I moved out to L.A. about six years ago and I started training in jujitsu with this great teacher called Anato Magno (ph) in Santa Monica. And the guys who were training with me, there were a few women and mainly guys, were real, everyday fighters. That is, there were a lot of policemen, a lot of Special Forces, a lot of bouncers, a lot of stunt guys.

And not only did we train in the academy but we'd all go out and have lunch afterwards. So I thought, well, this is really interesting, it's kind of a cross-section of L.A. These guys and a ringer, me. So I wrote this movie about reaching out to L.A. through the martial arts community.

Tavis: I'm just trying to get inside your head here for a second. So you moved to L.A. some years ago, you start training for your own - whatever reasons.

Mamet: That's right, yeah.

Tavis: And you find yourself in the midst of this group that you've described to us. What about that says to David Mamet there's a movie here?

Mamet: Well, I got fascinated by the whole ethos of jujitsu, because as you get - they call it the old man's sport because the idea is the better you get, the less strength you want to use. So you want to use knowledge to combat strength. And I thought it was kind of - it's fascinating philosophically because most of us in our life, especially in show business, maybe in other business, but this is the only business I know anything about, there's a lot of strife involved.

You've got to deal with anger; you've got to deal with greed - in yourself. So the question is, how do you deal in a world with conflict, how do you deal with it most effectively? And so jujitsu has got that philosophical aspect to it.

Tavis: And for those who don't know what it is, I'll let you take a stab at explaining what jujitsu is, number one, and number two, I'm curious about the impact it's had on you over the last six years.

Mamet: Jujitsu is a form of martial arts. Comes out of - first originally came out of India. Jujitsu and yoga were the same thing. And so it's an understanding of biomechanics, the way the body moves.

So then it went down to Japan and it's rather different - the martial arts that most of us see in the movies are striking forms. Boxing is a striking form, karate, kung fu, they're forms of striking, using your elbows or your fists or your feet. But jujitsu's a wrestling form. That is, you want to grapple with the other guy and use your understanding of the way the body moves to subdue him.

Tavis: I'm fascinated now - the second part of that question, I'm fascinated now by what you shared earlier about what we have to deal with as human beings with anger and with greed and the list of things that many of us, certainly in this business, have to deal with, and how that has influenced, how it's helped David Mamet specifically for six years now.

Mamet: Sure. Well, for example, why oppose force to force? That's one of the things that Chiwetel's trying to teach his students over here. Someone's opposing force to you, why push back? Eventually, one of you's going to get tired. If it's you, it doesn't matter if you're bigger, stronger, blah, blah, blah. When your force goes away, you've just lost that fight. The weaker person can defeat you, so why oppose force to force, right?

Move it to the side. Someone's using force on you, whether physical force or intimidation or trying to make you angry or trying to put you down, move it to the side. Say, "Well, am I really hurt? Is that really doing anything to me, or can I just push it to the side?"

Tavis: In instances - if I can talk today - in instances where you can't do that, the option is what?

Mamet: Well, first thing is don't oppose force to force. What you want to do in jujitsu is move to the person to the side or grapple him in such a way that he's carrying your weight around. Rather than carrying his weight either physically or emotionally - if someone says, "You son of a bitch, how did you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" Why should I carry that around? That's just words. I'm going to wait until he exhausts himself and at some moment he's going to give me an opportunity to use my knowledge.

Tavis: Okay. So when you are David Mamet and you've got all this success behind you, and then six years ago you start - not that you weren't bright before then, but when you get exposed to this martial art form six years ago it changes you, it opens you up in what way? What's it do for you when you discover it six years ago? You're already successful, but how do you apply that?

Mamet: Well, I don't know, it's the only business I know, but in the arts you always learned something new; you're always getting humbled. Because you say, "I thought I knew that," or "I'm so successful I shouldn't have to go through that." Or, "I've had so many - I've written so many plays I shouldn't have to face that blank piece of paper."

So you're constantly getting faced with your own humanity, and so jujitsu - the one nice thing about getting older is you get to learn new stuff, because you get out of your own way. You're less and less afraid of being ridiculous (laughter) because you've just got so little time left.

Tavis: That's a great line. That should be in a play somewhere.

Mamet: Oh, thank you.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) I'm laughing because I wonder if that happens to you consistently, where you'll say something and you're like, "I should write that down right quick."

Mamet: Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah, like I say something to my wife, she says, "That's funny." I say, "You know, I do it for a living." (Laughter)

Tavis: All right, let me take you back to the beginning, then. How did David Mamet become a playwright? Before all the success, what drew you, how did you get pulled into this business?

Mamet: Well, as a child actor in Chicago, you know, eight, nine years old, my uncle was involved with a Chicago board of rabbis he put on television shows for them to air at 6:00 on Sunday morning. So we needed some Jewish kids to play Jewish kids, and so he said, "You - " my sister - "You and you, get in there."

And so we started doing that, and I started getting involved in community theater, and at Second City in the early days I was a busboy, so I would see all these great comics and I'd watch four shows a night for years and years.

Tavis: You were a busboy at Second City?

Mamet: Yeah, I was.

Tavis: Wow.

Mamet: I also played - they had a children's theater, so I also played the piano for the children's theater on the weekends. So they say, "Don't go into the theater, because if you do all you're ever going to have is fun." So I went in, and it was the only thing I was any good at, so I never wanted to go home.

Tavis: How did you become so proficient, though, at writing? There are a lot of people who want to write, to your point earlier. A lot of folk, a lot of us sit down and have blank paper staring back at us, but you've been able to break through that for some reason. Why and how?

Mamet: Well, there's two reasons. One is I actually have a talent for it, which is - it's God-given. It never worked as a gift and I didn't work it. But what I did work at is writing all the time, because as a very young kid I had my own theater company in Chicago with William H. Macy, and -

Tavis: Still your friend, yeah.

Mamet: Say what?

Tavis: Still your friend (unintelligible).

Mamet: Oh, yeah. And so we put on a play every week because we were all working at straight jobs, I was a cab driver, Macy was a bartender. And so we realized that the more money we could make from our theater company, the less we had to work at our straight jobs. So we put on a play every week and when you do that and your living depends on it, you either get good at it or get out of it.

Tavis: How do you process - I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day who, we've been together for a lot of years as friends, and he has been blessed to be rather successful and I've been blessed to do what I do. We were just in a conversation over dinner not long ago talking about how fortunate we are, and really just trying to - just looking back at this journey.

So when you and Macy get together, do you guys ever talk about that, how fortunate and what this journey's been like?

Mamet: That's all we talk about. That's all we talk about. That's all we talk about. I'll hang out at his house, he hangs out at mine. We were real poor together for a real long time.

Tavis: A bartender and a cab driver; don't get much more working class than that.

Mamet: Well, yeah, and I think all of us, we just had a - we got together, a friend of ours passed on so we all got together, guys who'd been working for 40 years, and we just looked at each other and can't believe we're still in the business, supporting our family, thank god.

Tavis: So because you are still in the business this many years later, are you finding it - you said earlier as you get older, you get out of your way. So I'm curious as to whether or not you're finding it easier or more difficult to come up with new, fresh, interesting stuff?

Mamet: No, I think that basically I don't have any impulse control, so that's what I do for a living. I sit down in the morning and I jot down these crazy, crazy ideas, and some of them become a movie, some of them become a play, some are going to the wastebasket. So I just do that for a living. And because you never know which one of them's going to work, I do a lot of them, because I'm always trying to think.

I think anybody who ever started off in show business, however long you've been there, however successful you've been, when you go by the supermarket, it says, "help wanted," you still look at that.

Tavis: Another great line. We should use that - add that to another play. I guess but as you sit at that desk in the morning, does it get easier or more difficult with age to come up with these ideas? I know it's all that you do, but -

Mamet: It's not the ideas that get more difficult, it's the structure. Because the more you work at it, the structure of drama is very, very demanding. You've got to make the audience wonder what happens next, and that never gets any easier. But the more you work at it, the more you see the great possibilities so you get harder on yourself, I think.

Tavis: Speaking of your work, has there ever been a better, more all-star cast than "Glengarry, Glen Ross?"

Mamet: That was pretty -

Tavis: That's a pretty amazing cast.

Mamet: That was a pretty great movie, yeah.

Tavis: I mean, the cast is just phenomenal.

Mamet: Oh yeah, the cast is outrageous.

Tavis: I was looking at it again the other day. It's just crazy. Everybody and their mother was in that movie. All these great actors, it was pretty amazing.

When you sit down - I'm so fascinated by persons like you who've achieved so much, and I'm always trying to get inside your head, as you can tell. When you sit at that desk and you start writing, do you - how do you know whether its play material or whether it's film material?

Mamet: That's a real good question, and I don't know the answer to it. It's just - it just seems to be what it is.

Tavis: When do you figure that out? Do you figure that out when you start writing or at the end?

Mamet: Yeah. No, I figure it out at the beginning.

Tavis: That this is a play, this is not a movie.

Mamet: Yeah.

Tavis: You still love it after all these years? I assume you do.

Mamet: I'm crazy about it. Looking for a place to the other day and a person was helping me get out - get this little office to write, and she said, "But there's no view." And I thought about it, I said, "I've been working in various offices all around the world for a million years. I've never opened the shades." (Laughter)

Tavis: Why start now, huh?

Mamet: Exactly.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you on the program.

Mamet: Thank you so much, Tavis.

Tavis: Congrats on the film and not that you need good luck, but all the best to you.

Mamet: Thank you.

Tavis: On that project. David Mamet.