Authors: David Mamet
November (9 page)
BERNSTEIN:
Oh, gosh …
CHARLES:
Bernstein …
(
Pause
.)
BERNSTEIN:
Mister President …
CHARLES:
Bernstein, don’t die …
BERNSTEIN:
Mister President … My partner …
CHARLES:
Yes, Bernstein, yes.
BERNSTEIN:
My partner and I.
CHARLES:
Yes.
BERNSTEIN:
We …
CHARLES:
Bernstein …
BERNSTEIN:
We were going to vote for you.
(
She dies. A pause
.)
CHARLES:
(
To
DWIGHT GRACKLE
) You sonofabitch.
YOU JUST COST ME TWO VOTES!!!
DWIGHT GRACKLE:
Oh, jeez.
CHARLES:
What have you done? With your warlike impulses.
DWIGHT GRACKLE:
I’m just that sorry …
CHARLES:
Everyone’s about to die from Bird Flu, awaiting some word of consolation, from their President, and my speechwriter’s dead.
ARCHER:
(
Pause
) Hey, life goes on …
CHARLES:
She took a poison dart for me.
ARCHER:
… she’s a true patriot.
(
The phone rings
.
ARCHER
answers the phone
.)
CHARLES:
(
To self
) She gave up her life for her country …
ARCHER:
(
To phone
) What?
CHARLES:
Just like the Hist’ry books. Wow.
ARCHER:
(
Pause
) What? Say that again, please. Thank you. (
Pause
) The turkeys
aren’t
dead.
CHARLES:
What …?
ARCHER:
I beg your pardon, they
are
dead, but they didn’t die of Bird Flu.
CHARLES:
They’re “dead,” but they didn’t die of Bird Flu?
ARCHER:
No.
CHARLES:
What did they die of?
ARCHER:
They exploded.
CHARLES:
They “exploded”?
ARCHER:
The TV lights were too hot.
CHARLES:
Yes …
ARCHER:
And they’re all over the walls. They blew up.
CHARLES:
But it’s
not
Bird Flu?
ARCHER:
Wait wait wait wait
wait
: if it
were
Bird Flu, the voters would have to stay home. And you win.
CHARLES:
… but it’s
not
Bird Flu.
ARCHER:
No. The lights or something were too hot, and they expanded. (
To phone
) Yep. Let’s go with “Bird Flu …”
BERNSTEIN:
… but then people will be frightened.
ARCHER:
They’re gonna do just fine. Excuse me, why are you alive …?
CHARLES:
Bernstein …?
BERNSTEIN:
Sir?
CHARLES:
Why are you alive.
DWIGHT GRACKLE:
(
Reflectively
)… the poison has never failed.
CHARLES:
… why …?
DWIGHT GRACKLE:
(
Similarly
) How has the white woman survived?
ARCHER:
Bernstein? How have you survived?
BERNSTEIN:
Uh, the dart struck my amulet.
(
CHARLES
examines
BERNSTEIN.
)
CHARLES:
The dart has struck her amulet. The Chinese amulet has saved her life.
(
The phone rings
.)
ARCHER:
Yes.
CHARLES:
(
To self
)
Huh
…
ARCHER:
It’s the Secret Service, they’re back from their coffee break …
CHARLES:
The Chinese amulet signifying “love” has saved her life …
(
Pause
.)
ARCHER:
… and “are you okay”???
CHARLES:
Bernstein, you saved my life.
BERNSTEIN:
I can’t tell you how happy I am, Sir, to serve.
CHARLES:
I betrayed you, and yet, you risked your life for me.
ARCHER:
You had your life saved by a lesbian. Great. “In the midst of Bird Flu …”
CHARLES:
You risked your life for me, why?
BERNSTEIN:
Sir, you’re the President.
CHARLES:
I…
BERNSTEIN:
The people voted for you.
CHARLES:
They were mistaken.
BERNSTEIN:
That’s their right.
CHARLES:
Bernstein,
you
know who I am—I’m just some guy in a suit.
BERNSTEIN:
Sir, with respect? So were all the other guys who sat here.
CHARLES:
What? George
Washington?
BERNSTEIN:
Guy in a suit.
CHARLES:
Abraham Lincoln?
BERNSTEIN:
Guy in a suit.
CHARLES:
Bernstein, Lincoln freed the slaves.
I
can’t free the slaves.
BERNSTEIN:
You could marry me and my partner. (
Pause
) It would be your legacy.
CHARLES:
… my legacy …
ARCHER:
Chucky …
CHARLES:
(
Holds up a hand for quiet. Pause
) I always
felt
that I’d do something memorable—I just assumed it’d be getting impeached. Huh. (
Pause
) “My legacy—” (
Pause
) Bernstein—wash your face—you’re getting married.
ARCHER:
It’s not legal.
CHARLES:
Let the next guy figure it out.
ARCHER:
It’ll cost you the election.
CHARLES:
Damn job’s a pain in the ass. Too much stress. Too little opportunity for theft. I’m broke, I’m tired, and I’m going home.
BERNSTEIN:
… what will you
do
…?
CHARLES:
I’ll have Thanksgiving at the kitchen table, Bernstein. I’ll sit out on my front porch, and I’ll watch the sun go down … on a life of Public Service.
BERNSTEIN:
Sir, may I kiss you …?
CHARLES:
In the Oval Office …? Get the fuck out of here.
(
BERNSTEIN
kisses
CHARLES
.)
CHARLES:
Bernstein. Come on. I’m giving you away.
ARCHER:
(
re:
DWIGHT GRACKLE
) What about the Indian?
(
Pause
.)
CHARLES:
Oh, yes:
Dwight?
United for an instant in this accident called “time,” our paths converged. Now we must part, each to his own fate. I, a failed politician, am dismissed to poverty, you, an assassin, go to torture and death. Farewell.
DWIGHT GRACKLE:
Sir? Wyntcha just
pardon
me, give me Nantucket Island, you ’n’ me’ll build a casino. (
Pause
)
CHARLES:
Jesus
I love this country.
D
AVID
M
AMET
BOSTON MARRIAGE
In this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing room, Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming “women of fashion” who live together on the fringes of society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a young girl and wants to enlist the jealous Anna’s help for an assignation. As the two women exchange barbs, Claire’s inamorata arrives and sets off a crisis that puts both women’s futures at risk.
Drama/978-0-375-70665-3
THE CABIN
Reminiscence and Diversions
The pieces in
The Cabin
are about places and things: the suburbs of Chicago, where as a boy David Mamet helplessly watched his stepfather terrorize his sister; New York City, where as a young man he had to eat his way through a mountain of fried matzoh to earn a night of sexual bliss. They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene—and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret.
Memoir/Essays/978-0-679-74720-8
THE CRYPTOGRAM
The Cryptogram
is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing—the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers. On a night in 1959 a boy is waiting to go on a camping trip with his father. A family friend is trying to entertain them—or perhaps distract them. Because in the dark corners of this domestic scene, there are rustlings that none of the players want to hear. And out of things as innocuous as a shattered teapot and a ripped blanket, Mamet re-creates a child’s terrifying discovery that the grown-ups are speaking in code, and that that code may never be breakable.
Drama/978-0-679-74653-9
OLEANNA
A male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a short time become participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between this somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X-ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse.
Drama/978-0-679-74536-5
THREE USES OF THE KNIFE
On the Nature and Purpose of Drama
With bracing directness, one of our greatest living playwrights addresses the questions: What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today’s weather to next year’s elections. With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare, Brecht, and Ibsen, Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. The result is an electrifying treatise on the playwright’s art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy.
Drama/978-0-375-70423-9
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