Mamet Talk.(The Talk of the Town)(David Mamet )(Interview)

The playwright and screenwriter David Mamet was in town recently to talk about his new film, "Redbelt." He sat patiently for an interview on a white wire chair in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, one of his favorite haunts. He wore orange-rimmed glasses, a black beret over his crewcut, bluejeans, and spotless tan suede cowboy boots. Originally from Chicago, he lived in Vermont for about ten years, and then moved to Santa Monica, California, where he has lived for the past six, with his wife, the actress Rebecca Pidgeon, and four children. He likes taking long walks. And he can work wherever he goes, writing in longhand in the Clairefontaine spiral notebooks, large size, that he prefers.

"I hate the computer," he said. "I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail. I love working on a typewriter, the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too. I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write." So, sitting in the wire chair, he took possession of the interview and wrote it up himself, in his Clairefontaine notebook. This is it, along with the title he gave it:

Afternoon with a Playwright

The interviewer asked, "How long have you been in town and what have you done?" And he said that he'd got in the night before and he had been talking to the press.

"How do you like talking to the press?" the interviewer asked.

"Well," he said, "they always ask me the same four questions: What inspired you to do this film? How do you know if a project is to be a play or a movie? Where do you get your ideas? Which of your works do you like best? Once when they asked, 'Where do you get your ideas?' I replied, 'I think of them.' You know, I believe that once they asked Eleanora Duse, 'Who are you?' and she said, 'I am nobody.' Which is rather how I feel."

He gestured at a Henry Moore. "I love this sculpture," he said. "My nine-year-old son became enamored of postwar British ...