Content area
Full Text
"we find that the best way to keep a secret is Don't Tell Nobody. . ."
(The Spanish Prisoner 8)
Sitting down with David Mamet at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for a 1997 interview, columnist John Lahr noted a World War II poster that read: "Loose Talk Can Cost Lives! Keep It Under Your Stetson" (Lahr 70). More than an object of memorabilia, this practical reminder of wartime conduct is a symbol of Mamet's writing style. From con men to corporate espionage, the World War II motto of "keeping your mouth shut" can be found in a number of Mamet's fictional worlds. Similar to his tightlipped characters, Mamet's writing, or absence of, with its frequent use of ellipses, profanities, and indefinite articles, leaves much to the readers' imaginations and has made Mamet one of the foremost dramatists of the twentieth century.
In addition to the usual "Mametspeak," Mamet's most acclaimed works include a "MacGuffin." Mamet sees the MacGuffin as "that thing which the hew is chasing. The secret documents . . . the great seal of the republic of blah-blah-blah . . . the delivery of the secret message. . . . We, the audience, never really know what it is" (Mamet, Directing 102-03). Three decades earlier, Alfred Hitchcock had popularized the MacGuffin in his films and now Mamet was grooming himself to follow in those footsteps. Hitchcock established the ideal MacGuffin and, in so doing, set the standard for its use. Beginning with American Buffalo (AB) and proceeding to Glengarry Glen Ross (GGR), and finally The Spanish Prisoner (SP), Mamet's storytelling relies increasingly on Hitchcock's MacGuffin but less on his rules.
As a literary device, the MacGuffin predates Hitchcock. Rudyard Kipling first used it in his writing, but Hitchcock elaborated on the technique and made it a staple of his films. During a rare and comprehensive interview, Hitchcock explained what the MacGuffin meant:
It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says,
"What's that package up there in the baggage rack?"
And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin."
The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?"
"Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
The first mans...