Still a fantastic writer and I have loved a number of his films (House of Games, Spanish Prisoner, Homicide, and as mentioned above, the underrated Redbelt). So hopefully he can get back to doing what he does best.

When I first saw this and Oleanna, I assumed it was irony that drove the drama, when actually this is simply what he believes — which is of course fine; he is free to say what he thinks, just as I\’m free to take it however I want. We are all — including the author of the play — the audience; and we are free to take home what we take home from it. I still love these plays, though I don\’t see them the way I believe Mamet himself sees them.

But as he\’s gotten older, he has lost more and more respect for his audience, I believe, and feels the need to make sure they understand his point; so, by necessity, his \’statements\’ become just that — uninterpretable, shallow, and incrementally less-clever conceits that undermine his natural skills. Compare the setup and execution of his excellent, haunting and ambiguous film \’Homicide,\’ to the by-the-numbers didacticism of his later \’Spartan.\’ Homicide is a challenging moral nightmare, whereas Spartan is a well fashioned episode of \’24.\’

So, only knowing the logline of his new project, I\’m sad to say that I expect the same slippage. If any artist needs to go through Von Trier\’s Five Obstructions process, it\’s Mamet; trying to practice art without challenging your own views is just chewing cud.

Yes that happens but only when affirmative action is not used as directed which is exactly what I was pointing out. If used correctly, as written, a white kid with better grades than an african american will get into that college. As for your quota system, that is also acknowledged by lawmakers. It\’s not exactly a quota but a percentage that must be met that is determined in the area in which your business/firm operates. Say you are in an area populated by nothing but white people (100% whites). Your business doesn\’t need to go out of their way to hire a black person, it can hire nothing but a group of white people. Say you are in an area split, (50% white, 50% black) it is determined then that you should be able to match that mixture found in your community. However, you can NOT match that percentage if you show that the applicants of the protected group that applied do not have the job specifications needed for said work.

There are still inherent problems, as you\’ve shown people have a fundamental misunderstanding of affirmative action and therefore use it incorrectly. If a situation which you described has occurred (a white person was denied acceptance into a college based solely on that college trying to meet a quota) that person could file a lawsuit. Cases like that are out there, and people have won those cases. (Actually they deal with the very issue you have brought up, college acceptance)

Where\’s the Cannes review for \”Drive\”?

DAMN, Davis, OKAY!

And anyway, affirmative action is not just when two people are exactly equal in skill/ability, it involves things like racial quotas imposed to attempt to force the world to look the way certain people think it should look. Public schools are very often shitty. Setting up special scholarships for inner-city black kids, promoting private and charter schools, etc, are all things that ought to be done to change that. Doesn\’t mean that a white kid shouldn\’t get in to a college when he has better grades than a black kid, just because there are more poor black kids in America.

I hope Mamet makes a good satire, not a stupid one, but if you\’re determined to hate the idea from the beginning there\’s not much I can do.

Yeah, probably not.