Monday, March 25, 2013

More support for my theory that Mamet has lost it

In a strange coincidence I had recently read a recounting by Ronnie Spector of the day she left (escaped) Phil Spector, when I happened to see a poster for the new HBO Phil Spector show on a subway station wall. And I was appalled but not surprised to discover that David Mamet was behind the whole thing and he was presenting Spector as the good guy.

The NYMag's Vulture makes some interesting points:
Mamet has always had a thing for righteous macho martyrs — see Oleanna, about a professor whose pending tenure is scuttled when he is accused of sexual harassment by an ambitious young female student, and Hoffa, which compared the mobbed-up labor leader to Jesus and wasn’t remotely joking — but now that he’s entered a right-wing troll phase of his career, he’s cranked up the persecuted truth-teller affectation to the point where you can picture Mel Gibson talking him off a ledge. I’m pop-psychoanalyzing Mamet here not because I particularly enjoy it, but because Phil Spector’s tone and thesis are so out-of-nowhere weird that it doesn’t really make sense as anything but an example of an artist projecting himself onto another artist and saying, “I feel you, bro.” There are points in which Spector’s rococo monologues evoke Mamet’s editorial page rants and his books about creativity, cranky rambles in which he often comes across as one of those old rich guys who thinks that being an old rich guy makes him an expert in everything.
The "out-of-nowhere weird" characterization is another example of how critics of Mamet's recent work and political rants not only object to Mamet's conclusions - Phil Spector is innocent, Obama hates Israel - but their bafflement in how Mamet arrives at his conclusions. And the general consensus is that whatever Mamet is saying makes no sense.

This will only baffle you if you don't realize that Mamet has lost it, but nobody has yet been able to stop him from embarrassing himself by displaying evidence of his out-of-nowhere thought processes.

It's just a matter of time before it's revealed that Mamet has Alzheimers. Mark my words.

Vulture also pointed to a very interesting piece by a reporter who covered the Spector trials. Here's one of the points she makes about the out-of-nowhere bullshit promoted by David Mamet:
For those of you who didn't spend the better part of a year in a windowless courtroom with Spector, a quick refresher: On Feb. 3, 2003, Spector met a struggling actress named Lana Clarkson at the Sunset Strip club where she worked as a hostess. They repaired to his Alhambra mansion, where two hours later, she was shot in the mouth as she sat in a chair by the front door. 
After he was arrested on suspicion of murder, Spector claimed Clarkson killed herself. The first jury to hear the case deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of guilt. A second jury convicted him in 2009. 
In the film, we are told repeatedly and emphatically that there is no evidence Spector pulled the trigger. 
"They have no facts!" insists defense lawyer Linda Kenney Baden. It's as plain as Spector's white dinner jacket, the movie says. If he had shot her, we are informed again and again and again, the snowy fabric would be drenched in blood. 
In fact, there was blood on Spector's jacket: Tiny mist-like spots near the lapel that, according to expert testimony, put Spector no more than three feet from Clarkson's face when the gun went off. The same type of blood mist was found on the outside of Clarkson's wrist, an indication, experts said, that at the time of the gunshot, her hands were up in a defensive posture and not on the trigger. 
Then there's the chauffeur. Spector's driver testified that shortly after the gunshot, his boss walked out of the mansion holding a gun in his bloodied hand. "I think I killed somebody," he quoted Spector as saying. The film suggests that unethical police detectives forced the chauffeur to make this damning statement by threatening to charge him as an accessory.

There's no evidence of this, and Spector's lawyers never alleged it at trial. Likely because the driver told the first patrolman on the scene about Spector's comment and never varied in a subsequent recorded interview with detectives.
 
Five women testified, often through tears, that Spector had pulled guns on them when they tried to leave his house against his wishes. They were unshakable in their accounts of how alcohol and dashed romantic hopes turned an old-school gentleman into a monster. The movie rolls its eyes at them. Just common people looking for their 15 minutes, instead of treasuring their time with the genius.
Spector's defense claimed that Clarkson, 40, committed suicide because she was despondent over her prospects in Hollywood. The film ultimately embraces a second theory — that she accidentally shot herself while toying suggestively with the gun. 
What it doesn't mention is that Clarkson died with her purse strap on her shoulder. If that seems inconsequential to you, perhaps you are a man. Ladies, I ask you: Is shouldering a purse the gesture of a woman who intends to a) commit suicide; b) play a sex game; or c) leave? 
Well if you know Mamet's play OLEANNA, you'll understand Mamet's deep suspicion of women - bitches are out to destroy innocent men, by any means necessary, for no reason than they can.

Here's what Wikipedia says about Ronnie Spector (Bennett):
By her account, Phil kept Ronnie a near-prisoner and limited her opportunities to pursue her musical ambitions. In her autobiography, she said that he would force her to watch the film Citizen Kane to remind her she would be nothing without him. Spector's domineering attitude led to the dissolution of their marriage. Bennett was forbidden to speak to the Rolling Stones or tour with the Beatles, because Phil Spector feared that she would be unfaithful. 
Bennett claims Spector showed her a gold coffin with a glass top in his basement, promising to kill and display her if she left him. During Spector's reclusive period in the late 1960s, he reportedly kept his wife locked inside their mansion. She claimed he also hid her shoes to dissuade her from walking outside, and kept the house dark because he did not want anyone to see his balding head. Ronnie stated in her autobiography that she walked out of the house through the closed and locked rear sliding glass door, shoeless, shattering the glass as she left, and feet all cut up by the time she got to the gate. She never returned. Ronnie Spector filed for divorce in 1972. She wrote a book about her experiences, and said years later: "I can only say that when I left in the early 1970s, I knew that if I didn't leave at that time, I was going to die there."