I know they say you can find anything and everything on the internet, but that's not true, and it's not true in a lot of ways, and I was just reminded on one of the ways it isn't true just now, as I searched in vain for a print morsel or even the TV interview clip in question, to no avail. In any event, I'll just have to recollect it and you'll have to take my word for it, unless one of you can actually FIND the citation which would be awesome. In any event, what I was recollecting was a television interview, which perhaps aired on Entertainment Tonight or something like it, depicting the then-25-year-old Demi Moore attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention (the self-same event at which Moore colleague Rob Lowe had that whole sex-tape thing happening) and offering up her views on what was wrong with the system. And her laying out, rather passionately, this complaint about how people should be able to check boxes on their tax returns to specify what they wanted their money, that is, the tax revenues collected by the U.S. Treasury, to be spent on. Because, as Demi astutely pointed out, some people might object to their money being spent on evil things like bombs and stuff, and those people ought to be allowed to SAY NO to that, on account of their consciences and whatnot. This argument clearly was not all that thoroughly thought-out, policy-ramification-wise, and clearly doesn't really "get" the whole concept of "render unto Caesar," which concept one is of course free to mentally reject but which ought to at least be cited as some sort of precedent before advancing any kind of proposition involving taxation.
I thought about Moore's entirely earnest complaint on my way today to the public pool in my neighborhood, which opened on Wednesday and will stay open until Labor Day, and could conceivably stay open later, but won't, because budgets, which are reliant on tax revenues, aren't sufficient to keep it going past then. And the pool, at the Red hook Rec Center, is a honey; huge, clean, and...well, what more do you need besides huge and clean? Yeah, the locker room could use a sprucing up, but whatever. I thought of Moore and I concurrently thought of David Mamet, whose recent book The Secret Knowledge describes a political conversion during which—and here I CAN give the exact words, as the book's been getting a good amount of attention—he made the galvanic personal discovery that...wait for it..." I not only hated every wasted hard-earned cent I spent in taxes, but the trauma and misery they produced..."
Well, let's cut the guy some slack, and allow that he is describing his direct personal experience. It is not the experience of a particularly mature, or wise, or, as it happens, particularly smart person, but there you have it. And still: Has David Mamet never been to a public library, or a municipal pool? I imagine he's likely to have done the former at least once. So when he did, did he think, "my tax dollars at work, and I feel pretty good about it?" Also, has no one told him about tax dollars and the wonderful part they play in U.S. aid to Israel? If not, will doing so cause a matter-meets-anti-matter explosion to take place in what's left of Mamet's brain?
It occurs to me that in my making a mental collage of these two quotes, I was being a little unfair; even without allowing for Moore's naivete and inability to construct a coherent policy plank out of what is after all only a feeling about what is fair and what is right, her dumb proposal comes from an altogether better place than Mamet's petulant complaint does. And if you're wondering why I thought of Demi and David together in the first place, just remember...
...About Last Night.
I can't wait for the David Mamet/Dennis Miller conversation about how they saw the Light of the Right.
Posted by: Terry McCarty | July 04, 2011 at 11:54 PM
Re "the dopey final fifth of Redbelt"--I believe the climax was Mamet's homage to Buster Keaton's outside-the-ring capper to BATTLING BUTLER.
Posted by: Terry McCarty | July 05, 2011 at 12:52 AM
"I can't wait for the David Mamet/Dennis Miller conversation about how they saw the Light of the Right."
Frank Miller's comicbook-style transformation from libertarian Japanophile to conscription-advocating NeoCon makes it a fanatic, fearsome threesome!
Posted by: Oliver_C | July 05, 2011 at 04:39 AM
Rebecca Pidgeon is also a singer-songwriter with a new album about to appear. Following is the final paragraph of the news section of her site: "A success in both film and music, Pidgeon recently drew rave reviews in the much-lauded movie Red, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman."
Posted by: Michael Adams | July 05, 2011 at 12:44 PM
I've been posting this passage far too much on the Net -- I first read it in one of Mamet's essay collections in the 80s -- but I think of it every time I hear that Mamet claims he used to be a liberal (all-caps emphasis is mine):
“When we look at our large society today we see many problems—overcrowding, the risk of nuclear annihilation, the perversion of the work ethic, the disappearance of tradition, HOMOSEXUALITY, sexually transmitted diseases, divorce, the tenuousness of the economy—and we say ‘What bad luck that they are besetting us at once.’
“Even taken individually these occurrences seem incomprehensible. Taken as a whole the contemplation of them can surely induce terror. What is happening here and why have these things, coincidentally, beset us?”
Nice one, Dave. That said, I love The Edge (and was glad to see it spoken highly of in earlier comment threads), and am a big fan of Spartan and Glengarry Glen Ross.
I just watched two hours of Christian Marclay's wonderful The Clock at LACMA this weekend (highly recommended for all SCR readers in the L.A. area), and was embarrassed while watching Anthony Hopkins hand a watch to Elle McPherson that it wasn't until the Goldsmith music kicked in that I realized it was the last scene of The Edge.
My favorite bit of Mamet dickishness was when Ronin was about to be released, and one of Mamet's reps announced that he would be using a pseudonym, since he found it so unfair to have to share the screenplay credit with the guy who, you know, wrote the original screenplay. This way, of course, Mamet got to make a stand on "principle" while taking credit away from the original writer and keeping his share of the residuals. All class.
Posted by: Bettencourt | July 05, 2011 at 03:23 PM
Bettencourt:
In the 70s and early 80s, moral or other opposition to homosexuality was not a left-liberal litmus test. Indeed the classic-Marxist view of homosexuality (that it was leisure-class decadence) could be seen in films by such euro-Commies as Angelopoulos, Bertolucci and Visconti.
Posted by: Victor Morton | July 06, 2011 at 05:16 PM
It was Justine Bateman, not Demi Moore. Spy magazine had the exact quote.
Posted by: Account Deleted | July 10, 2011 at 08:09 PM
"The "virtues" of Whittaker Chambers elude me. There is no virute among vengeful closet queens -- and that includes the object of his affection Alger Hiss."
I guess I expect a certain level of hostility aimed at any "member of the gang" who commits the unforgivable effrontery of going over to the other side as Mamet has, but David E's comment above is utter nonsense. Chambers doesn't need my defense, but it just pisses me off to read such crap.
Posted by: DBrooks | July 10, 2011 at 10:48 PM
Hey, I'm a David E. fan, but I don't take responsibility for his pronouncements. My perspective on Whittaker Chambers is not his.
As for "member of the gang," holy shit, that's just dumb.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | July 11, 2011 at 06:54 AM