Introduction

David Mamet is not the first name that springs to mind when thinking about paradigmatic filmmakers from the American independent or ‘indie’ sectors, and his films have rarely been considered characteristic examples of filmmaking at the margins of Hollywood. As a matter of fact, the whole body of his work in American cinema has attracted very little attention from film scholars and to this date there have been only two book-length studies of his films; one dating back to 1993, when Mamet had made only three films, and one published in 2005, which once again focuses on his early films with only brief discussions of his extensive post-1997 filmography.

Interestingly, both these studies and the majority of critical work on Mamet's cinema have been undertaken by critics located outside the discipline of film studies, and associated more with disciplines like drama and literary studies. This is because Mamet's films constitute a relatively small part of a remarkable artistic output that also includes more than thirty plays, many volumes of collected essays, treatises on cinema and theatre, novels, poetry and a prime-time television show. Not surprisingly then, Mamet's cinema tends to be examined as part of this whole or, as is often the case, in conjunction with his plays, many of which have been adapted for the screen by Mamet himself.