David Mamet

By Joel Stein

David Mamet wrote and directed the film State and Main, which opens Dec. 22.

Q. I had to sit in the corner for an entire year in physics because I was caught reading your plays. Do you feel guilty?

A. Not at all. I'm not going to say I expect any gratitude for being lifted from the curse of a scientific education, but if you wanted to express some, I'd certainly accept it.

Q. When you wrote captions for Oui, did you ever throw in the names of people you knew just to piss them off?

A. It never occurred to me. That job was too hard to me. I was looking at pictures of these gorgeous naked ladies all day long, and I was supposed to come up with fantasies about them. It took activity I enjoyed and turned it into homework.

Q. What are you going to say to your kids when they start to curse?

A. There's a time and a place for everything. If I were a gynecologist, it would be inappropriate for my kids to be thrusting their hands up people's skirts because their dad did it.

Q. In your movie, Sarah Jessica Parker plays an actress who refuses to take her top off, which she refuses to do in real life. Were you able to convince her of how dumb this rule is?

A. I think it's perfectly reasonable. The only problem was that whenever Sarah Jessica would take her clothes off, Philip Seymour Hoffman would put them on.

Q. Why are you wearing suspenders?

A. It's my homage to Eugene Pallette, because I knew you'd ask. Because there was no movie in which he did not wear suspenders.

Q. So you did it for me?

A. For you and Eugene Pallette, and Jolie in show-biz heaven--Al Jolson.

Q. But mostly for me?

A. Sure.

--By Joel Stein