What Can You Learn from David Mamet About Adding Subtext to Your

Script?

By Justin Morrow (No Film School)

Little-known indie filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once famously said,"Drama is

real life with all the boring parts cut out."

The fact is, in movies, a screenwriter's job is primarily to tell a story in

pictures. And in order to prove my point, I'm going to focus on one of the
most dialogue heavy films in recent memory, David Mamet's adaptation of
his 1984 play, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Glengarry Glen Ross.

An extension of this dictum should then be: in movies, as in all good

drama, no one says what they want, or, more charitably, they are at least as
prevaricating as the average Joe or Jane. Because, just like in life, dialogue
(or conversation, depending on what plane of reality you happen to be
inhabiting) is all in the subtext, the hidden motivations and secret engines
that drive our interactions.

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may
omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough,
will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated
them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it
being above water. -- Ernest Hemingway

But, to put it bluntly, some writers just can't help having their characters say
what they mean (and the movie business isn't, you know, the truthiest). And
gosh bless 'em, they turn out screenplays by the forest, screenplays that
sometimes get made into movies.

Mamet's plays and films (and TV shows) have brought a unique take on the
American vernacular to audiences for going on five decades. In his work,
when a character speaks, you better believe it's necessary. And no one says
what they mean. Even in Alec Baldwin's famous scene from Glengarry Glen
Ross, the issue isn't steak knives. And it's not just Alec Baldwin's (nameless,
except for a NSFW sobriquet) character's motivation that provokes his
unforgettable monologue. His superficial motivation would be his favor to
Mitch and Murray, the bosses at the real estate company for whom he is
doing a favor by lighting a fire under an underperforming, sad-sack sales
team.

(Note: In case you've never had the pleasure of basking in the gleeful tirade
below, it's super NSFW, depending on where you work.)

And yet, and I hate to say it -- and usually run screaming from the room
when someone does, but it's more complex than that. Characters do not eat
by motivation alone. On any given day, we are buffeted by the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune that assailed Shakespeare's prince, from the
alarm clock that fails to go off, the lack of hot water in our shower, the
missed bus/train/unforeseen traffic jam/headache/cheating spouse/etcetera.
What we say and do are frequently not only diametrically opposed, but,
ironically, the sum of what has happened to us throughout the course of the
day, and by extension, our lives. Cosmic, no?

In those few minutes, Baldwin's character, who has driven there in an

"$80,000" car to berate the sales staff, isn't delivering a pep-talk; he's not
even haranguing these poor schnooks. In the nameless salesman's eyes,
he's there on a "mission of mercy." On some level, he truly wants to help
these men, each of whom, in their own way, has fallen into the desuetude of
just scraping by. He's looking down from Mount Olympus, here on a rainy
night to give these guys some "tough love." And each character in that office
is the product of the days and years that have brought them to that moment,
though Mamet has been quoted as saying, in an excellent interview with The
Paris Review, that he doesn't care about anything except the question,
"Does the character need to convey that information? If the answer is no,
then youd better cut it out, because you arent putting the audience in the
same position with the protagonist -- I try to adopt that as an absolute tenet.
I mean, if Im not writing for the audience, if Im not writing to make it easier
for them, then who the hell am I doing it for? And the way you make it easier
is by following those tenets: cutting, building to a climax, leaving out
exposition, and always progressing toward the single goal of the protagonist.
Theyre very stringent rules, but they are, in my estimation and experience,
what makes it easier for the audience."

And, most importantly:

"People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things
about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he
wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective.
Thats the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage.
They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, its just
coincidence, because what theyre trying to do is accomplish an objective."

Well, that's all very well and good, but how does this help me, you might be
asking? And in doing so, you're illustrating his (and by extension, my)
point: all actions are undertaken to accomplish an objective. A few general
rules, courtesy of Mr. Mamet:

1. It's not what they say, it's what they do: "A character can swear up and
down that they're 'an honest man,' but it's their actions that define them."

2. Never forget the audience: "And the way you make it easier is by following
those tenets: cutting, building to a climax, leaving out exposition, and always
progressing toward the single goal of the protagonist."
3. Let the dialogue speak for itself: "When you write stage directions --
unless theyre absolutely essential for the understanding of the action of the
play (He leaves. She shoots him.) -- something else is going to happen
when the actors and directors get them [on the set]."

And a few more (not from Mamet, but insightful), courtesy of a great article
on the film over at Script Shadow:

4. Don't talk unless absolutely necessary "Without question, one of the

biggest mistakes I see from amateurs is characters who are only talking
because theyre in a scene. If characters are only talking because a writers
making them, the scene will be maddeningly boring."

5. Lying is good (for drama!) Dialogue is always interesting when

someones lying. Why? Theres a natural inclination for us readers to find out
if the other partys going to figure it out or not. Glengarry is one big lying fest.
Shelleys lying to all the leads about how they won a contest. Roma
(Pacino) spends the entire movie lying to his mark. Ross (Ed Harris) and
Aaronow (Alan Arkin) are lying about robbing the place. When a character
has something to hide, the dialogue always has an extra spark to it.

And, last but most certainly not least:

6. CONFLICT! "Ive said it before and Ill say it again. One of the easiest
ways to create good dialogue is through conflict. In almost every single
scene in Glengarry Glen Ross, one character wants something while the
other character wants something else."