Five Television Plays: A Waitress in Yellowstone, or Always Tell the Truth / Bradford / The Museum of Science and Industry Story / A Wasted Weekend / We Will Take You There

by David Mamet

Five unique short plays for television by one of America’s most celebrated playwrights. A 'Waitress in Yellowstone' (or: 'Always Tell the Truth') is a parable about an honest waitress and a corrupt congressman. In Bradford, a new police chief arriving in a small New England town is plunged into the midst of its cozy secrets and uncovers the truth behind his predeces­sor's mysterious fatal hunting accident. The Museum of Science and Industry Story is a fantasy about the adventures of a man locked in a museum overnight. A Wasted Weekend is a 1987 episode of Hill Street Blues focusing on four cops and their ill-fated hunting trip. In We Will Take You There, Danny and Mike, partners in an unusual “taxi service to the wilds,” offer themselves as guides to the most remote areas of the world.

Displaying Mamet’s characteristic ear for language and unsettling moral vision, these plays are among his darkest, funniest, and most entertaining.

Includes:

'A Waitress in Yellowstone' (or: 'Always Tell the Truth')

'Bradford'

'The Museum of Science and Industry Story'

'A Wasted Weekend'

'We Will Take You There'

Genres: Plays

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 1990

About the author

David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.

Reviews

[Elliot Chalom · Rating 2 out of 5]

They say timing is everything, right?

Mamet's foray into writing for television suffers mainly from him being in the wrong place (tv) at the wrong time (the 1980's in this case). Mamet explains in his brief introduction that he always wanted to write for this medium but that he missed its golden age. Little did he know how correct he was - the golden age of television hadn't passed, it was yet to come. His style of intelligent, and more importantly quiet writing, requiring a degree of intellect and patience from his audience, would have been ideally suited for this golden age of television that we are (arguably) still living through, beginning with premium television shows like The Wire and The Sopranos and single camera sitcoms like The Office over a decade ago.

Mamet writes five television episodes that are collected in this book, with only one (a final season episode of Hill Street Blues) ever made and only that one part of an existing show. You can see clearly in the other 4 Mamet's wit and dark humor, but you can also see him bending over backwards to fit into the mid-80s television landscape. His dialogue-heavy, action-lacking, style that in other settings (most notably his classic plays) make him brilliant are missing. He could have been way ahead of his time. Instead these are generally good stories that miss the mark like so much television of the time.

In the end, it's too bad. Mamet could have written the best episode of a Michael Schur show ever.