The Playgoer: Fuck You, You Nazi Fucks

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Saturday, September 12, 2009

Fuck You, You Nazi Fucks

It is indeed true that David Mamet is directing a new film of "The Diary of Anne Frank."

Although when I first read about it in The Onion last month, it seemed too good to be true.

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Mamet is writing and directing a new film version of The Diary Of Anne Frank. Here are some highlights from his adaptation:

  • When confronted for stealing food, Joe Mantegna's Putti Van Daan claims not to "give two goddamn fucks in a pig's ass"
  • Fantastic scene in which Anne Frank denies her dad coffee and tells her family that only those with brass balls can survive the Nazis
  • Anne's diary is the only place she is able to finish a sentence
  • The lead is recast as Angelo, a 54-year-old longshoreman for whom the attic is a metaphor for sexual repression
  • Rebecca Pidgeon is shoehorned into the plot, ruining movie at last minute
  • As the Nazis approach, Anne orders the crying baby to "can it"
  • The bookcase that covers the entrance to the secret annex is played by Alec Baldwin
  • Anne's death is ultimately less about "Nazis" and more about "the American dream"
Actually this is just one of many online parodies already out there. He just makes it so easy sometimes, don't he.

Interesting that Mamet's film still claims to be an adaptation not just of the diary itself, but of the Hacket/Goodrich dramatization--the 1955 play that became the classic 1959 film. When director James Lapine wanted to do a "new" Anne Frank on Broadway in 1997 (the one with Natalie Portman) he also brought on a playwright, Wendy Kesselman, to revise/supplement the script.

So I wonder, is the Hacket/Goodrich script somehow legally the "authorized" version with sole dramatization rights? Because clearly these other writers seem to want to take their own crack at it.

Reminds me of Lawrence Graver's fascinating book An Obsession With Anne Frank, about the original race for those dramatization rights--a book, by the way, that seems to be the inspiration for Rinne Groff's latest play.


UPDATE 9/30/09: looks like the Mamet project isn't happening after all.

2 comments:

NAZI said...

NAZI OWN YOU! YOU KNOW IT YOU JEW

Playgoer said...

Hmm, further Mamet parodying? Or just nutjob hate-speech?

What y'all think? I can't decide...