Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet said he wrote a play about Harvey Weinstein, although there is no word on when it will be produced.
During an interview with the Chicago Tribune about his new book, Mamet casually mentioned that he has a full play written about the disgraced Hollywood film producer.
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“I was talking with my Broadway producer and he said, ‘Why don’t you write a play about Harvey Weinstein?’ And so I did,” Mamet told the Tribune.
Mamet did not go into any further details about the project. As Page Six notes, the producer he is likely referring to is Jeffrey Richards, who Mamet has worked with on productions of China Doll, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Anarchist, A Life in Theater, Speed-the-Plow, November and Race.
Sexual harassment is not a new issue for Mamet. He previously tackled it in his controversial 1992 play Oleanna. Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles starred in a 2009 Broadway production of the play, which centers on a professor accused of sexual exploitation by a female student. The play was turned into a 1994 film with William H. Macy.
“I think about this a lot now. I have a bunch of daughters, a young son,” Mamet told the Tribune of the #MeToo movement. “Every society has to confront the ungovernable genie of sexuality and tries various ways to deal with it and none of them work very well. There is great difficulty when you are switching modes, which we seem to be doing now. People go crazy. They start tearing each other to bits.”
Mamet is a two-time Oscar nominee best known for Glengarry Glen Ross, House of Games and The Untouchables. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross. He also wrote and directed the 2013 TV movie Phil Spector. Mamet is also the father of actresses Zosia Mamet and Clara Mamet.
Mamet’s next film is The Force, an adaptation of the Don Winslow crime novel which will be directed by James Mangold. He also wrote a new novel called Chicago, a story about Tribune reporters set during the Prohibition era.
“It is made up in part by some of those stories that we all grew up with,” Mamet said of his new work. “I have always been influenced by the city’s darker traditions, its collective fondness for gangsters and con men. I realize how physically close I have been to places where those dark things happened — the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the kidnapping of little Bobby Franks, the Levee District — and it was impossible for me not to hear the echo of the past.”
