House of Games a Screenplay by David Mamet based on a story by Mamet & Katz

Mamet, David & Jonathan Katz

ISBN 10: 0802130283 / ISBN 13: 9780802130280

Published by Grove Press, c.1987,, 1987

About this Item

Grove Press, NY, c.1987, 1st.trade paperbk.prtg., 72pp., NF $.

Seller Inventory # 91234

Bibliographic Details

• Title: House of Games a Screenplay by David Mamet based on a story by Mamet & Katz
• Publisher: Grove Press, c.1987,
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802130283
• ISBN 13: 9780802130280
• Binding: paperback,
• Condition: Very Good,

About this title

Synopsis

Playwright David Mamet’s brilliant debut as a film director, House of Games is a psychological thriller in which a young woman psychiatrist falls prey to an elaborate and ingenious con game by one of her patients, who entraps her—with her own subconscious connivance—in a series of criminal escapades. It is a breathless roller-coaster ride of a movie that keeps springing one bizarre surprise after another, sustaining suspense with dazzling audacity. The unsuspecting audience is lured into a psychological and moral thicket of troubling implications, which bear the unmistakable imprint of Mamet’s intensely personal vision.

Here is the complete screenplay of House of Games, with many illustrations selected from the film and an introduction by the author recounting in candid detail his experience as a first-time director.

Review

This is the screenplay of the first film written and directed by David Mamet, the story of a well known psychiatrist seduced by an underworld of petty intrigue. Mamet is commonly--and wrongly--considered a writer who consistently litters his characters' speech with obscenities. There are a good number of tongue lashings in House of Games, but what this script really proves is that Mamet has an extraordinarily poetic grasp of human language and human psychology. Every word, every exchange counts in this twisty, suspenseful screenplay, one of those rare dramas where it is impossible to predict what will happen next.