William H Macy On David Mamet’s Unusual Funeral Etiquette

The renaissance man's actor-of-choice on how his friend literally buried his father.

“Would I have an acting career if it wasn’t for David Mamet? Possibly, but I wouldn’t have this career. David is the great man of American letters. He’s a writer without equal. No one else can do what he does, and nobody else does it in quite the same way. David’s the only playwright I know of who writes with a metronome next to his typewriter — that’s how important rhythm is in his work.

“For someone who’s so associated with manly themes and very strong language  —
no, I don’t know how many “fucks” there are in Glengarry Glen Ross — he’s actually a really sweet guy. His great passion when his kids were younger was to go into his wood shop and make toy animals for them. That’s an image quite at odds with the bruising, brooding genius behind American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow.