Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet

First published: 1988

First produced: 1988, at the Royale Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of work: The late 1980’s

Locale: A Hollywood film studio office

Principal Characters:

• Bobby Gould, a film executive, around forty years of age
• Charlie Fox, a lesser film executive, around forty
• Karen, Gould’s temporary secretary, in her twenties

The Play

Scene 1 of Speed-the-Plow opens with Bobby Gould in his new but as yet undecorated office, debunking the prose of a heavy-sounding book about radiation. His old friend and right-hand man Charlie Fox walks in unannounced. Gould, who has attained a new position at a Hollywood studio only two days before, continues mocking the book, aware that Fox will shortly let him know why he came. Fox asks Gould how close he is to his boss, the head man in Gould’s Hollywood studio, whose name is Ross.

When Gould tells Fox that he can approve (“greenlight”) a picture, Fox tells Gould that the actor Doug Brown is willing to “cross the street” to do a script that Fox has procured for him. Without answering, Gould tells his temporary secretary to get Ross on the telephone. At this point, the quality of the script is not mentioned. It is clear, however, that Doug Brown means money at the box office.

Fox acquaints Gould with the events leading to this lucky break. Only a few moments before Fox entered Gould’s office, Doug Brown drove to Fox’s house and said that he would settle the deal the next morning at ten. Gould tells his temporary secretary to hold all calls except those from Ross; then he asks her to fetch coffee.

Gould and Fox learn that Ross will see them in ten minutes, during which time Fox briefly describes the plot of the script, using the jargon of the film industry: The film is “a buddy film, a prison film, Douggie Brown, blah blah, some girl. . . .” Gould, thankful for Fox’s loyalty in bringing in a major star, promises that Fox will be co-producer. Protocol will still be observed, however, with Gould doing the talking in Ross’s office: “We get in, get out and we give it to him in one sentence.” Unfortunately, Ross must go to New York, and the meeting is rescheduled for ten the next morning. Fox, nervous that ten will be too late, since Brown has given him only a twenty-four-hour option, is reassured by Gould that it is important to see Ross in person to “forge that bond.” Gould convinces Fox not to worry, promising, “It’s done.”

To pass the time, Fox and Gould ecstatically count their as yet unearned money: Gould plans to hire “someone just to figure out the things we want to buy.” It is clear, however, that Gould feels ambivalent about the impending deal when he says—hypocritically denying the capitalistic nature of his position as well as its moral vacuity—“Money is not gold.” Fox comments on the appearance of the secretary, whom he calls “the broad,” but Gould denigrates her: “Baby, she’s nothing. You wait ’til we make this film.”

Fox reads a few lines from the radiation book that Gould was examining when the play opened, sarcastically noting that it is by an “Eastern sissy writer” and suggesting that Gould make it into a film instead of the buddy film. Gould indicates that he could. Then Karen, Gould’s temporary secretary, enters with coffee. Fox happily informs her, to her astonishment, that the two buddies consider themselves a pair of prostitutes.

Karen is told to cancel everything except Gould’s meeting with Ross the next morning. When Fox asks her if she would be willing to stay on with Gould, Karen indicates that she is only a temporary and does not even know what to do. Gould tells her to call the Coventry, a restaurant, and order a table for two at one o’clock.

Fox bets Gould five hundred dollars that Gould cannot get Karen to go to bed with him and then leaves. Karen reenters to say that the Coventry does not have a table—immediately realizing her naïvete in not having mentioned Gould’s name, which would have secured a reservation. Gould, who clearly has been thinking of his bet with Fox, kindly insists that she has made no grave mistake and proceeds to explain the film business to Karen, including what it means to give a “courtesy read” to the radiation book. Karen agrees to read the book and report her opinion of it to Gould at his home that evening. Without blinking, Gould tells Karen to phone Fox, tell him that he (Gould) will be late for lunch, and that Fox owes him five hundred dollars.

Scene 2 occurs later that evening, in Gould’s apartment. Karen tries to convince Gould that the confusing, philosophical radiation book will make a worthwhile film by appealing to his conscience, believing that he wants “to do good.” Convinced that Fox’s prison script is not the basis for a good film, she goes on to explain, unconvincingly, the excellent qualities she finds in the radiation book.

Scene 3 begins as scene 1 did. Gould is sitting behind his desk when Fox walks in optimistically promising more deals. Gould interrupts with “I’m not going to do the film.” Fox thinks that Gould, whom he now calls Bobby, must be joking and says agreeably that the buddy film is worthless. He then intimates that Gould has changed his mind as a result of having slept with Karen. Gould announces that he is going to see Ross himself, leading Fox to believe that Gould is cutting him out of their deal. Fox reminds Gould of his promise. Gould tells Fox that he has decided to use the radiation book as the basis for his next film. Fox, sure that Gould has lost his mind, tries to persuade him that Karen does not “understand” Gould, that she must have ulterior motives. Gould, to convince Fox of the soundness of his decision, allows him to question Karen, who firmly tells Fox that she and Gould, the previous evening, had talked about “the ability to make a difference.” Her position weakens, however, when Fox asks her if she would have slept with Gould had he not decided to make the radiation book into a film. She hesitatingly admits that she would not have slept with him. Gould immediately says, “Oh, God, now I’m lost.” As both Fox and Karen argue—Fox maintaining that she is an ambitious nobody willing to do anything to get ahead and Karen pleading with Gould to remember their “perfect love” and their decision of the night before—Gould fights to maintain objectivity: “I have to think now.”

In the closing lines of the play, Karen reminds Gould, “we have a meeting”—presumably with Ross to seal the deal. Instead, she succeeds in convincing Gould of her ulterior motives, for Gould asks Fox to show her the door. Fox tells her that her idea to make a film out of the radiation book was stupid, because it would never have become a “movie”: “the people wouldn’t come.” Gould regretfully laments that he “wanted to do good” but that he was instead “foolish,” and he and Fox agree that, after all is said and done, they were put on earth to make a movie, so “how bad can life be?”

Dramatic Devices

Much has been written about the nature of Mamet’s dialogue, his special ear for the dialogue of the street with its short, often foul, staccato one-liners. Mamet often has his characters subvert important truths by muttering clichéd truisms. Moreover, in Speed-the-Plow Fox and Gould take shortcuts in their speech, speaking in a kind of shorthand that is native to their situation but strange to the uninitiated. Karen’s attempt to become an insider cannot succeed because she misuses the argot. Her attempt to become a part of the team, to penetrate the insider’s world, is seen by Gould and Fox as a hostile take-over bid.

Further, Karen’s unsuccessful explication of people’s fears forces the observation that what people most fear cannot be intelligibly expressed. Unable to communicate their feelings, the characters use words which are not the right signifiers; their words mask their feelings even to themselves. Mamet’s specialized and lean dialogue is enhanced by stage gestures that demonstrate the relationship between the power holder and the power seeker: Critic Brent Staples notes, “While Gould telephones the head of the studio to arrange for Fox to go before the altar of power, Fox pantomimes pretending to perform fellatio on him. Elsewhere he trails Gould across the stage, burying his face in his buttocks.” At one point Gould starts smoking a cigarette while he is already smoking his cigar; the gesture indicates the frantic nature of that particular character at that particular moment.

Perhaps the most intense dramatic moment occurs in act 3. Fox, seeing his twenty-year career going up in smoke, physically knocks sense into Gould, beating him into the recognition that his previously sound mind was worked over, roughed-up, by a “whore.” Fox proves that actions-of-the-street speak louder than words. Gould listens; he does not effect a change. He does not make the film that might better its audience. The only change he makes—in full view of the audience—is to remove his roughed-up shirt and don a clean one. Gould and Fox become, once again, professional white-collar businessmen.

Critical Context

There has been much speculation about the significance of the title Speed-the-Plow, with its flow-through hyphenation. Researchers have uncovered its agrarian good luck phraseology from eighteenth century England; it means roughly, “Hope your ploughing gets finished swiftly and profitably.” If this is what Mamet had in mind, he is using the title subtly to suggest that the fast-paced movie industry has had many forebears. Speed-the-Plow’s business-as-usual realistic ending wins out over its possible romantic counterpart.

One ironic aspect to Speed-the-Plow is that the buddy movie that the men are going to make is contained within a buddy play. Mamet, too, has had to wrestle with the fact that art for art’s sake does not sell tickets. If his characters seem to practice an “honor among thieves” (with the buzzword in Speed-the-Plow being “loyalty”), we see much the same characters in his dramas as in his screenplays: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Verdict (1982), The Untouchables (1987), House of Games (1987), and Things Change (1988).

Mamet’s misogynistic and immature male characters, Bobby and Charlie, are like the others in his canon. Pascale Hubert-Liebler states that “the rare heterosexual relationships, doomed from the start by male misogyny and the mutual incomprehension of the sexes, usually end in disaster.” In Speed-the-Plow, Karen is objectified, as Mamet’s women often are. She is regarded as a body, not as an individual to be taken seriously. Like a commodity, she is a trophy to be won in bed and conned into submission.

The audience cannot assume that the values and relationships found in Speed-the-Plow apply only to Hollywood. The characters in Speed-the-Plow seem no different in psychological make-up from the thieving salesmen found in Glengarry Glen Ross (pr. 1983) or the unsuccessful schemers of American Buffalo (pr. 1975). One cannot assume that these psychological cripples are any different from the rest of the world.

The roundness of structure found in Speed-the-Plow, the careful matching of form to content, is also found in other Mamet plays. Mamet’s repeated themes are also here: that humans are all alone; that their friends are only their business associates; that business implies money; that people like a person for what he or she can do for them. Worthy of note is the thematic similarity between this play and Mamet’s earlier The Disappearance of the Jews (in his Three Jewish Plays, pb. 1987), which contains a character named Bobby Gould who has fantasies about Hollywood.

Sources for Further Study

Bigsby, C. W. E. David Mamet. London: Methuen, 1985.

Carroll, Dennis. David Mamet. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

Friedman, Samuel G. “The Gritty Eloquence of David Mamet.” New York Times Magazine, April 21, 1985, 32-38.

Hubert-Liebler, Pascale. “Dominance and Anguish: The Teacher-Student Relationship in the Plays of David Mamet.” Modern Drama 31 (December, 1988): 557-570.

Kane, Leslie, ed. David Mamet: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1991.

Lieberson, Jonathan. “The Prophet of Broadway.” New York Review of Books, July 21, 1988, 3-5.

Radavich, David. “Man Among Men: David Mamet’s Homosocial Order.” In Fictions of Masculinity: Crossing Cultures, Crossing Sexualities, edited by Peter F. Murphy. New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Savran, David. “David Mamet.” In In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988.

Staples, Brent. “Mamet’s House of Word Games.” New York Times, May 29, 1988, sec. 2, p. 1.