David Mamet to Direct The Diary of Anne Frank

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By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (28)

So, David Mamet is set to both write and direct a big-screen version of the The Diary of Anne Frank for Disney.

Let that stew a bit.

Yes: Mamet — the guy who wrote Glenggary Glen Ross, State and Maine, The Spanish Prisoner and Heist, among other films — is set to tackle the life of a teenage Holocaust victim hiding from the Germans in her father’s office building.

I have no problem with a movie based on The Diary of Anne Frank. It’s been done several times before, but it’s a story that really needs to be passed on frequently. It has to survive generation after generation. And I love David Mamet — he has an impeccable writing style, and he’s so cool that when he goes to bed, sheep count him. But somehow I don’t see him writing a movie about Anne Frank. It’s too bizarre. His signature rhythm doesn’t befit the material. And how is he going to fit his untalented wife and Ricky Jay into this film, anyway?

You know what? It’s cool. With Mamet penning the screenplay, Anne Frank gets away clean. There’ll need to be a card game going on in her father’s office while she’s hiding.There’ll be a lot of profanity. Anne will trick the Germans, who’ll think they’re way ahead of her and trick her, only to realize that she’s anticipated their trick, and double tricked them. Mamet’s Anne Frank will never see that concentration camp. She’ll be cruising the Atlantic, slam-bang on the breezoad, tweeting, “Coffee is for closers, Scheißkerl,” while a group of German soldiers are scratching their heads.

Hell, if we have to have revisionist history, let Mamet do the revising. After all, it’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction. As long as Michael Bay ain’t doing it, I can’t get too worked up.

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Comments

If there’s anyone that can pull off Anne Frank I guess it’s Mamet, I’m more shocked that Disney would tackle such a sensitive subject. I hope for all involve that this doesn’t end badly.

Posted by: Guess Who! at August 13, 2009 9:18 AM

Mamet wrote and staged a successful production of this early in his career. It's actually a pretty good fit. I'm interested to see how it comes out.

Posted by: TylerDFC at August 13, 2009 9:20 AM

if this is 2 truths and a lie, i'm not seeing the 2 truths anywhere.

Posted by: gp at August 13, 2009 9:23 AM

I'm sure Rebecca Pidgeon could play the mother or something. I mean - she's not able to play the mother, but what I mean is that she probably will.

She is not a good actor. And when was Mamet last any good? I actually can't remember.

Posted by: Caspar at August 13, 2009 9:59 AM

As long as he doesn't cast a Nazi sympathizer to stand on the other side of the wall and coo "You need somebody to take you into a new thing", this could turn out all right. Agreed that this needs to be remade for every new generation.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 10:03 AM

Yeah, I'm not sure that the Diary of Anne Frank should be... clever.

That said, he's also done some fairly straight-ahead stuff as well (see The Edge and Hoffa, for instance).

Posted by: Eep at August 13, 2009 10:08 AM

"Yeah, I'm not sure that the Diary of Anne Frank should be... clever."

Well-put, Eep. I'm also curious how he'll handle the ending. Will it be the pre-death-by-typhus-in-Bergen-Belsen statement"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart" ending, or will he address the horrific conditions in which Frank and her entire family (save her father) died?

I don't have a ton of patience for the "triumph of the human spirit" narrative when it comes to Anne Frank.

Posted by: samantha t at August 13, 2009 10:17 AM

I just hope (with the exception of Rebecca no-talent Pidgeon) he uses his usual stable of actors and we get to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Shelley Winters role. That would be worth it.

Posted by: PaddyDog at August 13, 2009 10:18 AM

I don't have a ton of patience for the "triumph of the human spirit" narrative when it comes to Anne Frank.

But...but that's what makes the story worth telling. And if any film requires fidelity to the source material, I can't come up with a better example than this one.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 10:29 AM

When Dustin mentioned that Mamet is writing for Disney, it could very well be Miramax or Touchstone or one of those divisions that produces movies other than G-Force.
Funnily enough, I'm reading Mamet's play, "Oleanna" at the moment, which is a very interesting play thus far. No card games yet, and only one actual swear.

Posted by: Kamikaze Feminist at August 13, 2009 10:35 AM

Oddly enough, I disagree. I think the whole kind-heartedness of Frank and her peri-pubescent naivete is fine, but really what makes the story worth reading in this day and age is that she and most of her family were captured and did die horribly in a camp. It's important not to Disneyize the Holocaust or to leave any suggestion that "things always work out" even if only spiritually.

What happened to Anne Frank demonstrates how twisted the human spirit can be and how easy it is for hate to turn into horrific deeds (are you listening Town Hall loonies?). That's why the story needs to be re-told: many of today's youth have been raised not only on "happily ever after" but also on "being famous is the only thing that matters". They need wake-up calls more than ever.

Posted by: PaddyDog at August 13, 2009 10:38 AM

"Third prize is you're sent to Auschwitz."

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at August 13, 2009 10:44 AM

(are you listening Town Hall loonies?).

Posted by: PaddyDog at August 13, 2009 10:38 AM
---
For a style of government where people are not permitted to get riled up and talk back to their so-called representatives when they feel their interests and their lives are at stake, where citizens must smile and nod and say, "Thank you, I'll take whatever you're handing me without question, even if you yourself don't know or understand what it is you're handing me, thankyouverymuch, your highnesses," see: Nazi Germany.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at August 13, 2009 10:50 AM

But there's no shortage of works that detail the horrors of the camps, and our present knowledge of those horrors hangs over Anne Frank already. It's not a secret what ended up happening to her -- I knew that when I read it as an adolescent, and so did everybody else.

It's not a fair treatment of Anne Frank to change it in order to correct the wrongs done by Robin Williams and the striped pajama flick. Just because they appropriated the "indomitability of the human spirit" theme in order to make a buck doesn't mean you futz around with the story that begat them. "In spite of it all" brings that shit home, and it would be an abomination to subordinate it to whatever present-day axes a person might want to grind.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 10:50 AM

You all trivialize Nazi Germany by comparing what's happening today to it.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 10:53 AM

Very nice bucdaddy.

Posted by: becks at August 13, 2009 10:54 AM

Yes, very nice if you have to place yourself at the cusp of the end times in order to score a cheap debating point.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 10:58 AM

HaHa, just to clarify, I was talking about the Glengarry comment, not the town hall comment. I'm not trying to gang up on you sansho.

Posted by: becks at August 13, 2009 10:59 AM

Gotcha, becks. All good. The Glengarry comment is indeed priceless.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 11:02 AM

I actually agree with you on the whole trivializing Nazi Germany thing. Another thing that is often trivialized... the introduction of sliced bread. I don't think people comprehend just how convenient that was.

Posted by: becks at August 13, 2009 11:06 AM

I really should be less surprised than I am to see Godwin's Law in a thread about an Anne Frank movie.

Posted by: branded at August 13, 2009 11:06 AM

i just hope they cast miley cyrus as anne. bring some class to the role.

Posted by: gem at August 13, 2009 11:14 AM

Having kicked this thread's ass, I will now move on to other matters. I said good day.

Posted by: sansho1 at August 13, 2009 11:15 AM

*Wikis Godwin's Law ... reads ...*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one, branded.

Also: 'preciate it, becks and sansho1.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at August 13, 2009 11:19 AM

Oh man I am excited for this. Redbelt ruled.

When was the last time Hollywood got a consistently good writer/director to adapt a piece of classic literature?

Mamet also directed Beckett, so I think he'll adapt his style successfully.

Posted by: Chris P. at August 13, 2009 11:33 AM

I just hope they don't cast Dakota freaking Fanning as Anne - but they probably will.

Posted by: the essence of fanciness and class at August 13, 2009 1:54 PM

This could work, Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner worked and there were no profanities, but don't expect any Asians to help save Anne Frank.

Posted by: Corey W. at August 13, 2009 2:40 PM

Two thoughts about this:

1) I'm sort of sick of Holocaust movies, but only because the more times you put it on film, the more it seems like the whole thing is just some distant, made-up story straight out of Hollywood. Just keep showing real footage (it's not like none exists). I HIGHLY recommend the Shoah Foundation's Oscar-winning documentary The Last Days. When I showed it to my 10th graders, the real footage was so unbelievable to them, one actually said, "That's just special effects, right?" When people die in horrible manners on the big screen all the time, people being murdered in a mass genocide doesn't seem so horrific. We need to do all we can to NOT Hollywood-ize it.

2) If they do make it, Natalie Portman is too old now to play Anne Frank. Are there any other young Jewish girls in Hollywood who could pull it off?

Posted by: Ariel at August 15, 2009 1:47 PM

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