Speed-the-Plow

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Speed-the-Plow (1988) is short play by David Mamet which is a satirical dissection of the American movie business, a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000).

Hollywood producers Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox engage in a verbal boxing match centered around the eternal debate of art versus money. Should Gould go for another bad action blockbuster? Or should he put himself on the line for a film adaptation of a spiritual, apocalyptic novel? Gould's secretary Karen acts as catalyst in the debate (Gould has her read the novel in order to report on it to him later, at his apartment; there she gives a glowing review of the novel's themes and content) and, only to be ditched just as easily in the play's cynical finale, with Gould's partner, Fox, accusing her of using her sex to get a place in the movie business.

The play's text contains an epigram by William Makepeace Thackeray, from his novel Pendennis, which puts the theme in larger context. It starts: "Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplating it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest?" Gould finds himself on both sides of this dilemma, and at times in the play he "stands aloof," and at other times he "takes part" in life's contest, with its moral strictures.

Jack Kroll of Newsweek described "Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."

Speed-the-Plow was first performed by the Lincoln Center Theater at the Royale Theater, Broadway, New York, in 1988, with a cast of Joe Mantegna (Gould), Ron Silver (Fox) and Madonna (Karen). The play was nominated for a Tony Award for Play of the Year. Silver won a Tony Award for Best Actor (Play).

David Rabe's play and subsequent film adaptation Hurlyburly could be considered a companion piece to Speed-the-Plow, centering on the empty lives of a group of Hollywood executives after the debate was won by money.

Madonna discusses her experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlDg_5V00Ls