American Buffalo (1996) Helped Me Find My Voice As a Young Playwright
Reader, I have to start this week’s newsletter on a somber note, because my alma mater is closing its doors at the end of May. How and why this happened to an academic institution that dates back to before the Civil War has been well documented by some very good reporters, so I’m not here to talk about that.* I’d rather speak to one particular way that Birmingham-Southern College imprinted on me.
The school’s final month of existence features a full calendar. For any alumni like myself, there have been plenty of excuses to return to campus this spring, from baseball games to academic presentations to formal closing ceremonies. But I’ve been rather angry about my college falling apart ever since this dire situation was unearthed more than a year ago, and I wanted my final trip to BSC to be a bit more meaningful—something that could help me trade my anger in for sadness, if only for a few hours.
I decided the Theatre Department’s last production would be the perfect final curtain.
The students put on a terrific rendition of Tom Jones’ and Harvey Schmidt’s The Fantasticks, a delightful musical that I’d never seen. A few of my former classmates were in the audience with me. BSC’s president, whom I met last summer during the Sidewalk Film Festival when his family graciously hosted an event at their home, was there with his wife as well. But I couldn’t help but think about the current students—particularly the underclassmen who chose BSC only to be unwillingly relocated to a different school before they could graduate. (Imagine being a junior at BSC right now. Awful.)
I was only tangentially involved with the Theatre Department when I was in college. For my first two years, I had several friends—including my roommate—who were theatre majors, so I found myself attending several plays. But then I took my first theatre-adjacent class my junior year: Introduction to Playwriting.** I was minoring in creative writing en route to an English degree, and this was a class I simply could not turn down.***
Because it was a liberal arts college, most of my classes were small. But this might’ve been the smallest one I had. There were five of us total: me, my college best buddy and fellow English major Kevin, a couple of theatre majors, and one more person that I shamefully can’t remember.**** And our professor, Dr. Alan Litsey, couldn’t have been a nicer, more genuine teacher.
As we learned the basics of playwriting, we worked our way toward writing complete short plays by the end of the semester. I was 20 years old and still largely fueled by American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson, so naturally my final short play sprung from those influences: Two low-level mobster guys—one an older veteran, one a young rookie—size each other up over lunch by debating the age of the girl in the Wendy’s logo.
Dr. Litsey had some wonderful feedback for me, but his most impactful note was a recommendation: “Are you familiar with David Mamet’s work?”
I wasn’t. In fact, I’d hardly read any plays later than the 19th century at that point, so Mamet was brand new to me (even though I’d seen films like Wag the Dog and Hannibal). Dr. Litsey thought I’d unknowingly stumbled into the territory of Mamet’s trademark brand of circular dialogue—“Mamet speak,” as they call it—and he recommended that I study his plays and screenplays.
I recall landing on American Buffalo first, which I read and then watched in that order.***** Unsurprisingly to Dr. Litsey, this story really spoke my creative language. Mamet’s dialogue felt somehow both grounded and heightened, the sort of lines we almost always think but almost never say. And American Buffalo, a play/film that’s all about the discussion of a robbery rather than the robbery itself, might be the purest extended distillation of Mamet speak you’ll find.
It was intoxicating. I went on to read many of his plays as well as some of his nonfiction. He would become a major influence on my creative writing going forward. And I might never have immersed myself in his work had my BSC experience—and my particularly insightful playwriting professor—not led me down that road.
But as Robert Frost, Ponyboy, and New Found Glory all said, nothing gold can stay. My alma mater is closing its doors. And to make matters worse in a way, David Mamet turned out to be…not such a great guy.****** But I can’t only be angry about these present states of affairs, I suppose. So I’ll try to follow in my classmates’ footsteps, celebrating those days and carrying the best parts of them with me.
*Kyle Whitmire, Pulitzer Prize winner and former fellow editor-in-chief of The Hilltop News (I had to get that one in there), has been providing excellent coverage as expected.
**It was my last theatre-adjacent class as well. I am simply not built for the stage. (Even film acting, which I tried once a few years later, is a skill that I do not possess.)
***BSC didn’t establish a Film Department until a few years after I left, allowing students to study the history of cinema and learn film production techniques and even take trips to Sundance. Introduction to Playwriting was as close as I could get.
****One of those theatre majors, my friend Leslie, agreed to let me write her a one-act play to direct for her senior thesis project, which was the first time anything I’d written was performed in any way. And she did a terrific job. Such a good job, in fact, that I wound up dating her lead actress that summer.
*****It took me almost 600 words to get to the film in the headline today. My editor John is gonna shake his head at me.
******You might know all about Mamet’s plethora of bad takes, but this recent piece from Pajiba really sums up my feelings about his decline.
American Buffalo is now streaming on Hoopla, Freevee, and PlutoTV, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.