Speed-the-Plow (1988)

Mamet’s new play was a send-up of both Hollywood producers and scriptwriters. The drama revolves around which of two competing scripts the newly promoted executive, Bobby Gould, will decide to film: the unabashedly commercial ‘Doug Brown’ screenplay promoted by his friend and associate Charlie Fox, or The Bridge, the obscurely ‘authentic’ novel about radiation championed by the temporary secretary, Karen, whom Gould is trying to get into bed. Speed-the-Plow is often compared to other works about Hollywood, and no fewer than five of the 18 essays in a 1997 collection about Hollywood on Stage discuss Mamet’s play at some length. It was a runaway success, not only because it is a riot of brilliant one-liners and a satire on the Hollywood that had just provided Mamet with such acclaim, but also because it starred Madonna as Karen. Her performance received almost universally negative reviews, but later criticism implies that she may deliberately have been dealt an unwinnable hand.