2005 Award Recipient

Acclaimed screenwriter/playwright David Mamet, known for penning some of the stage and screen's most influential dialogue of the past three decades, will be honored as this year's recipient of the Screen Laurel Award presented by the Writers Guild of America, west at the 57th Annual Writers Guild Awards ceremony February 19, 2005.

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"Writers everywhere stand in awe of David Mamet for his extraordinary ear, his penetrating eye, and his unique voice," said Daniel Petrie Jr., president of the Writers Guild of America, west. "His amazing body of work reflects his uncompromising vision. By lending us that vision, David Mamet helps us see ourselves.

Perhaps more than any other contemporary writer working today, Mamet has influenced the way we speak on film, on the stage, on television, and even in our own lives, best known for his terse, rapid-fire delivery that informs such seminal works as his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross -- legend even has it that he's been known to employ a metronome during rehearsals to hone the precise delivery of his staccato lines.

Having attended Goddard College in Plainfield, VT, Mamet founded Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater Company at age 24, serving as its artistic director from 1971-76. Early on, the prolific playwright first made his name for his lacerating, often profane stage productions (featuring his trademark "Mamet-speak"), later turning his attention to the screen, transforming many of own his plays into often brooding, dialogue-driven films, including American Buffalo (1996, his first play produced on Broadway in 1975), the controversial sexual-politics drama Oleanna (1994), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), which received a WGA nomination for Best Screenplay (Based on

Materials Previously Produced or Published), and About Last Night (1986), which was adapted from his own ground breaking play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Mamet's screenplay debut was his 1981 adaptation of James M. Cain's classic film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice. The following year, he earned an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for The Verdict (1982, Best Writing Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium) as well as Golden Globe (Best Screenplay) and Writers Guild Award (Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium) nominations in 1983. Later in that decade, he returned to film with another acclaimed adaptation, this time The Untouchables (1987), based on the hit TV series and set in his own hometown of Chicago, moving on to a more light-heated remake of We're No Angels (1989).

In 1987, Mamet made his directorial debut with House of Games, adapted from his own play and starring his then-wife Lindsay Crouse, a cat-and-mouse labyrinth which influenced a generation of independent filmmakers and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Screenplay, after garnering both Best Original Screenplay and Best Film trophies at the Venice Film Festival. Since then, Mamet has emerged as a double-threat in the film industry, writing and directing such distinctive, disparate films as Spartan (2004), Heist (2001), Lakeboat (2001, based on his first play from 1970), State and Main (2000), The Winslow Boy (1999), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Homicide (1991), nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, and the wry comedy Things Change (1998, co-written with Shel Silver).

Mamet's other notable screenplays include co-writing (with Steve Zaillian) the screen adaptation of Thomas Harris' best-selling thriller Hannibal (2001), Ronin (1998, as "Richard Weisz"), The Edge (1997), the ever-topical political satire Wag the Dog (1997), co-written with Hilary Henkin, with whom he shared an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, in addition to Golden Globe (Best Screenplay), BAFTA (Best Screenplay, Adapted), and Writers Guild Award (Best Screenplay, Based on Material Previously Produced or Published) nominations, Vanya on 42^nd Street (1994), his adaptation of Chekov's classic Uncle Vanya, and Hoffa (1992).

First performed on the London stage, Mamet's recent play Boston Marriage was nominated for a 2002 Laurence Oliver Theatre Award for Best New Comedy in 2001. Other acclaimed Mamet theatrical works include the Tony-nominated Speed-the-Plow, The Cryptogram, The Shawl, Prairie Du Chien, The Old Neighborhood, and Edmond. Mamet's plays have earned a slew of awards, including several New York Drama Critics Circle and OBIE Awards. On the television front, Mamet's notable projects include the HBO telefilm Lansky (1999), Showtime's Texan (1994), The Water Engine (1992), his adaptation of Uncle Vanya (1991), an early episode of Hill Street Blues (1981), and his first script for television, the 1979 PBS special A Life in the Theater (remade for TNT in 1993), based on his own play. More recently, Mamet directed an edgy episode ("Strays") of FX's hard-hitting hit series The Shield. Continuing this partnership, Mamet has teamed up with The Shield creator Shawn Ryan for an upcoming CBS drama series revolving around an elite Delta Force anti-terrorism unit.

In 1994, Mamet published his first novel, The Village, in addition to having lectured at the University of Chicago and taught at the Yale Drama School. Among his upcoming projects, Mamet is slated to write and direct the contemporary pop-culture satire Joan of Bark: The Dog That Saved France, set to star Will Ferrell for Columbia Pictures.

Awarded to a guild member who has advanced the literature of the motion picture and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the screenwriter, the Screen Laurel has been received by such esteemed writers as Billy Wilder, Horton Foote, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Sonya Levien, Preston Sturges, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, John Huston, Blake Edwards, Mel Brooks, and last year's honoree, John Michael Hayes.