April 13, 2001 | David Mamet already had several produced plays to his credit before he wrote Lakeboat, a freewheeling and often profanely funny collage of monologues and conversations aboard a freighter on the Great Lakes. But it’s hard to shake the impression while watching Joe Mantegna’s faithful film adaptation that the drama, first produced in 1981, is the kind of frankly and earnestly autobiographical work you expect from a first-time playwright.
That impression is reinforced by what feel like the first soundings of themes Mamet would examine and develop more fully in subsequent plays. (Note the many facets of male camaraderie and competitiveness that get a once-over-lightly gloss here.) It’s worth noting that, scarcely three years after Lakeboat premiered, Mamet gave us Glengarry Glen Ross, a searing drama loosely based on the playwright’s experiences as a real-estate salesman. Lakeboat, too, draws heavily from Mamet’s early work experiences – but, I suspect, offers fictionalized characters that are much less further removed from their real-life inspirations.
Mantegna – who, as an actor, has enjoyed great success in Mamet’s plays and films – does little or nothing to disguise the theatrical roots of Lakeboat. Indeed, his attempts to “open up” the play are limited to a few stylized flashbacks to illustrate some colorful anecdotes. (Look closely, and you’ll see an unbilled Andy Garcia as a crewman whose mysterious disappearance generates fanciful conjecture.) For the most part, Mantegna is content to simply ground the action in a naturalistic setting – much of the movie appears to have been filmed aboard a real freighter – while allowing his actors enough room to work their beguiling magic.
Essentially plotless, Lakeboat unwinds through eyes of Dale (Tony Mamet, David’s younger brother), an Ivy League college student who gets a summer job aboard the Seaway Queen, a Lake Michigan freighter. He’s a mostly mute witness while his more experienced shipmates – played by Robert Forster, Peter Falk, Denis Leary and frequent Mamet collaborators J.J. Johnson and Jack Wallace – argue, interact and wax philosophical while trying to avoid unnecessary contact with their cranky captain (Charles Durning) and his first mate (George Wendt).
There’s little in the way of traditional narrative momentum: One self-contained scene simply follows another, and so on. The end result plays like a loosely connected string of verbal arias and duets. If you’re not a Mamet fan, Lakeboat may seem shapeless and pointless. But if you’re an admirer of his work, or if you’re willing to be as patiently observant as Dale, you will find much that is fascinating and illuminating.
Some episodes are laugh-out-loud hilarious. (When someone claims that Steven Segal is the toughest guy in movies, a shipmate argues – forcefully — that even Shirley Temple could kick his butt.) Others are funnier in a more bittersweet, almost melancholy fashion, as the grizzled seadogs attempt to give Dale valuable life lessons informed by their own experiences. Unfortunately, those experiences include boozing, brawling and, quite possibly, date rape. But even as they offer the worst imaginable advice, they appear to have the best of intentions.
Dale listens quietly, attentively, to everyone. But Joe Pitko (Forster) is the only guy on board who realizes why his younger shipmate is so curious, so eager to learn. The thing is, Joe isn’t at all angry to know that, someday, he might wind up being transformed into a character in something Dale may write. Truth to tell, Joe once considered a life in the arts himself, before he settled down to find more practical employment in the real world. Now, he tells Dale, it’s too late to try anything else. But Dale is lucky – much luckier than Joe has ever been.
“You’ve got it made,” Joe tells his younger shipmate. Forster’s performance is so dead-solid perfect, and Lakeboat is so scrupulously fair to its characters, that Joe’s words are deeply affecting and genuinely encouraging. His bestowing of approval may be the most generous gesture anyone has ever managed in anything David Mamet has ever written.
A personal note: I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that my reaction to Lakeboat might be colored by the fact that my father, now retired, was employed as a merchant seaman for more than 40 years. I visited him aboard various ships now and then – met a few of his shipmates, briefly toured where he worked and lived for weeks and months on end – and I never ceased to marvel at how comfortable he seemed in a world that I knew would be forever alien to me. So I can fully appreciate Dale’s desire to observe and remember everything around him. I can also appreciate his mix of relief and wistfulness when he knows it is time to leave.
