David Mamet and The Art of the Con
By Ian Chant |
Glengarry Glen Ross actors from left to right: Ian Bell, R. Hamilton Wright, MJ Sieber, Charles Leggett. Photo by Derek Sparks. |
A Confidence Game: Known variably as a con, scam, swindle, or grift, there are almost as
many cons as there are ways to lie to people. There are short cons like confusing a store
clerk to give out more change than you’re owed or the classic game of Three Card Monte. But
more famous are the longer, often more lucrative cons. These can involve teams of con artists,
faked identities, and even the inventing of entire institutions and businesses that may not
exist.
Whether we like to admit it or not, cons have a long history in American culture. In
particular, scams involving real estate have been popular for hundreds of years, and have
involved some of the most iconic pieces of property in the nation. Storied American con artist
and hoaxer George C. Parker made a notable living pretending to sell tourists New York landmarks
like Madison Square Garden and the Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn Bridge was his bread and
butter, though—Parker claimed to have “sold” the bridge twice a week for years,
occasionally resulting in police having to remove toll booths erected by unsuspecting tourists
who believed they were the bridge’s new owners.
The American confidence game has figured heavily into playwright David Mamet’s body of work.
His film debut, House of Games, featured long-time collaborator Joe Mantegna as a
career con man, while Mamet’s acclaimed thriller The Spanish Prisoner takes its title
from the scheme of the same name, a fraud that has been around for hundreds of years and forms
the backbone of the film’s plot.
Confidence games make for unsurpassed environments of tension and uncertainty, allowing Mamet
to explore relationships and identities while forcing audiences to constantly question the
motivations of each character. The device also means that there are plenty of opportunities for
the betrayals, double crosses, and unforeseen twists that make many of Mamet’s thrillers so
compelling. Many of these rely on last-minute changes of fate and reversals of fortune, leaving
viewers wondering just who has been scamming who throughout the story.
And while Glengarry Glen Ross may not be as steeped in blatant fraud as some of
Mamet’s other works, the real estate salesmen portrayed in the piece aren’t the well-intentioned
ReMax agents who might have sold you your house. What Mamet’s men are selling are dream properties,
which, in reality, are hardly the fantasy they’ve promised to be.
Land sale schemes, in which properties are sold as picturesque getaway locales, often turn out,
well... not quite as advertised. It’s among the oldest tricks in the book, and even today when the
most well-known confidence games involve secret investment strategies or jailed Nigerian bureaucrats,
anyone with an internet connection can still purchase land, sight unseen, over eBay at the push of
a button.
In the world of fraud and confidence games, it seems, the more things change, the more they stay
the same.
