David Mamet helps Disney re-write the Diary of Anne Frank
Disney has recently acquired the rights to film The Diary of Anne Frank and they’ve chose oft potty-mouthed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet to write and direct the new version.
Drawing reference from the original play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, and of course the legendary diary, Mamet will re-tell the tale of the spry Jewish German lass who hid in a secret room in the attic of her father’s office building in Amsterdam with her sister and parents, later joined by the van Pels family and another family friend. The Frank family hid for two years before they were ratted out and deported to a concentration camp, where Anne tragically passed away seven months, several days after her sister’s death. Her diary contains entries from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944, and was later found by her father, the family’s sole survivor, and was hailed for its poignant intelligence when published.
Mamet’s grasp of and expertise concerning trials of antisemitism and what he calls “Jewish self-hatred”, having penned several books on the subject, will hopefully add a warm halo of humanistic honey to this otherwise bleak story. Some preclude Mamet will address the re-write as more of a young girl’s rite of passage. Anne did receive her first kiss in the secret room, from Peter van Pels, but questioned if it was simply due to the seclusion. She was repulsed by her “flatmates” and still mourning her grandmother; energetically emotional in every possible direction. Ah, impetuous teen angst reigns in every situation.
With tough-guy screenplays under his belt (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ronin, Heist, The Untouchables) there’s no doubt Mamet has an affinity with instrumental, institutional rebels. I’m sure he will instill the blaring rift between the martial and the filial.
Belligerent and Broadway darling David Mamet always has a sociological point to drill, and usually does so with an explosion of expletives. For example, here’s an example of how his Anne Frank may pan out with heavily modified excerpts from his Glengarry Glen Ross script:
ANNE FRANK
Bullshit the [Third Reich], [if] I don’t get
on board the [next train outta the Netherlands], they’re
going to [_nasty_verb_] my ass. I need the
[absolute best hiding place]. I need [it] now. Or I’m
gone, and you’re going to miss me,
[Pops], I swear to you.
OTTO H. FRANK
What the fuck talk is that?
What the fuck talk is that?
Where did you learn that? In [that damn Montessori] school?
(pause)
That’s “talk,” my [wiseass youngest daughter of two], that’s
“talk.” I’m getting garbage.
(pause)
You’re giving it to me, and what
I’m saying is it’s fucked.
ANNE FRANK
You’re saying that I’m fucked.
OTTO H. FRANK
Yes. (pause) I am. I’m sorry to antagonize you.
[I'm off to craft the secret bookcase entrance to our hidey hole]
[Don't you dare follow me!].
(door slams)
