Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- In ``Bambi vs. Godzilla,'' his new book about the movie business, David Mamet nails producers, script readers, critics, film schools, audience testing, even Laurence Olivier.

Mamet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who also earned Oscar nominations for his screenplays of ``The Verdict'' and ``Wag the Dog,'' spoke with me last week at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York.

Warner: You love movies but seem to hate the movie business.

Mamet: I don't hate the movie business. I'm fascinated by the movie business. It's the only absolutely essential intersection in the history of mankind between art and commerce. You could paint the picture and sell it or not. You can put on plays in your backyard. But you have to have a distribution process for movies.

Warner: You have a special contempt for producers. What makes them so despicable?

Mamet: Everybody is a producer in Hollywood, and there are a lot of people who produce nothing.

Warner: Screenwriters seem to be dispensable in Hollywood, or even interchangeable. Why is there so little regard for them?

Mamet: A lot of people in the business end loathe screenwriters because it looks like they aren't doing much of anything. And if they do it well, it looks like anybody can do it.

Curtis vs. Olivier

Warner: You say the less dialogue in movies, the better. Isn't that strange advice coming from someone who is so well known for his dialogue?

Mamet: If you've got a lot of dialogue in a movie, instead of camera angles and shots, you're doing something wrong because the audience understands the information much quicker when they're watching the shots. Commercial makers all know this. It's hard enough to do it for 10 seconds in a commercial, but it's even harder for a two-hour film.

Warner: You have some very unorthodox views of movies and actors. For instance, you may be the only person who thinks Tony Curtis is a better actor than Laurence Olivier.

Mamet: Everybody thinks that; they're just not aware that they think it. And here's how you know. Ask anybody to think of Laurence Olivier, and the best that they're going to do is say, ``Great, great actor.'' But there's going to be no change in their demeanor. Ask someone to talk about Tony Curtis and they'll say, ``Oh yes, oh yes, `Some Like It Hot' and `The Boston Strangler.''' It's a visceral reaction.

Godlike Newman

Warner: In your book, you call Paul Newman ``the most beautiful man ever to grace the screen.''

Mamet: I just love Paul. He looks like a Greek god. He may actually be a Greek god.

Warner: You don't like audience testing, where they bring people in before the movie is released, ask them what they think and then, based on what they say, make changes in the film.

Mamet: It doesn't work. If it did, there wouldn't be any flops. If it worked, rather than the billionaires in the movie business hiring some schmo to do audience testing, the schmo would be hiring the billionaires.

Warner: You created the TV series ``The Unit,'' which is about a Special Forces team. Where did the idea come from?

Mamet: I was doing a movie called ``Spartan'' about a guy in an unnamed Special Forces unit, and I read a book called ``Inside Delta Force'' by one of the original members. I called him up and I asked him if he would be my technical adviser.

So we were sitting around one day after shooting and started talking about his book. And he said, ``I'd like to make a television show. I have so many stories to tell that didn't make it into the book.''

Warner: There's a character on ``The Simpsons'' named Gil who's supposedly based on the pathetic Jack Lemmon salesman in ``Glengarry Glen Ross.'' Do you consider that a tribute?

Mamet: Of course it is. Jackie Gleason once said ``The Flintstones'' was just ``The Honeymooners'' in disguise. He said it was the greatest honor of his life that they thought enough of him to demean his image.

``Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business'' is published by Pantheon (250 pages, $22).

(Rick Warner is the movie critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Rick Warner in New York at rwarner1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 20, 2007 00:16 EST