David Mamet

American playwright and screenwriter — author of Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow — screenwriter for The Verdict, The Untouchables, Wag the Dog — who publicly converted from liberal to conservative and wrote The Secret Knowledge explaining his political evolution.

Creates the realistic American workplace drama — Glengarry Glen Ross's portrait of real estate salesmen (the salesroom as primal competition space, the dialogue as pure linguistic aggression) created a new idiom for American theater that is simultaneously political and deeply human.