Nov 30

David Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue, and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

Mamet was born in Chicago, the son of a teacher and an attorney. He is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company and gained early acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976: The Duck Variation, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross, which received its first Broadway revival in 2005. Mamet’s first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice. He received an Academy Award nomination for The Verdict a year later.

In 1987, Mamet made his film directing debut with House of Games, starring his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse, and a host of longtime stage associates. He has remained a prolific writer and director, assembling an informal repertory company for his films, including William H. Macy, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Ricky Jay. Like independent filmmaker John Sayles, Mamet funds his own films with the pay he gets from credited and uncredited rewrites of typically big-budget Hollywood films like Wag the Dog and Ronin.

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Nov 29

Pong is a first generation video game released originally as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. It is based on the sport of table tennis and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is hit. Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the world’s first video arcade game but it was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity in both the arcade and home console markets.

Pong was the first game developed by Atari and co-founder Nolan Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn despite having no experience with video games. To acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. He asked Alcorn to create a simple game with one moving spot, two paddles, and digits for score keeping. Alcorn created his own designs because he felt that the basic game was too boring.

He added features to give the game more appeal. To construct the prototype, Alcorn purchased a black and white television set from a local Payless store and placed it into a four-foot wooden cabinet. In September 1972, Bushnell and Alcorn installed the Pong prototype at the local bar, Andy Capp’s Tavern and it was well-received the first night. By the end of March 1973, between 8,000 to 10,000 of the units had been sold, although, taking into account the large number of clones, it is estimated that over 100,000 coin-ops were sold.

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Nov 28

The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943 in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference among the Big Three (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom) in which Stalin was present. The chief discussion was centered on the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

At the same time, a separate protocol pledged the three countries to recognize Iran’s independence. Most importantly the conference was organized to plan the final strategy for the war against Nazi Germany and its allies. The key Allied leaders met together only twice during World War II but when they did confer, their decisions changed the course of history. The first of these two conferences only came about after much pleading and threats from Roosevelt who wished to strengthen the cooperation between the U.S., Great Britain, and the USSR.

Roosevelt wanted this meeting so much that he was willing to make numerous concessions to Stalin, and the choice of location itself was a place more convenient to Stalin. Roosevelt arrived in Tehran with little bargaining power and in poor physical condition. In contrast, Stalin arrived jubilant and swaggering because of the USSR’s most recent victories in Eastern Europe. Churchill was calm and focused, hoping to promote his Mediterranean plan.

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Nov 27

Network is a 1976 New Hollywood drama film about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System, and its struggle with poor ratings. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, and stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and Peter Finch.

Chayefsky and the producer Howard Gottfried had just come off a lawsuit against United Artists, challenging the studio’s right to lease their previous film, The Hospital, to ABC in a package with a less successful film. Despite recently settling this lawsuit, the two men agreed to allow UA to finance Network. After reading the script, UA found the subject matter too controversial and backed out.

Chayefsky and Gottfried shopped the script around to other studios and eventually found an interested party in MGM. Network premiered in New York City on November 27, 1976 with a wide release following shortly afterward. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. In 2006, the script was voted one of the top ten movie scripts of all-time by the Writers Guild of America, East.