David Mamet on the title, Redbelt:

MAMET: In Brazilian Jujitsu there’s one red belt and it’s currently held by Helio Gracie, who’s one of the two men who invented Brazilian Jujitsu. He’s now 95 or 96 and he wears the red belt. It’s honorific, because in Jujitsu there are only the four belts - white, blue, purple, brown, and black. White means you don’t have a belt, in effect.

Mamet on the philosophy of the belts in Jujitsu since they're not awarded through competition:

MAMET: That’s an excellent question. They get their belt because the belt is awarded to them by the teacher in the academy. And the tradition of my academy, and I understand the tradition of Brazilian Jujitsu, the purest form is very different than a lot of martial arts, because the martial art would happen as people test for the belt and the teacher says these are the things you have to do in Kung Fu or Tae Kwon Do to get the next level belt. But in my academy, it’s exactly the opposite. What happens is one day, usually after a particularly strenuous class or workout or something like that, the teacher will come over and give you the next belt and everybody’s reaction is almost universally the same - they say, "No, I’m not ready yet." So the belt is a symbol that you’ve been watched and observed and it’s time for you to take on new responsibilities.

Memet on Tim Allen’s character having a hot watch:

MAMET: Who else is going to have a hot watch except a celebrity? You think about it, a guy who has a vast amount of money and - I’ll tell you a story. I was at a party at my friend’s... A guy had just gotten some big thing at his studio and he says to John - John says, "Oh, what a nice watch." And the fella says, "Oh look, it’s a Patek Phillipe watch. It cost me, oh some stupid amount of money." It’s like $40,000 for the watch. So [my friend} says, "Oh yeah, really?" The guy says, "Cost me $40,000. Yeah, I’m glad you admired it. I even picked it out myself. We had my personal shopper pick it out for us because we don’t have the time." So the guy left and [my friend] started to laugh and I said, "Why are you laughing?" He said, "First off, who would want to pay $40,000 for any watch? Second off, if the watch is listed at $40,000, you can make three phone calls and get it for $20,000. Third off, who would want to tell anybody what their stupid watch cost? And fourth off, and most importantly, if he’s got a personal shopper, one thing is true and one thing is probable. The first thing that’s true is the personal shopper didn’t pay any $40,000 for that watch and the second thing that is probable is the watch may be a phony, because if a guy is dumb enough to hire a personal shopper to waste $20,000, she probably paid $300 for it." So that’s exactly the person who would have a hot watch, a movie star. That’s what Joey Montana says at the end, "Who would be dumb enough to pawn a watch that Chet Frank gave them?"

David Mamet on whether he’s actually saying that a sense of honor is futile:

MAMET: No, quite the contrary. What I’m saying is that people are intrinsically human and that as human beings there aren’t one class of good human beings and one class of bad human beings, we all have the capacity for good and we all have the capacity for bad. So what I tried to do is adopt what people would call the "tragic view of the universe," which is that we all have the capacity to do good, we all fail sometimes, and there’s the capacity for the potential for redemption, there’s potential for grace, and we have to recognize that not only in ourselves, but in each other. So we shouldn’t castigate people by being of a different political persuasion, but realize - it’s like somebody said, some Roman said, "Speak softly. Inside of every man’s breast a fire is raging.".