Dressed in faded jeans and work boots, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film maker David Mamet seems very much at home in the abandoned Public Waterworks building, where he is shooting his third film, "Homicide."

The waterworks office, now transformed into a police station, is so grungy that it is impossible to tell the real dirt from what has been added by the set designer. Behind the camera, an actor kills time playing Nintendo, while two local youngsters with small speaking parts blow their lines in take after take. Perhaps realizing that criticism would be counterproductive, Mr. Mamet merely says, "Let's do it again" in a quiet voice.

After the critical successes of his two earlier films, the dark con-man picture "House of Games," with Joe Mantegna and Mr. Mamet's former wife, Lindsay Crouse, and "Things Change," the offbeat comedy that paired Mr. Mantegna with Don Ameche, Mr. Mamet is now making a film about a detective on a big-city police force, once again starring Mr. Mantegna.

Though the film is cast more or less in terms of the generic formula of a Hollywood police story, Mr. Mamet's own preoccupations are clearly present. Perhaps the most unconventional aspect of the movie is that Gold, the detective played by Mr. Mantegna, is Jewish.

"Have you ever noticed that in spite of the fact that there were authentic Jewish heroes during World War II, there are no streets named Goldberg Street in America?" Mr. Mamet says. "The very idea sounds funny to our ears.

"My cousin, Eddie Mamet, is a captain with the N.Y.P.D., and it was while I was hanging out with him that I started thinking about this. I mean, 'Homicide' is one of the first movies in which you hear the word 'Jew,' rather than 'Jewish.' There have been other movies about being Jewish, yes, but the joke about 'Gentleman's Agreement,' for example, is that he ain't Jewish. It's an anti-Semitic movie about anti-Semitism against non-Jews.

"And as a Jew it kind of burns me that the only way that the Jewish experience is ever treated in American films...