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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

David Mamet

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David Mamet
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: November 30
Actor
Author
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Theatrical Director
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
David Alen Mamet
David Alan Mamet
Dialogue
Scripts
Completely
Movie
Film
Able
Without
Good
Script

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Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
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Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration.
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War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
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When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
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I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.
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Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.
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IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
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Every fear hides a wish.
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I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.
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Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
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When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
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The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
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You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
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We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.
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I won't ever do e-mail.
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Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as real life, do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.
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Fun is what you do for yourself. If somebody else does it, it's entertainment.
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Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.
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Make the audience wonder what's going on by putting them in the same position as the protagonist.
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Film is a collaborative business: bend over.
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