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We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?

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
Never
Would
Prefer
Test
Tests
Point
Comes
Form
Doe

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Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.
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We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law?s treatment.
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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
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Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
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One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
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Film is a collaborative business: bend over.
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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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What we're trying to do is find two or more shots the juxtaposition of which will give us the idea.
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We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
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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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Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
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Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.
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There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
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Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
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I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
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Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
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For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.
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The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.
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A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.
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I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.
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