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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.

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
Live
Wonder
Calling
Viability
Call
Concern
Censoring
Nations
Limits
Oppressive
Freedom
Nation
Dissent
Times
Expression
Censorship
Process
Instead
Commercial
Thought
Media
Limit
Become
Liberty
Police

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My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
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Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.
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One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.
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I love Superman. I'm a big fan of anyone who can make his living in his underwear.
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People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
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I don't really have a social life.
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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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Based on a true story is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of no loan request refused. For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence.
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You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
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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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Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
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The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
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The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
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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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They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.
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Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
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Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
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Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.
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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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