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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?
David Mamet
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David Mamet
Age: 77
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
Able
Questions
Every
Answer
Scene
Wants
Answers
Three
Happens
Screenplays
Film
Questioning
More quotes by David Mamet
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.'
David Mamet
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
Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
David Mamet
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
David Mamet
I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
They have a desire to put on plays and to fulfill that traditional role of a theater in a community: to be the place where people go to hear the truth.
David Mamet
When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
David Mamet
When I started out I was a failed actor.
David Mamet
The pain of losing is diverting. So is the thrill of winning. Winning, however, is lonelier, as those you've won money from are not likely to commiserate with you. Winning takes getting used to.
David Mamet
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
David Mamet
Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
David Mamet
I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.
David Mamet
Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival.
David Mamet
We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
David Mamet
The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle.
David Mamet
