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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.

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
Lines
Theatre
Whether
Accomplish
Write
Moved
Tell
Case
Couch
Character
Line
Couches
Writing
Cases
Apparent
Trying
Saying
Directions
Going
Stage
Aids

More quotes by David Mamet

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If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions.
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I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.
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Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.
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Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
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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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Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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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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IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
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When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
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I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
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Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
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If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
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A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.
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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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Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.
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It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
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I don't really have a social life.
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