Quote

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

More quotes by David Mamet

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Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
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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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Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
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Film is a collaborative business: bend over.
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I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
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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 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.
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Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.
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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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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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A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team.
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The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.
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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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I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.
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You can't rely on the acting to tell the story.
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Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
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Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival.
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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?
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I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.
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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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