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If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).
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
Point
Cannot
Stories
Certain
Narration
Find
Unimportant
Without
Virtually
Made
Audience
Story
More quotes by David Mamet
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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It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
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I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.
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Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.
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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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As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
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I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
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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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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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American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.
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I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
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Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
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If You can't tell it to me in one sentence, they can't put it in TV Guide.
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The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.
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The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
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Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.
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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 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.
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Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.
David Mamet
Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.
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