Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Schools
Useless
Drama
Experience
Found
Film
School
Suspect
Suspects

More quotes by David Mamet

Image
The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders the Arabs would like to kill them all.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
David Mamet
Image
You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.
David Mamet
Image
The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
David Mamet
Image
Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as real life, do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
When I started out I was a failed actor.
David Mamet
Image
Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
David Mamet
Image
The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.
David Mamet
Image
The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
I don't really have a social life.
David Mamet
Image
You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
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.'
David Mamet
Image
I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.'
David Mamet
Image
I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
David Mamet