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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.
David Mamet
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David Mamet
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: November 30
Actor
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Film Director
Film Producer
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Screenwriter
Television Producer
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Chicago
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David Alen Mamet
David Alan Mamet
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More quotes by David Mamet
When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
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I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.
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I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
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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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IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
David Mamet
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
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
David Mamet
My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.
David Mamet
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
David Mamet
One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.
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
All of us. All of us. We're doomed.
David Mamet
Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
David Mamet
Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.
David Mamet
I won't ever do e-mail.
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
The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.
David Mamet
A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.
David Mamet
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
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
