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Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration.

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
Stories
Narration
Dramatic
Otherwise
Cutting
Story
Action
Tell

More quotes by David Mamet

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If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we're all going to be back in the breadline.
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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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The audience requires not information but drama.
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I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
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My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
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Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.
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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.
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When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
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In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously.
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We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
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Fun is what you do for yourself. If somebody else does it, it's entertainment.
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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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When I started out I was a failed actor.
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Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
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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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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.
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To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art.
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Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
David Mamet
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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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The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.
David Mamet