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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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All of us. All of us. We're doomed.
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Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
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My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.
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Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.
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The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.
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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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Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
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I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.
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Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
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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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Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
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I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.
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War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
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You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
David Mamet
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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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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
David Mamet
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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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Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.
David Mamet