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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
Otherwise
Cutting
Story
Action
Tell
Stories
Narration
Dramatic

More quotes by David Mamet

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The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
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The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
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I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
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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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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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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.
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Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.
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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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I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.
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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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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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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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A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.
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We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.
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Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.
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I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.
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Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
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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.
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The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
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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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