Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Story
Report
True
Aesthetic
Occurrence
Film
Reports
Reduction
Stories
Interpretation
Refused
Best
Actual
Request
Come
Creator
Equivalent
Based
Loan
Understanding
Fashioned

More quotes by David Mamet

Image
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law?s treatment.
David Mamet
Image
Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
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
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.
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
People only speak to get something.
David Mamet
Image
I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.
David Mamet
Image
The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing that politicians go in poor and go out rich that the Government screws up everything it touches and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
David Mamet
Image
The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.
David Mamet
Image
There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
David Mamet
Image
You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
David Mamet
Image
Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
David Mamet
Image
Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
David Mamet
Image
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
David Mamet