David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mametis an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Rossand Speed-the-Plow. Mamet first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His play Race opened on Broadway on December 6, 2009...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth30 November 1947
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.
I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.
In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.
In Chicago, we love our crooks!
It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
You got an all-out prize fight, you wait 'til the fight's over, one guy's left standing and that's how you know who's won.
There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.
It is the objective of the protagonist that keeps us in our seats.
Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed.
The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
All fears are one fear. Just the fear of death. And we accept it, then we are at peace.
Don't assume I'm dumb because I wear a suit and tie.
Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival.
In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough, you'll probably come across something that will give you a key as to structure. I think the process of writing a play is working back and forth between the moment and the whole. The moment and the whole, the fluidity of the dialogue and the necessity of a strict construction. Letting one predominate for a while and coming back and fixing it so that eventually what you do, like a pastry chef, is frost your mistakes, if you can.