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
The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.
I look back upon my Liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.
You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.
Train yourself for a profession that does not exist.
Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.
Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
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.