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
There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.
The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy.
People only speak to get something.
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
What we're trying to do is find two or more shots the juxtaposition of which will give us the idea.
I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.
Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens next. That's the only thing that's going on. . . . Character is nothing other than action, and character-driven means The plot stinks, and you'd better hope the star is popular enough to open the movie in spite of it.
No one enjoys being equal.
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed "unwittingly," the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.
People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That's the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage. They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it's just coincidence, because what they're trying to do is accomplish an objective.
We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.