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
I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail.
There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
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.
We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
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.
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
Having spent too many years in show business, the one thing I see that succeeds is persistence. It's the person who just ain't gonna go home. I decided early on that I wasn't going to go home. This is what I'll be doing until they put me in jail or in a coffin.
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.