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 look back on 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.
Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.
When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for.
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.
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.
At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!'
What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.
Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.
Marijuana, for example, won't help one determine the correct aspect ratio...
Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.
Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.