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Film Quotes by David Mamet

14 Film quotes by David Mamet

All Film quotes David Mamet’s page

David Mamet’s take on movies is as razor‑sharp as his dialogue. Though the list is brief, each line cuts to the core of his views on drama, direction, and the craft of filmmaking, making it a handy entry point for anyone curious about his cinematic voice.

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Film is a collaborative business: bend over.

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The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.

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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

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The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.

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Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving…

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Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why…

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Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

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The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

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Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

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I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have…

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Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.

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"Based on a true story" is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of "no loan request refused." For, at best, the creator has…

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My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if…

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Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens…

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If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm…

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Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.

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When I started out I was a failed actor.

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We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

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“We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of…

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Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

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The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in…

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I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is…

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Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

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“Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.”

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“How was her crumbcake? oh.. from the store... …”

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A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators…

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The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to…

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In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.

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“As a youth I enjoyed — indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered — the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism.…

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