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How Can I Be Secure? Through Amassing Wealth Beyond All Measure? No. And What's Beyond Measure? That's A Sickness. That's A Trap. There Is No Measure. Only Greed.

-David Mamet

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How Can I Be

David Mamet

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How Can I Be Secure? Through Amassing Wealth Beyond All Measure? No. And What's Beyond Measure? That's A Sickness. That's A Trap. There Is No Measure. Only Greed.

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My Dad Was An Immigrant Kid And A Democrat And A Jew, And We Didn't Know Any Republicans In Our Group. So I Grew Up Democratic. My Dad Was A Labor Lawyer - A Very Hardworking Guy, A One-horse Labor Lawyer - And Then I Went To Hippie College And Lived In The Bubble.

You Know, I Once Read An Interesting Book Which Said That, Uh, Most People Lost In The Wilds, They, They Die Of Shame. Yeah, See, They Die Of Shame. 'what Did I Do Wrong? How Could I Have Gotten Myself Into This?' And So They Sit There And They... Die. Because They Didn't Do The One Thing That Would Save Their Lives. Thinking.

"based On A True Story" Is A Come-on, The Aesthetic Equivalent Of "no Loan Request Refused." For, At Best, The Creator Has Fashioned A Film Based On His Understanding Of, Interpretation Of, And Reduction Of The Report Of An Actual Occurrence.

No One Enjoys Being Equal.

All Fears Are One Fear. Just The Fear Of Death. And We Accept It, Then We Are At Peace.

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.

As You All Know First Prize Is A Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone Wanna See Second Prize? Second Prize Is A Set Of Steak Knives. Third Prize Is You're Fired.

I Took The Liberal View For Many Decades, But I Believe I Have Changed My Mind.

The Pain Of Losing Is Diverting. So Is The Thrill Of Winning. Winning, However, Is Lonelier, As Those You've Won Money From Are Not Likely To Commiserate With You. Winning Takes Getting Used To.

We Cannot Live Without Trade. A Society Can Neither Advance Nor Improve Without Excess Of Disposable Income. This Excess Can Only Be Amassed Through The Production Of Goods And Services Necessary Or Attractive To The Mass. A Financial System Which Allows This Leads To Inequality; One That Does Not Leads To Mass Starvation.

The First Amendment Ensures Not That Speech Will Be Fair, But That It Will Be Free. It Cannot Be Both.

First Amendment

My Definition Of A 'friend' Is, Coming From Chicago, Someone Who Says, 'yeah, Sure. You Know What? Let's Talk About What We Can Talk About. Let's Help Each Other Out. Your Politics Are None Of My Business.'

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.

It's Upsetting To Be A Man In Our Society.

We Must Have A Pie. Stress Cannot Exist In The Presence Of A Pie.

The Israelis Would Like To Live In Peace Within Their Borders; The Arabs Would Like To Kill Them All.

I've Always Been Fascinated By The Picaresque.

A Liberal Pretending To Be A Conservative? That's Like A Straight Person Pretending To Be Gay To Get Greater Acceptance.

The Mind Is A Mill Which Can Incessant Turn, 'til Its Mere Operation Focus The Stress Inward And The Stones Grind Themselves To Dust.

Listen, Here's The Thing About An English Degree - If You Sat Somebody Down And Asked Them To Make A List Of The Writers They Admire Over The Last Hundred Years, See How Many Of Them Got A Degree In English.

You Don't Know What Life Is. You Know Nothing.

For It Is Written That Just As It Is Forbidden To Partake Of The Forbidden, It Is Forbidden Not To Partake Of The Permitted.

Always Tell The Truth - It's The Easiest Thing To Remember.

The Dream And The Film Are The Juxtaposition Of Images In Order To Answer A Question.

American Football Seems To Resemble Soccer In That One Scores By Putting The Ball Through The Opponent's Goal; But Football, Truly Is About Land. The Settlers Want To Move The Line Of Scrimmage Westward, The Native Americans Want To Move It East.

The Honest Man Might Observe... That No One Gets Something For Nothing; That Politicians Go In Poor And Go Out Rich; That The Government Screws Up Everything It Touches; And That The Will To Believe Is Best Confined To The Religious Venue, As To Practice It Elsewhere Is Just Too Damned Expensive.

It Is Not The Constitutional Prerogative Of The Government To Determine Needs.

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.

Multiple Choice

You Can't Write About History Without Writing About Politics At Some Point. History Is About Movements Of People. 'what Is Criminality And What Is Government' Is A Theme That Runs Through Every History.

I Was Fortunate Enough To Have A Rambling Youth.

I've Always Been More Comfortable Sinking While Clutching A Good Theory Than Swimming With An Ugly Fact.

It's Hard To Write A Good Play Because It's Hard To Structure A Plot. If You Can Think Of It Off The Top Of Your Head, So Can The Audience.

You Know, Young Actors Say All The Time, 'should I Use My Own Life Experience?' And My Response Is, 'what Choice Do You Have?'

Anyone Can Write Five People Trapped In A Snowstorm. The Question Is How You Get Them Into The Snowstorm. It's Hard To Write A Good Play Because It's Hard To Structure A Plot. If You Can Think Of It Off The Top Of Your Head, So Can The Audience. To Think Of A Plot That Is, As Aristotle Says, Surprising And Yet Inevitable, Is A Lot, Lot, Lot Of Work.

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.

I Love Working On A Typewriter - The Rhythm, The Sound; It's Like Playing The Piano, Which I Do, Too.

It Is The Objective Of The Protagonist That Keeps Us In Our Seats.

I Don't Really Have A Social Life.

I Hate Vacations. There's Nothing To Do.

I Hate The Computer. I Hate Their Spell-check. I Won't Ever Do E-mail.

Opportunity May Knock, But It Seldom Nags.

Invent Nothing, Deny Nothing, Speak Up, Stand Up, Stay Out Of School.

President Obama Seems To Understand The Constitution As A 'set Of Suggestions.'

The Terror And Beauty Of The Dream Come From The Connection Of Previously Unrelated Mundanities Of Life.

Forget Narrative, Backstory, Characterisation, Exposition, All Of That. Just Make The Audience Want To Know What Happens Next.

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'm Greedy And Ambitious Like Everybody Else.

The Surprise Is Half The Battle. Many Things Are Half The Battle, Losing Is Half The Battle. Let's Think About What's The Whole Battle.

Always Do Things The Least Interesting Way, The Most Blunt Way, And You Make A Better Movie. This Is My Experience.

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.

If, Indeed, A Firearm Were More Dangerous To Its Possessors Than To Potential Aggressors, Would It Not Make Sense For The Government To Arm All Criminals, And Let Them Accidentally Shoot Themselves? Is This Absurd? Yes, And Yet The Government, Of Course, Is Arming Criminals.

I Love All Insider Memoirs. It Doesn't Matter Whether It's Truck-drivers Or Doctors. I Think Everybody Likes To Go Backstage, Find Out What People Think And What They Talk About And What Specialised Job They Have.

I've Been Alienating My Public Since I Was 20 Years Old. When 'american Buffalo' Came Out On Broadway, People Would Storm Out And Say, 'how Dare He Use That Kind Of Language!' Of Course I'm Alienating The Public! That's What They Pay Me For.

There Is No Such Thing As Character Other Than The Habitual Action, As Mr. Aristotle Told Us Two Thousand Years Ago.

Anyone Ever Lost In The Wild Knows That Nature Wants You Dead.

Cultivate A Love Of Skill. Learn Theatrical Skills. They Will Give You Continual Pleasure, Self-confidence, And Link You To Fifty Thousand Years Of The History Of Our Profession.

Self Confidence

If You Find That A Point Cannot Be Made Without Narration, It Is Virtually Certain That The Point Is Unimportant To The Story (which Is To Say, To The Audience).

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.

Luck, If There Is Such A Thing, Is Either Going To Favor Everyone Equally Or Going To Exhibit A Preference For The Prepared.

If The Scene Bores You When You Read It, Rest Assured It Will Bore The Actors, And Will Then Bore The Audience, And We're All Going To Be Back In The Breadline.

Make The Audience Wonder What's Going On By Putting Them In The Same Position As The Protagonist.

If You're Writing An Opinion Piece, It's Your Job To Write Your Opinion. If, On The Other Hand, You Wrote A Novel, As Virginia Woolf Tells Us, It Would Be Inappropriate If You Let Your Novel Be Influenced By Your Political Opinions.

Political Opinions

We All Hope. It's What Keeps Us Alive.

The Popularity Of Disaster Movies Expresses A Collective Perception Of A World Threatened By Irresistible And Unforeseen Forces Which Nevertheless Are Thwarted At The Last Moment. Their Thinly Veiled Symbolic Meaning Might Be Translated Thus: We Are Innocent Of Wrongdoing. We Are Attacked By Unforeseeable Forces Come To Harm Us. We Are, Thus, Innocent Even Of Negligence. Though Those Forces Are Insuperable, Chance Will Come To Our Aid And We Shall Emerge Victorious.

Symbolic Meaning

A Play Is Basically A Long, Formalistic Polemic. You Can Write It Without The Poetry, And If You Do, You May Have A Pretty Good Play. We Know This Because We See Plays In Translation. Not Many People Speak Norwegian Or Danish Or Whatever Guys Like Ibsen Spoke, Or Russian - Yet We Understand Chekhov And The Others.

The Correct Unit Of Study Is Not The Play; It Is The Scene.

Art Is About The Spontaneous Connection Of The Artist To His Own Unconscious - About Insight Beyond Reason. If His Insight Were Reasonable, Anyone Could Do It, But Anyone Cannot. Only Few Can, And They Are Called.

Don't Assume I'm Dumb Because I Wear A Suit And Tie.

If You Can't Tell It To Me In One Sentence, They Can't Put It In Tv Guide.

Liberalism Is A Religion. Its Tenets Cannot Be Proved, Its Capacity For Waste And Destruction Demonstrated. But It Affords A Feeling Of Spiritual Rectitude At Little Or No Cost.

When We Leave The Play Saying How Spectacular The Sets Or Costumes Were, Or How Interesting The Ideas, It Means We Had A Bad Time.

Each Culture Has Its Own Form Of Staged Combat, Evolved From Its Particular Method Of Street Fighting And Cleaned Up For Presentation As A Spectacle, E.g. Savate, Cornish Wrestling, Karate, Kung-fu.

As Long As The Protagonist Wants Something, The Audience Will Want Something.

I Know Very Well What It Is To Be Out Of Work And To Be Cheated By Employers And I Know What It Is To Be An Employer.

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 Conscious Mind Is Going To Suggest The Obvious, The Cliché, Because These Things Have Offered The Security Of Having Succeeded In The Past.

The Quality I Most Admire In A Man Is Steadfastness.

I Won't Ever Do E-mail.

I'm Afraid Of Only Two Things: Being Lazy And Being Cowardly.

Put. That Coffee. Down. Coffee's For Closers Only.

The Secret Knowledge Is There's Nobody Home But Us Chickens. The Constitution Was Written By A Bunch Of Regular Guys Who Tried To Get Together And Thrash Out A Contract Under Which They Could Get Together That Would Keep People Together.

There's Something In Me That Just Wants To Create Dialogue.

The Liberals In My Neighbourhood Wouldn't Give Away Brentwood To The Palestinians, But They Want To Give Away Tel Aviv.

To Find Beauty In The Sad, Hope In The Midst Of Loss, And Dignity In Failure Is Great Poetic Art.

The Pursuit Of Fashion Is The Attempt Of The Middle Class To Co-opt Tragedy. In Adopting The Clothing, Speech, And Personal Habits Of Those In Straitened, Dangerous, Or Pitiful Circumstances, The Middle Class Seeks To Have What It Feels To Be The Exigent And Nonequivocal Experiences Had By Those It Emulates.

I Used To Think I'd Like To Be A Fireman - In Fact, I Still Would - And The Only Drawback I Could See Was Coming Back To The Firehouse, After A Day Of Fighting Fires, And Still Having To Put In An Eight-hour Day Writing.

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.

It’s Not A Lie. It’s A Gift For Fiction.

In A World We Find Terrifying, We Ratify That Which Doesn't Threaten Us.

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.

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 Found Them To Be Useless.

My Idea Of Perfect Happiness Is A Healthy Family, Peace Between Nations, And All The Critics Die.

All Of Us. All Of Us. We're Doomed.

Obama Is A Tyrant The Same Way Fdr Was A Tyrant. He Has A View Of Presidential Power That States: The Government Is In Control Of The Country, And The President Is In Charge Of The Government. He's Taken An Imperial View Of The Presidency.

Life In The Movie Business Is Like The Beginning Of A New Love Affair: It's Full Of Surprises, And You're Constantly Getting F***ed.

Old Age And Treachery Will Always Beat Youth And Exuberance.

We All Die In The End, But There's No Reason To Die In The Middle.

I Always Thought The Real Violence In Hollywood Isn't What's On The Screen. It's What You Have To Do To Raise The Money.

It's Hard For A Jew Of My Generation, An American Jew, Who Is Philo-zionistic, Not To Romanticize Israel.

My Alma Mater Is The Chicago Public Library.

When I Started Out I Was A Failed Actor.

It's Hard To Write A Good Plot, It's Very Hard.

Every Fear Hides A Wish.

I Go Out There. I'm Out There Every Day. [pause] There Is Nothing Out There.

Storytelling Is Like Sex. We All Do It Naturally. Some Of Us Are Better At It Than Others.

The Oscars Demonstrate The Will Of The People To Control And Judge Those They Have Elected To Stand Above Them (much, Perhaps, As In Bygone Days, An Election Celebrated The Same).

There's Nothing In The World More Silent Than The Telephone The Morning After Everybody Pans Your Play. It Won't Ring From Room Service; Your Mother Won't Be Calling You. If The Phone Has Not Rung By 8 In The Morning, You're Dead.

I Love Superman. I'm A Big Fan Of Anyone Who Can Make His Living In His Underwear.

In Practice We, In The World, Must Do Business With Each Other.

People May Or May Not Say What They Mean... But They Always Say Something Designed To Get What They Want.

Movies Were Never An Art Form, They Were Entertainment. It Just Evolved Into An Art Form From There, And It's Still Evolving In Different Ways.

The Basis Of Drama Is... The Struggle Of The Hero Towards A Specific Goal At The End Of Which He Realises That What Kept Him From It Was, In The Lesser Drama, Civilisation And, In The Great Drama, The Discovery Of Something That He Did Not Set Out To Discover But Which Can Be Seen Retrospectively As Inevitable.

My Dad Was A Labour Lawyer, And The Ideas That I Grew Up With - Bad Management, Bad Capitalism, Robber Barons - When I Applied This To My Own Life, I Saw That We Are All On Both Sides Of The Coin.

In Chicago, We Love Our Crooks!

You Wanna Know How To Get Capone? They Pull A Knife, You Pull A Gun. He Sends One Of Yours To The Hospital, You Send One Of His To The Morgue. That's The Chicago Way! And That's How You Get Capone.

Show Business Is And Has Always Been A Depraved Carnival.

I Don't Think There's Any Information To Be Gotten From Television.

There Is A Profound And Ineradicable Taint Of Antisemitism In The British.

Conservatives Believe In Smaller Government And In The Power Of The Electorate. So I Think That We're Less Likely To Try To Use A Dramatic Forum To Warp People's Political Views.

Everybody Makes Their Own Fun. If You Don't Make It Yourself, It Isn't Fun. It's Entertainment.

Policemen So Cherish Their Status As Keepers Of The Peace And Protectors Of The Public That They Have Occasionally Been Known To Beat To Death Those Citizens Or Groups Who Question That Status.

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 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.

They Say The Definition Of Ambivalence Is Watching Your Mother-in-law Drive Over A Cliff In Your New Cadillac.

The Most Charming Of Theories Holds That Someone Other Than Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare's Plays -- That He Was Of Too Low A State, And Of Insufficient Education. But Where In The Wide History Of The World Do We Find Art Created By The Excessively Wealthy, Powerful, Or Educated?

Don't Write Stage Directions. If It Is Not Apparent What The Character Is Trying To Accomplish By Saying The Line, Tell Us How The Character Said It Or Whether Or Not She Moved To The Couch Isn't Going To Aid The Case.

Any Time Two Characters Are Talking About A Third, The Scene Is A Crock Of S***.

They Have A Desire To Put On Plays And To Fulfill That Traditional Role Of A Theater In A Community: To Be The Place Where People Go To Hear The Truth.

My Greatest Fear Is That The Audience Will Beat Me To The Punch Line.

In Playwriting, You've Got To Be Able To Write Dialogue. And If You Write Enough Of It And Let It Flow Enough, You'll Probably Come Across Something That Will Give You A Key As To Structure. I Think The Process Of Writing A Play Is Working Back And Forth Between The Moment And The Whole. The Moment And The Whole, The Fluidity Of The Dialogue And The Necessity Of A Strict Construction. Letting One Predominate For A While And Coming Back And Fixing It So That Eventually What You Do, Like A Pastry Chef, Is Frost Your Mistakes, If You Can.

Every Scene Should Be Able To Answer Three Questions: "who Wants What From Whom? What Happens If They Don't Get It? Why Now?"

Films Have Degenerated To Their Original Operation As Carnival Amusement - They Offer Not Drama But Thrills.

I Understand That Computers, Which I Once Believed To Be But A Hermaphrodite Typewriter-cum-filing Cabinet, Offer The Cyber Literate Increased Ability To Communicate. I Do Not Think This Is Altogether A Bad Thing, However It May Appear On The Surface.

Characters On Stage, Like People In What We Refer To As "real Life," Do Not Speak To Reveal Themselves. They Do Not Speak To Conceal Themselves. They Speak To Get Whatever It Is That They Want. It Is The Only Reason They Speak.

Every Reiteration Of The Idea That Nothing Matters Debases The Human Spirit.

What We're Trying To Do Is Find Two Or More Shots The Juxtaposition Of Which Will Give Us The Idea.

Here's What Happens In A Play. You Get Involved In A Situation Where Something Is Unbalanced. If Nothing's Unbalanced, There's No Reason To Have A Play. If Hamlet Comes Home From School, And His Dad's Not Dead And Asks Him If He's Had A Good Time, It's Boring. But If Something's Unbalanced, It Must Be Returned To Order.

It Is The Writer’s Job To Make The Play Interesting. It Is The Actor’s Job To Make The Performance Truthful.

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.

Being A Writer In Hollywood Is Like Going To Hitler's Eagle Nest With A Great Idea For A Bar Mitzvah.

My Tendency As An Actor Was To Correct People, Was To Say, 'what If We Tried It This Way, What About If We Tried That Way?' That's Terrible Habit For An Actor, But That's A Good Habit For Director. So I Became A Director.

The True Writer Must Write Not The Acceptable But The True.

People Ask Me, 'what Do You Do?' And I Tell Them I'm A Writer, But Always With The Silent Reservation, 'i Am, Of Course, Not Really A Writer. Hemingway Was A Writer.'

The Greater The Intellect, The More Ease In Its Misdirection.

Our Job, As Writers Is To Do Our Jobs.

Freud Believed That Our Dreams Sometimes Recapitulate A Speech, A Comment We've Heard Or Something That We've Read. I Always Had Compositions In My Dreams. They Would Be A Joke, A Piece Of A Novel, A Witticism Or A Piece Of Dialogue From A Play, And I Would Dream Them. I Would Actually Express Them Line By Line In The Dream. Sometimes After Waking Up I Would Remember A Snatch Or Two And Write Them Down. There's Something In Me That Just Wants To Create Dialogue.

We're All Put To The Test... But It Never Comes In The Form Or At The Point We Would Prefer, Does It?

Culture Exists And Evolves To Relegate To Habit Categories Of Interactions The Constant Conscious Reference To Which Would Make Human Interaction Impossible.

The Realization That I Came To Is That Each Citizen For Himself Or Herself Understands The Economics, Which Is, "i Better Make More Than I Spend And I Better Put Something Aside For A Rainy Day, And I Want To Get A Good Idea About What To Do With The Surplus So That Perhaps It Can Grow While I'm Sleeping." And That That's Capitalism. Everybody Practices It, But Half Of The Country - Those On The Left - Deny That It's True.

The Audience Perceives Only What The Actor Wants To Do To The Other Actor.

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.

A Man Stands Alone At The Plate. This Is The Time For What? For Individual Achievement. There He Stands Alone. But In The Field, What? Part Of A Team.

The Founders Recognized That Government Is Quite Literally A Necessary Evil, That There Must Be Opposition, Between Its Various Branches, And Between Political Parties, For These Are The Only Ways To Temper The Individual's Greed For Power And The Electorates' Desires For Peace By Submission To Coercion Or Blandishment.

Here Is A Sovereign Talisman Against Regret: Never Do That Which Might Engender It.

We Respond To A Drama To That Extent To Which It Corresponds To Our Dream Life.

I'm Responding To The Will Of The People.

Where In The Wide History Of The World Do We Find Art Created By The Excessively Wealthy, Powerful, Or Educated?

I'm Not The Guy To Ask About Politics. I'm A Gag Writer.

The Work Of The Director Is The Work Of Constructing The Shot List From The Script.

The Main Question In Drama, The Way I Was Taught, Is Always, 'what Does The Protagonist Want?' That's What Drama Is. It Comes Down To That. It's Not About Theme, It's Not About Ideas, It's Not About Setting, But What The Protagonist Wants.

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.

Fun Is What You Do For Yourself. If Somebody Else Does It, It's Entertainment.

Mixed Martial Arts Was Invented By Brazilians, Whose Families Had Been Trained By The Japanese. Those Brazilians Came To The U.s., Where Their Invention Was Bought Out, Gussied Up And Presented To The World, Which Found It Good.

Roll Back The Clock, And Every Possession Of Every Great Country Started With A Crime.

A Good Film Script Should Be Able To Do Completely Without Dialogue.

I Like Bach. I Like Randy Newman.

Hitchcock Denigrated American Films, Saying They Were All 'pictures Of People Talking' - As, Indeed, Most Of Them Are.

In My Family, In The Days Prior To Television, We Liked To While Away The Evenings By Making Ourselves Miserable, Solely Based On Our Ability To Speak The Language Viciously.

The Essence Of Jiu-jitsu Is Philosophy.

One Person May Need (or Want) More Leisure, Another More Work; One More Adventure, Another More Security, And So On. It Is This Diversity That Makes A Country, Indeed A State, A City, A Church, Or A Family, Healthy. 'one-size-fits-all,' And That Size Determined By The State Has A Name, And That Name Is 'slavery.'

The Purpose Of Technique Is To Free The Unconscious. If You Follow The Rules Ploddingly, They Will Allow Your Unconscious To Be Free.

I'm Entitled To My Political Opinions, And I Get To Vote Because I'm An American.

Political Opinions

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!'

Every Reiteration Of The Idea That _nothing Matters_ Debases The Human Spirit. Every Reiteration Of The Idea That There Is No Drama In Modern Life, There Is Only Dramatization, That There Is No Tragedy, There Is Only Unexplained Misfortune, Debases Us. It Denies What We Know To Be True. In Denying What We Know, We Are As A Nation Which Cannot Remember Its Dreams--like An Unhappy Person Who Cannot Remember His Dreams And So Denies That He Does Dream, And Denies That There Are Such Things As Dreams.

Almost All Movie Scripts Contain Material That Cannot Be Filmed.

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.

Many Players Will Not Improve Because They Cannot Bear Self-knowledge.

Train Yourself For A Profession That Does Not Exist.

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?

Worry Is Interest Paid In Advance On A Debt That Never Comes Due.

The So-called Assault Weapons Ban Is A Hoax. It Is A Political Appeal To The Ignorant. The Guns It Supposedly Banned Have Been Illegal For 78 Years. Did The Ban Make Them 'more' Illegal? The Ban Addresses Only The Appearance Of Weapons, Not Their Operation.

Assault Weapons

Get Into The Scene Late; Get Out Of The Scene Early.

Welcome To Chicago. This Town Stinks Like A Whorehouse At Low Tide.

War Is Tragedy. The Great War Stories Are Tragedies. It's The Failure Of Diplomacy. 'war And Peace,' 'a Farewell To Arms,' 'for Whom The Bell Tolls.' Those Are Some Of The Greatest Tragedies.

Film Is A Collaborative Business: Bend Over.

Any Claim To Actual Identification As A Drama Must Rest Upon The Construction Of A Plot Independent Of The Assignment Of Affliction To The Protagonist.

The Great Movie Can Be As Free Of Being A Record Of The Progress Of The Protagonist As Is A Dream.

What I Value Most In My Friends Is Loyalty.

My Alma Mater Is The Chicago Public Library. I Got What Little Educational Foundation I Got In The Third-floor Reading Room, Under The Tutelage Of A Coca-cola Sign.

We Americans Have Always Considered Hollywood, At Best, A Sinkhole Of Depraved Venality. And, Of Course, It Is. It Is Not A Protective Monastery Of Aesthetic Truth. It Is A Place Where Everything Is Incredibly Expensive.

I Examined My Liberalism And Found It Like An Addiction To Roulette. Here, Though The Odds Are Plain, And The Certainty Of Loss Apparent To Anyone With A Knowledge Of Arithmetic, The Addict, Failing Time And Again, Is Convinced He Yet Is Graced With The Power To Contravene Natural Laws. The Roulette Addict, When He Invariably Comes To Grief, Does Not Examine Either The Nature Of Roulette, Or Of His Delusion, But Retires To Develop A New System, And To Scheme For More Funds.

All Rhetorical Questions Are Accusations.

Rhetorical Question

Like Lincoln Said: "if Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong," And I Feel The Same Way About The Leftist Dismantling Of The West. If That's Not Wrong, Then Nothing Is Wrong.

Being Among My People Is A Delight. We Jews Live Among Ourselves. I Love It.

A Stage Play Is Basically A Form Of Uber-schizophrenia. You Split Yourself Into Two Minds - One Being The Protagonist And The Other Being The Antagonist. The Playwright Also Splits Himself Into Two Other Minds: The Mind Of The Writer And The Mind Of The Audience.

Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It Will Finally Be Worth It. Acting Is More About Courage Than Anything Else.

Blasphemy And Prayer Are One. Both Assert The Existence Of A Superior Power. The First, However, With Conviction.

The Audience Requires Not Information But Drama.

The Individual Is Not Only Best Qualified To Provide His Own Personal Defense, He Is The Only One Qualified To Do So: And His Right To Do So Is Guaranteed By The Constitution.

I've Been Training In Jiu-jitsu For About Six Years And I'm Very Fortunate To Live In That World. All The Fighters Hang Out And Have Lunch Together Just About Every Day And Trade Stories. And I've Always Been Fascinated How In The World Of Jiu-jitsu In L.a. Everybody In The Fight World - Cops, Special Forces, Bouncers, Stuntmen - Connected Across Different Lines.

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