Background Image
...
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.
-David Mamet
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

When We Leave The

David Mamet
...
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.

Understanding the Quote: "when we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes..."

This quote by David Mamet reflects deeply on the theme of mean. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mean, Ideas, Play, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how David Mamet interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About David Mamet

David Mamet is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mean and ideas. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 25915
Topic
Mean
Ideas
Play
More From David Mamet
Anyone Ever Lost In The Wild Knows That Nature Wants You Dead.
Humor
Deep Thought
Want
Roll Back The Clock, And Every Possession Of Every Great Country Started With A Crime.
Country
Crime
Clock
I Like Bach. I Like Randy Newman.
Newman
Randy
I Don't Really Have A Social Life.
Social
Social Life
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.
Writing
Fighting
Thinking
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.
Running
Writing
Government
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
Years
Skills
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.
Grief
Loss
Odds
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.
Jobs
Writing
Political Opinions
Opportunity May Knock, But It Seldom Nags.
Opportunity
May
My Greatest Fear Is That The Audience Will Beat Me To The Punch Line.
Greatest Fear
Lines
Beats
I Hate The Computer. I Hate Their Spell-check. I Won't Ever Do E-mail.
Hate
Mail
Computer
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?
Art
Powerful
Play
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.
Luck
Three
Needs
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.
Slavery
Way
West
The Mind Is A Mill Which Can Incessant Turn, 'til Its Mere Operation Focus The Stress Inward And The Stones Grind Themselves To Dust.
Stress
Dust
Focus
I've Always Been More Comfortable Sinking While Clutching A Good Theory Than Swimming With An Ugly Fact.
Swimming
Ugly
Facts
Fun Is What You Do For Yourself. If Somebody Else Does It, It's Entertainment.
Fun
Doe
Entertainment
If You Can't Tell It To Me In One Sentence, They Can't Put It In Tv Guide.
Tvs
Guides
One Sentence
Everyone Needs Money. That's Why They Call It Money
Needs
Heist
Need Money
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.
Writing
Play
Long
The Audience Perceives Only What The Actor Wants To Do To The Other Actor.
Actors
Want
Perceive
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.
Spiritual
Feelings
Cost
Old Age And Treachery Will Always Beat Youth And Exuberance.
Age
Youth
Beats
In Practice We, In The World, Must Do Business With Each Other.
Practice
World
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.
Pain
Winning
Gambling
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?
Joy
Sorrow
Diners
Films Have Degenerated To Their Original Operation As Carnival Amusement - They Offer Not Drama But Thrills.
Drama
Amusement
Film
I'm Entitled To My Political Opinions, And I Get To Vote Because I'm An American.
Political Opinions
Vote
Entitled
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.
Thinking
Battle
Half
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.
Soccer
Football
Moving
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.
Wrestling
Fighting
Culture
It Is The Objective Of The Protagonist That Keeps Us In Our Seats.
Protagonists
Objectives
Seats
The Government, For Example, Has Determined That Black People (somehow) Have Fewer Abilities Than White People, And, So, Must Be Given Certain Preferences. Anyone Acquainted With Both Black And White People Knows This Assessment Is Not Only Absurd But Monstrous. And Yet It Is The Law.
Black And White
Government
Assessment
All Of Us. All Of Us. We're Doomed.
Doomed
The Product Of The Artist Has Become Less Important Than The Fact Of The Artist. We Wish To Absorb This Person. We Wish To Devour Someone Who Has Experienced The Tragic. In Our Society This Person Is Much More Important Than Anything He Might Create.
Artist
Wish
Important
All Fears Are One Fear. Just The Fear Of Death. And We Accept It, Then We Are At Peace.
Fear Of Death
Accepting
Film Is A Collaborative Business: Bend Over.
Film
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.
Home
People
Guy
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.
Dream
Drama
Unhappy Person
Every Fear Hides A Wish.
Fear
Wish
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.
Drama
Lying
Writing
The Audience Will Teach You How To Act And The Audience Will Teach You How To Write And To Direct. The Classroom Will Teach You How To Obey, And Obedience In The Theatre Will Get You Nowhere. It’s A Soothing Falsity.
Writing
Theatre
Classroom
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.
Educational
Reading
Library
It's Hard To Write A Good Plot, It's Very Hard.
Writing
Plot
Hard
There's Something In Me That Just Wants To Create Dialogue.
Want
Dialogue
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.
Art
Connections
Spontaneous
Before You Can Steal Fire From The Gods You Gotta Be Able To Get Coffee For The Director.
Coffee
Fire
Directors
Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It Will Finally Be Worth It. Acting Is More About Courage Than Anything Else.
Doubt
Acting
Encounters
The Quality I Most Admire In A Man Is Steadfastness.
Men
Quality
Admire
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.
Excess
Doe
Income
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.
Government
Arms
Criminals
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.
Drama
Independent
Plot
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).
Stories
Made
Certain
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.
Country
Sleep
Rainy Day
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.
Home
Persistence
Years
If You're Neurotic And You Think, I'm Not Where I Deserve To Be Or My Mother Didn't Love Me, Or Blah, Blah, Blah, That Lie, That Neurotic Vision, Takes Over Your Life And You're Plagued By It 'til It's Cleansed. In A Play, At The End Of The Play, The Lie Is Revealed. [t]he Better The Play Is, The More Surprising And Inevitable The Lie Is, As Aristotle Told Us. Plays Are About Lies.
Mother
Lying
Thinking
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.
Believe
Thinking
Government
I Took The Liberal View For Many Decades, But I Believe I Have Changed My Mind.
Believe
Views
Mind
The Israelis Would Like To Live In Peace Within Their Borders; The Arabs Would Like To Kill Them All.
Borders
Peace Within
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.
Surprise
Affair
Love Affair
I Won't Ever Do E-mail.
Mail
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.
Hollywood
Sinkholes
Monasteries
The Avant-garde Is To The Left What Jingoism Is To The Right. Both Are A Refuge In Nonsense.
Jingoism
Avant Garde
Nonsense
Being Among My People Is A Delight. We Jews Live Among Ourselves. I Love It.
People
Delight
Jew
Worry Is Interest Paid In Advance On A Debt That Never Comes Due.
Worry
Debt
Interest
It's Upsetting To Be A Man In Our Society.
Men
Upset
Our Society
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.
Theatre
May
Enlightening
Luck, If There Is Such A Thing, Is Either Going To Favor Everyone Equally Or Going To Exhibit A Preference For The Prepared.
Luck
Favors
Preference
Everybody Makes Their Own Fun. If You Don't Make It Yourself, It Isn't Fun. It's Entertainment.
Fun
Entertainment
Ifs
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.
Jobs
Thinking
Doctors
I'm Responding To The Will Of The People.
People
Crime
Responding
There Is A Profound And Ineradicable Taint Of Antisemitism In The British.
Profound
British
My Idea Of Perfect Happiness Is A Healthy Family, Peace Between Nations, And All The Critics Die.
Ideas
Perfect
Healthy
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.
Bores You
Actors
Scene
It Is To A Dramatist, Which Is To Say, To An Unfrocked Psychoanalyst, Stunning That That Which Has Sustained The Left In My Generation, Its Avatar, Its Prime Issue, Has Been Abortion. For, Whether Or Not It Is Regarded As A Woman's Right, An Unfortunate Necessity, Or Murder, Which Is To Say, Irrespective Of Differing And Legitimate Political Views, To Enshrine It As The Most Important Test Of The Liberal, Is, Mythologically, An Assertion To The Ultimate Right Of A Postreligious Paganism.
Views
Issues
Abortion
A Good Writer Gets Better Only By Learning To Cut, To Remove The Ornamental, The Descriptive, The Narrative, And Especially The Deeply Felt And Meaningful. What Remains? The Story Remains.
Meaningful
Cutting
Get Better
You Don't Know What Life Is. You Know Nothing.
Life Is
Knows
Almost All Movie Scripts Contain Material That Cannot Be Filmed.
Scripts
Materials
People Only Speak To Get Something.
People
Speak
Hitchcock Denigrated American Films, Saying They Were All 'pictures Of People Talking' - As, Indeed, Most Of Them Are.
Talking
People
Film
I Tend To Write A Lot, Which I Think Is The Secret To Being Prolific.
Writing
Thinking
Secret
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.
Country
Taken
Government
The Conscious Mind Is Going To Suggest The Obvious, The Cliché, Because These Things Have Offered The Security Of Having Succeeded In The Past.
Past
Mind
Conscious
I Didn't Knowingly Meet A Conservative Until, To My Shame, I Was 60 Years Old And Sat Down And Said, 'wow, I Don't Understand What This Guy's Talking About, But He Has A Great Civility About Him. Perhaps I Better Investigate This Thing.'
Talking
Years
Guy
They Say The Definition Of Ambivalence Is Watching Your Mother-in-law Drive Over A Cliff In Your New Cadillac.
Mother
Law
Cadillacs
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.
Thinking
Unique
Pieces
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.
Years
Degrees
Down And
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.
Party
Government
Evil
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.
Police
Groups
Citizens
What We're Trying To Do Is Find Two Or More Shots The Juxtaposition Of Which Will Give Us The Idea.
Ideas
Two
Giving
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.
Play
Two
Uber
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.
Religious
Believe
Men
People May Or May Not Say What They Mean... But They Always Say Something Designed To Get What They Want.
Truth
Honesty
Mean
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.'
Chicago
Definitions
Helping
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.
People
What If
Way
As Long As The Protagonist Wants Something, The Audience Will Want Something.
Want Something
Long
Protagonists
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.
School
Multiple Choice
Interesting
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.
Cutting
Thinking
Guy
Welcome To Chicago. This Town Stinks Like A Whorehouse At Low Tide.
Law
Chicago
Tides
Where In The Wide History Of The World Do We Find Art Created By The Excessively Wealthy, Powerful, Or Educated?
Art
Powerful
World
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.
Knives
Cadillacs
Firsts
We All Die In The End, But There's No Reason To Die In The Middle.
Reason
Ends
Middle
To Find Beauty In The Sad, Hope In The Midst Of Loss, And Dignity In Failure Is Great Poetic Art.
Art
Loss
Dignity
It’s Not A Lie. It’s A Gift For Fiction.
Lying
Fiction
I Pray You Indulge Me For A Space, For I Am Going To Set Out On A Speech Which May Have Some Duration, But Whose Theme May Be Gleaned From Its Opening Phrase: How Dare You.
Space
Phrases
May
Forget Narrative, Backstory, Characterisation, Exposition, All Of That. Just Make The Audience Want To Know What Happens Next.
Want
Narrative
Next
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.'
Country
Adventure
Cities
Always Tell The Truth - It's The Easiest Thing To Remember.
Truth
Fortune Cookie
Remember
Don't Assume I'm Dumb Because I Wear A Suit And Tie.
Ties
Dumb
Suits
They Say You Can't Study Kabbalah Until You Are At Least 40 Years Old. You Know Why? You Have To Have Experienced At Least One Generation Making The Same Mistakes As The Previous One.
Mistake
Years
Generations
The Dream And The Film Are The Juxtaposition Of Images In Order To Answer A Question.
Dream
Order
Answers
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.
Acting
Way
Study
"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.
Understanding
Stories
Film
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.
Mistake
Writing
Thinking
No One Enjoys Being Equal.
Equality
Enjoy
Equal
The Purpose Of Technique Is To Free The Unconscious. If You Follow The Rules Ploddingly, They Will Allow Your Unconscious To Be Free.
Technique
Purpose
Unconscious
If You Pretend The Characters Cant Speak, And Write A Silent Movie, You Will Be Writing Great Drama.
Drama
Writing
Character
Culture Exists And Evolves To Relegate To Habit Categories Of Interactions The Constant Conscious Reference To Which Would Make Human Interaction Impossible.
Culture
Impossible
Habit
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.
People
Trying
Defense
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.
Fighting
Years
Lunch
The Essence Of Jiu-jitsu Is Philosophy.
Philosophy
Essence
Jiu Jitsu
The Greater The Intellect, The More Ease In Its Misdirection.
Ease
Misdirection
Intellect
We're All Put To The Test... But It Never Comes In The Form Or At The Point We Would Prefer, Does It?
Doe
Tests
Form
The Job Of The Artist, Is To Say, Wait A Second, Everything That We Have Thought Is Wrong. Let's Re-examine It.
Jobs
Artist
Waiting
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.
Art
Way
Entertainment
Always Do Things The Least Interesting Way, The Most Blunt Way, And You Make A Better Movie. This Is My Experience.
Interesting
Way
Blunt
Here Is A Sovereign Talisman Against Regret: Never Do That Which Might Engender It.
Regret
Might
Sovereign
We Must Have A Pie. Stress Cannot Exist In The Presence Of A Pie.
Stress
Food
Pie
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.
Greed
Wealth
Sickness
Get Into The Scene Late; Get Out Of The Scene Early.
Writing
Scene
Late
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.
Writing
Past
Self
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.
Real
Hollywood
Violence
There Is No Such Thing As Character Other Than The Habitual Action, As Mr. Aristotle Told Us Two Thousand Years Ago.
Character
Years
Two
You Can't Rely On The Acting To Tell The Story.
Acting
Stories
Rely
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.
Dad
Ideas
Coins
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.
Thinking
Filing Cabinet
Typewriters
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
Perception
Tragedy
Art And Mass Entertainment And Propaganda, They Can All Be Plotted On The Same Graph, But There Is A Difference.
Art
Differences
Entertainment
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.
Real
Character
People
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.
Team
Men
Fields
I Was Fortunate Enough To Have A Rambling Youth.
Rambling
Youth
Enough
We All Hope. It's What Keeps Us Alive.
Alive
Invent Nothing, Deny Nothing, Speak Up, Stand Up, Stay Out Of School.
School
Speak
Deny
I'm Greedy And Ambitious Like Everybody Else.
Ambitious
Greedy
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.
War
Farewell
Tragedy
In A World We Find Terrifying, We Ratify That Which Doesn't Threaten Us.
Scary
Insecurity
World
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.
Employers
Cheated
Wells
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!'
School
Men
Law
What I Value Most In My Friends Is Loyalty.
Loyalty
My Friends
Values
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.
Mean
Ideas
Play
The Images In A Dream Are Vastly Varied And Magnificently Interesting.
Dream
Interesting
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.
Government
Liberty
Principles
Train Yourself For A Profession That Does Not Exist.
Doe
Profession
Train
Every Scene Should Be Able To Answer Three Questions: "who Wants What From Whom? What Happens If They Don't Get It? Why Now?"
Three
Answers
Want
Let The Cut Tell The Story. Otherwise You Have Not Got Dramatic Action, You've Got Narration.
Cutting
Stories
Action
Being A Writer In Hollywood Is Like Going To Hitler's Eagle Nest With A Great Idea For A Bar Mitzvah.
Eagles
Ideas
Hollywood
One Can Read All One Wants, And Spend Eternities In Front Of A Blackboard With A Tutor, But One Is Not Going To Learn To Swim Until One Gets In The Water.
Water
Swim
Want
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.
Media
Government
Branches
Any Time Two Characters Are Talking About A Third, The Scene Is A Crock Of S***.
Writing
Character
Talking
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.
Gun
Tough
Kind
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.
Drama
Ideas
Doe
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.
Dream
Writing
Play
The Great Movie Can Be As Free Of Being A Record Of The Progress Of The Protagonist As Is A Dream.
Dream
Progress
Records
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.
Book
Thinking
People
My Alma Mater Is The Chicago Public Library.
Library
Chicago
Alma Mater
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.
Art
World
Invention
The Correct Unit Of Study Is Not The Play; It Is The Scene.
Play
Study
Scene
I Love Working On A Typewriter - The Rhythm, The Sound; It's Like Playing The Piano, Which I Do, Too.
Piano
Typewriters
Sound
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.
School
Heart
Player
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.
Fashion
Class
Tragedy
I'm Not The Guy To Ask About Politics. I'm A Gag Writer.
Guy
Gags
Asks
We Live In Oppressive Times. We Have, As A Nation, Become Our Own Thought Police; But Instead Of Calling The Process By Which We Limit Our Expression Of Dissent And Wonder ‘censorship,’ We Call It ‘concern For Commercial Viability.
Freedom
Media
Expression
I Hate Vacations. There's Nothing To Do.
Hate
Vacation
I Hate
Blasphemy And Prayer Are One. Both Assert The Existence Of A Superior Power. The First, However, With Conviction.
Prayer
Firsts
Conviction
The Work Of The Director Is The Work Of Constructing The Shot List From The Script.
Directors
Scripts
Lists
For It Is Written That Just As It Is Forbidden To Partake Of The Forbidden, It Is Forbidden Not To Partake Of The Permitted.
Forbidden
Written
The Terror And Beauty Of The Dream Come From The Connection Of Previously Unrelated Mundanities Of Life.
Dream
Connections
Terror
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).
People
Judging
One Day
I Go Out There. I'm Out There Every Day. [pause] There Is Nothing Out There.
Pauses
Storytelling Is Like Sex. We All Do It Naturally. Some Of Us Are Better At It Than Others.
Sex
Storytelling
It's Hard For A Jew Of My Generation, An American Jew, Who Is Philo-zionistic, Not To Romanticize Israel.
Israel
Generations
Jew
Show Business Is And Has Always Been A Depraved Carnival.
Carnivals
Shows
Show Business
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.
Defense
Constitution
Individual
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.
Writing
Character
Theatre
Every Reiteration Of The Idea That Nothing Matters Debases The Human Spirit.
Ideas
Matter
Spirit
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.
Stars
Character
Mean
A Liberal Pretending To Be A Conservative? That's Like A Straight Person Pretending To Be Gay To Get Greater Acceptance.
Gay
Acceptance
Conservative
Many Players Will Not Improve Because They Cannot Bear Self-knowledge.
Player
Gambling
Self
The First Amendment Ensures Not That Speech Will Be Fair, But That It Will Be Free. It Cannot Be Both.
Speech
Firsts
First Amendment
We Respond To A Drama To That Extent To Which It Corresponds To Our Dream Life.
Dream
Drama
Our Dreams
Our Job, As Writers Is To Do Our Jobs.
Jobs
All Rhetorical Questions Are Accusations.
Accusation
Rhetorical
Rhetorical Question
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.
People
Theatre
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.
Television
Evening
Language
I'm Afraid Of Only Two Things: Being Lazy And Being Cowardly.
Two
Lazy
Cowardly Acts
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.
Years
People
Storm
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.
Art
Theatre
World
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.
Drama
School
Useless
Make The Audience Wonder What's Going On By Putting Them In The Same Position As The Protagonist.
Wonder
Protagonists
Audience
Trending Author
Francis Bacon
David Petraeus
Stephen Hopkins
Dr. Seuss
Farley Mowat
Yusef Komunyakaa
Category
Information