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February 20, 2007
Mamet on "Bambi vs. Godzilla"
David Mamet collates his recent screeds apropos of Hollywood in the volume, "Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business"; Bloomberg's movie cricket, Rick Warner, has a kindly chat at Bloomberg HQ. "I don't hate the 
movie business. I'm fascinated by the movie business. It's the only absolutely essential intersection in the history of mankind between art and commerce. You could paint the picture and sell it or not. You can put on plays in your backyard. But you have to have a distribution process for movies." And movies, Mamet insists, should have as little fuckin' dialogue as possible. "If you've got a lot of dialogue in a movie, instead of camera angles and shots, you're doing something wrong because the audience understands the information much quicker when they're watching the shots... It's hard enough to do it for 10 seconds in a commercial, but it's even harder for a two hour film." and of the "Simpsons" salesman who seems based on Glengarry Glen Ross"' Shelley Levine Mamet observes, "Jackie Gleason once said 'The Flintstones' was just 'The Honeymooners' in disguise. He said it was the greatest honor of his life that they thought enough of him to demean his image."
Posted by Ray Pride at February 20, 2007 03:57 PM
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