David Mamet is standing by his belief that films don’t need dialogue to be able to enjoy them.
On the latest episode of Real Time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter and director debated the topic with Bill Maher after the host asked him, “We wouldn’t want to go back to the silent movies, would we?”
“Yeah!” Mamet responded. “Here’s why… We watch movies in translation, right? That are done. So we don’t know what the dialogue is, right? We watch movies in translation that have subtitles, so we don’t know what the dialogue is. Also, we’ll watch a movie with the sound off on the airplane. We’re watching the next guy’s movie, you can’t tell the dialogue, right? You have no idea, [and] you have no trouble following that movie.”
Maher was quick to note that people don’t have trouble following “some movies.
On the latest episode of Real Time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter and director debated the topic with Bill Maher after the host asked him, “We wouldn’t want to go back to the silent movies, would we?”
“Yeah!” Mamet responded. “Here’s why… We watch movies in translation, right? That are done. So we don’t know what the dialogue is, right? We watch movies in translation that have subtitles, so we don’t know what the dialogue is. Also, we’ll watch a movie with the sound off on the airplane. We’re watching the next guy’s movie, you can’t tell the dialogue, right? You have no idea, [and] you have no trouble following that movie.”
Maher was quick to note that people don’t have trouble following “some movies.
- 12/2/2023
- by Carly Thomas
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: Mindful that David Mamet gave me the best quote I’ve ever gotten in 30 years of trade reporting, I have been chasing him down to try to get him to answer a question on my mind. What does it feel like for a great writer of dialogue to have an actor like the late Sean Connery — who won his only Oscar with the Mamet-scripted Brian De Palma-directed drama The Untouchables — elevate the words like Connery did as the rough and tumble Irish cop Jim Malone? Or, for that matter, when Alec Baldwin and the other stellar stars turned Glengarry Glen Ross in a master class in toxic testosterone.
But when you talk to him, Mamet is like his best plays and scripts: unpredictable. That was the case back in my Daily Variety days, when I got Mamet on the phone to discuss the abrupt exit of actor Jeremy Piven...
But when you talk to him, Mamet is like his best plays and scripts: unpredictable. That was the case back in my Daily Variety days, when I got Mamet on the phone to discuss the abrupt exit of actor Jeremy Piven...
- 11/13/2020
- by Mike Fleming Jr
- Deadline Film + TV
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