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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 now?"
-David Mamet
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Every Scene Should Be Able To Answer

David Mamet
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "who wants what from whom? what happens if they don't get it? why now?"
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Three Answers Want

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What i don't like is when i see stuff that i know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. what you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
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What is a scene? a) a scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the aristotelian unities of time and place-this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) a scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. starts angry, ends embarrassed. starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. make something happen.
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As human beings, don't we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
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In my dreams is a country where the state is the church and the church the people: three in one and one in three. it is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. it is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. it is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.
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Questions are not happenstance thoughts nor are questions common problems of today which one picks up from hearsay and booklearning and decks out with a gesture of profundity questions grow out of confrontation with the subject matter and the subject matter is there only where eyes are, it is in this manner that questions will be posed and all the more considering that questions that have today fallen out of fashion in the great industry of problems. one stands up for nothing more than the normal running of the industry. philosophy interprets its corruption as the resurrection of metaphysics.
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