True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

93 Pages·2016·0.47 MB·English

by  David Mamet

Acclaim for DAVID MAMET’s
TRUE AND FALSE
“Terrific … simply, beautifully expressed … really clears the air.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Entertaining and enlightening.… Mamet’s new book on the actor’s life
makes me proud to be a participant in that life.”
—Joe Mantegna
“This is a very important book. No one has defined the actor’s job better
than Mamet.”
—William H. Macy
“I agree with almost nothing Mr. Mamet says in this book and encourage
you to devour every word. Mamet is a genius.”
—Alec Baldwin
DAVID MAMET
TRUE AND FALSE
David Mamet was born in Chicago in 1947 and studied at Goddard College in Vermont
and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York. He has taught at
Goddard College, the Yale Drama School, and New York University, and lectures at the
Atlantic Theater Company, of which he is a founding member. He was the first artistic
director of Chicago’s St. Nicholas Theater Company, and has directed the films House of
Games, Things Change, Homicide, Oleanna, and The Spanish Prisoner. Mamet was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross. His acclaimed plays and screenplays include
Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and The Verdict, for which
he received an Academy Award nomination.
DAVID MAMET
ALSO BY
PLAYS
The Cryptogram
Oleanna
Speed-the-Plow
Bobby Gould in Hell
The Old Neighborhood
The Woods
The Shawl and Prairie du Chien
Reunion and Dark Pony
and The Sanctity of Marriage
The Poet and the Rent
Lakeboat
Goldberg Street
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Frog Prince
The Water Engine and Mr. Happiness
Edmond
American Buffalo
A Life in the Theater
Sexual Perversity in Chicago
and The Duck Variations FICTION
The Village
The Old Religion
NONFICTION
The Cabin
On Directing
Some Freaks
Make Believe Town
Writing in Restaurants
Three Uses of the Knife SCREENPLAYS
Oleanna
Glengarry Glen Ross
We’re No Angels
Things Change (with Shel Silverstein)
Hoffa
The Untouchables
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Verdict
House of Games
Homicide
Wag the Dog
The Edge
The Spanish Prisoner

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 1999
Copyright © 1997 by David Mamet
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in
the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in
hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
in 1997.
The Library of Congress has cataloged
the Pantheon edition as follows:
Mamet, David.
True and false : heresy and common sense
for the actor / David Mamet.
p. cm.
1. Acting. I. Title.
PN2061.M2265 1997
792′.028—dc21 97-19336
eISBN: 978-0-30780649-9
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
The scientific approach to the phenomenon
of human nature enables us to be ignorant without
being frightened, and without, therefore, having to
invent all sorts of weird theories to explain away
our gaps in knowledge.
—
D. W. WINNICOTT
Towards an Objective Study of Human Nature
A magician is an actor
impersonating a magician.
—
JEAN EUGÈNE ROBERT-HOUDIN
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
To the Actor
Some Thoughts
Ancestor Worship
A Generation That Would Like to Stay in School
Scholarship
Find Your Mark
I’m on the Corner
Business is Business
Auditions
Paint by Numbers
“Work”
Oral Interpretation
Helping the Play
Acceptance
The Rehearsal Process
The Play and the Scene
Emotions
Action
Guilt
Concentration
Talent
Habit
The Designated Hitter
Performance and Character
The Villain and the Hero
Acting “As If”
“They Once Walked Among Us”
Eleven O’Clock Always Comes
Meritocracy