On Directing Film
by David Mamet

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Book Reviews of On Directing Film

Book Review: An arrow in the quiver of any fine writer.
Summary: 5 Stars

However, he isn't just a playwright. Mamet has directed movies (Things Change, We're No Angels, Oleanna, House of Games), written movies (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981), adapted plays (An Enemy of the People, The Cherry Orchard) and has written criticism on the art of the theatre and writing for it.

The title of On Directing Film is misleading. A better title would be, For the Director Who Writes. Mamet spends a great deal of time in the book, it is structured around lectures he gave at Columbia University in 1987, explaining how to trim a script to its core so the best, and most coherent story can be told through film. Often his students will mention camera angles or camera movements to complete an emerging story they are developing, but Mamet is quick to reduce the lecture to the field which he knows well. Writing. He always returns to the script and how that should be structured so an excellent story can be told. Filming the script, the easy part, is for later.

Mamet draws from Hitchcock to Hemingway to Aristotle to explain what makes a good story work and how that can be applied to writing the script. On Directing Film should be mandatory reading for all students, formal or informal, of creative writing.

Summary of On Directing Film

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