Otto Preminger was getting hell from the studio. He was spending too much on his big epic "Exodus". He went into the village and posted notes "You can be in a Hollywood movie for only ten shekels!"

The next day, over five hundred people showed up, money in hand.

"This is how you do crowd scenes!" he boasted from his chair.

"Exodus" came in slightly under budget.

Paul Sills died on June 2.

When I was at The Yale Drama School, we were indoctrinated by the grand masters of the method: Stella Adler and Bobby Lewis. They made the art of acting into this torturous, analytic, never-ending nightmare of navel gazing.

Along came Paul Sills for a semester; the founder of "Second City". He said "don't think; never think". We spent six weeks exploring the "nothing" moment. Two actors enter the stage and physically improvise - instantly and seamlessly. There is no… Continue

After my first two plays were produced, I decided it was time to write a screenplay. I had always loved movies, I was a dramatist, and I was lured by the opportunity to make some big bucks. The project took me four weeks. I was proud of it and sent a copy to a major agent. A month later, it was returned. Three-quarters of it had been obliterated by red ink. One hundred and twenty pages had been reduced to thirty- two. It was accompanied by a single comment: “ And it stinks.” Needless to say, thi… Continue

Q:

How do you write a play? What do you start with - character, dialogue, plot?

MAMET:

Well, there's an old cowboy trick. The herd is coming through fast and one cowboy asks another how you estimate the number of cows so quickly. The other cowboy says: "It's very easy. You just count up the number of hooves and divide by four." That's how you write a play. You do a lot of writing to figure out what the hell the play's about and throw out three-quarters of it and write it again and look at it… Continue