David Mamet on Hollywood

Mamet was interviewed in Time Out New York by Joshua Rothkopf. The subject: Mamet’s new book about film, Bambi vs. Godzilla.

Hollywood is capitalism at its best: opposing forces working it out, using the tools of the marketplace. As such, it’s vastly messier than totalitarianism, but it kills a lot less people.

On audience:

I write for the audience. The small market or the mass market may be a function of the worth of my script, or of the assiduousness by which it was sold. But, like any other artist, I consider my potential audience everybody alive and half of the people who are dead.

And, by my vote, a Mamet must-read for writers: Writing in Restaurants, circa 1987.