Chad Taylor

White rabbit


Fred Topel: How do you make a genre film your own?

David Mamet: Well, you can't help but make a distinct movie. If you give yourself up to the form, it's going to be distinctively your own because the form's going to tell you what's needed. That's one of the great things I find about working in drama is you're always learning from the form. You're always getting humbled by it. It's exactly like analyzing a dream. You're trying to analyze your dreams. You say, 'I know what that means; I know exactly what that means; why am I still unsettled?' You say, 'Let me look a little harder at this little thing over here. But that's not important; that's not important; that's not important. The part where I kill the monster – that's the important part, and I know that means my father this and da da da da da. But what about this little part over here about the bunny rabbit? Why is the bunny rabbit hopping across the thing? Oh, that's not important; that's not important.' Making up a drama is almost exactly analogous to analyzing your dreams. That understanding that you cleanse just like the heroes cleanse not from your ability to manipulate the material but from your ability to understand the material. It's really humbling, just like when you finally have to look at what that little bunny means. There's a reason why your mind didn't want to see that. There's a reason why you say, 'Oh, that's just interstitial material. Fuck that. That's nothing, right?' Because that's always where the truth lies, it's going to tell you how to reformulate the puzzle.

– David Mamet interviewed by Fred Topel for Diary of a Screenwriter