It occurred to me while I was doing House of Games . . .

"It occurred to me while I was doing House of Games that the difficulty of making the movie was exactly the same difficulty the confidence man has. For the confidence man it is depriving the victim of her money; for me it is misleading the audience sufficiently so they feel pleased when they find out they’ve been misled, tricking them so that every step is logical, and at the end they’ve defeated themselves. So, the process of magic and the process of confidence games, and to a certain extent the process of drama, are all processes of autosuggestion. They cause the audience to autosuggest themselves in a way that seems perfectly logical but is actually false."

. . . David Mamet . . . "David Mamet: The Art of Theatre XI" . . . Paris Review 39, no 142 (Spring 1997): 53-74 . . .