If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
BILLY WILDERThe only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Well, nobody’s perfect.
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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.
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I’m delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we’ve got something to look down on.
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Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book?
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Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.
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After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano.
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I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
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I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
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We’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
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She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
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I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
BILLY WILDER