Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDERMake subtlety obvious.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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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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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
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I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
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If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
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If you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are happy with your own work first.
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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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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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Money makes even bastards legitimate.
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A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don’t bury our dead. When you think it’s out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.
BILLY WILDER