I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDERMoney makes even bastards legitimate.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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Well, nobody’s perfect.
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Money makes even bastards legitimate.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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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.
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I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
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I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School.
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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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[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
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Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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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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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My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.
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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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You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
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God save me from myself.
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She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you’re really in the presence of something. In that league there’s only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It’s a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you’ve found it.
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They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won’t work. She was an original.
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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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Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house.
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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.
BILLY WILDER