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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

Billy Wilder

I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDER

Eggs Funny Twenties
I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
BILLY WILDER

Anyone Fabulous Screen Utterly
I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
BILLY WILDER

Always People Think Thinking
God save me from myself.
BILLY WILDER

Catchy Save Me
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.
BILLY WILDER

Able Actors Camera Writing
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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.
BILLY WILDER

First Firsts Own Unlikely
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDER

English Mixtures Schwarzenegger
An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
BILLY WILDER

Actors Doors Entering Situation
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER

Inspirational Motivational Movie
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.
BILLY WILDER

Animal Country Elephants
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.
BILLY WILDER

Art Looks Television
She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
BILLY WILDER

Believe Thinking Years
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.
BILLY WILDER

Country People Ring Smell Sound Stationery Telephone
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World
[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
BILLY WILDER

Bathroom Hotel Sleep Sunset

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

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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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