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.
BILLY WILDERDevelop a clean line of action for your leading character
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Make subtlety obvious.
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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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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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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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I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
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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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Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
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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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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.
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood’s Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town.
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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?
BILLY WILDER