A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDERDevelop a clean line of action for your leading character
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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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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Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window – that is at once interesting.
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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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Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
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I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.
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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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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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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
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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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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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The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
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The best director is the one you don’t see.
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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
BILLY WILDER