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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

Billy Wilder

The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
BILLY WILDER

Hate Seriously Taken
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.
BILLY WILDER

Chamberlain Events Preliminaries Spain
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
My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
BILLY WILDER

Aunt Hold Pay Punctuation
Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Men Perfect Wells
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
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.
BILLY WILDER

Fabulous Mean Towns
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
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

Class Middle Normal People Restaurant
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
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER

Like Made Picture
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing
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
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
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
I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous.
BILLY WILDER

Act Appalled Courageous Get Perhaps Say
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

Daughter Father Thinking
I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
BILLY WILDER

Hate People Return Screen
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.
BILLY WILDER

Hit House Morning Rain Writing
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.
BILLY WILDER

Interesting Mean Men
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
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.
BILLY WILDER

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

Eggs Funny Twenties

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

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