My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDERI have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
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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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[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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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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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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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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Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
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Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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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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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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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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The best director is the one you don’t see.
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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.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
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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.
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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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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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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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Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
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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.
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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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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER