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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.

Billy Wilder

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
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 best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
BILLY WILDER

Bad Noses Smell
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
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
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER

Inspirational Motivational Movie
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER

Funny History Luck
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
One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
BILLY WILDER

Enough Hundred One
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDER

English Mixtures Schwarzenegger
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
Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
BILLY WILDER

Country Hollywood Killing People
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
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
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

Book Director Fighting Stupid Theory
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 met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDER

Eggs Funny Twenties
I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
BILLY WILDER

Bored Category Moved People
They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won’t work. She was an original.
BILLY WILDER

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

Hiding Plot Subtle
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER

Great Year Hollywood Films Movie
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Men Perfect Wells

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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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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Popular Authors

More Billy Wilder Quotes