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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

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

English Mixtures Schwarzenegger
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
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
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
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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
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
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER

Funny History Luck
Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
BILLY WILDER

Deserve Fight Important Writer
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 WILDER

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

Hiding Plot Subtle
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
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
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
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
God save me from myself.
BILLY WILDER

Catchy Save Me
You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
BILLY WILDER

Best Things Done
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
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
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.
BILLY WILDER

League Little Understand Really Something
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
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
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.
BILLY WILDER

Grandmother Kings Old Thinking Tree
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
BILLY WILDER

Enough Hundred One
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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