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.
BILLY WILDERHappiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
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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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[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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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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Make subtlety obvious.
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Money makes even bastards legitimate.
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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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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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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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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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I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
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I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
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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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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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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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.
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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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.
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If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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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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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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