I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
BILLY WILDERAn actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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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Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
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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.
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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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She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
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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.
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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 have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won’t work. She was an original.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER