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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.

Billy Wilder

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
BILLY WILDER

Cutting Finals Nine
France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
BILLY WILDER

Fall Money Paper Travel
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
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER

Directing Directors Film Sycophants
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
Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Gender Nobody Perfect Well
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
BILLY WILDER

Best Things Done
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
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER

Great Year Hollywood Films Movie
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
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
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

[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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[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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Popular Authors

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