I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
BILLY WILDERMoney makes even bastards legitimate.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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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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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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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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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.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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.
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If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
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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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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
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Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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Make subtlety obvious.
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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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Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER