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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

Billy Wilder

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
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
We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
BILLY WILDER

Mediocre Track Undoubtedly
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
BILLY WILDER

Dream Good Inspiration Morning
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.
BILLY WILDER

Class Middle Normal People Restaurant
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
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
God save me from myself.
BILLY WILDER

Catchy Save Me
I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
BILLY WILDER

Anyone Fabulous Screen Utterly
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
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 Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

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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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