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

Billy Wilder

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
BILLY WILDER

Aunt Hold Pay Punctuation
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 WILDER

Around Fabulous Mean Met Towns
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
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER

Funny History Luck
One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
BILLY WILDER

Enough Hundred One
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
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
I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
BILLY WILDER

Bored Category Moved People
If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
BILLY WILDER

Hate Seriously Taken
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.
BILLY WILDER

Animal Country Elephants
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
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
BILLY WILDER

Always People Think Thinking
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
I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous.
BILLY WILDER

Act Appalled Courageous Get Perhaps Say
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

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

Mediocre Track Undoubtedly
God save me from myself.
BILLY WILDER

Catchy Save Me
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing
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.
BILLY WILDER

Deserve Fight Important Writer
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
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
Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Gender Nobody Perfect Well
I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
BILLY WILDER

Hate People Return Screen
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER

Directing Directors Film Sycophants
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
BILLY WILDER

Dream Good Inspiration Morning

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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Popular Authors

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