black
grey
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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

Billy Wilder

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.
BILLY WILDER

Fabulous Mean Towns
Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Gender Nobody Perfect Well
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
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
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 best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
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.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
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.
BILLY WILDER

Class Girl Real Somebody Stars
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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
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.
BILLY WILDER

Country People Ring Smell Sound Stationery Telephone
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
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

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