black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
BILLY WILDER

Bad Noses Smell
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
BILLY WILDER

Dream Good Inspiration Morning
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER

Directing Directors Film Sycophants
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
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
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
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
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER

Great Year Hollywood Films Movie
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
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
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
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
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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Billy Wilder Quotes