The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDEREighty 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.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
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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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Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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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 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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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.
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The best director is the one you don’t see.
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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.
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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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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.
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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 you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
BILLY WILDER