Quote

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

Billy Wilder

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Billy Wilder
Age: 95 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 22
Died: 2002
Died: March 27
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Journalist
Screenwriter
Writer
Samuel Wilder
Never
Thousand
Audience
Dark
Imbecile
Wrong
Imbeciles
Individual
Member
Together
Critical
May
Members
Work
Genius

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Well, nobody's perfect.
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I'm delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we've got something to look down on.
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Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
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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?
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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
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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, 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.
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Make subtlety obvious.
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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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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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The best director is the one you don't see.
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Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man. Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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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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An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
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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 don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
Billy Wilder