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

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
Third
Thirds
Problem
Firsts
First
Real
Writing

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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God save me from myself.
Billy Wilder
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Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.
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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.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
Billy Wilder
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I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
Billy Wilder
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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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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
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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
Billy Wilder
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
Billy Wilder
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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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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
Billy Wilder
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What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
Billy Wilder
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder