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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

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
Elegant
Hiding
Plot
Points
Subtle
Writer
Better

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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
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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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Well, nobody's perfect.
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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 best director is the one you don't see.
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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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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.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.
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What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
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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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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.
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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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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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Make subtlety obvious.
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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