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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

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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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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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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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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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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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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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
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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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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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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 ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.
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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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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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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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