Quote

A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.

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
Dead
Television
Bury
Says
Folds
System
Idiot
Father
Sees
Play
Pictures
Think
Forgotten
Thinking
Daughter

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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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.
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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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
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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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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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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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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'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
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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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If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
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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.
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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Well, nobody's perfect.
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
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The best director is the one you don't see.
Billy Wilder