Quote

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.

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
Good
Cameras
Eighty
Parts
Execution
Picture
Spot
Percent
Afford
Actors
Spots
Able
Twenty
Right
Camera
Writing
Twenties

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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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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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Well, nobody's perfect.
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What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
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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 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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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 just made pictures I would've liked to see.
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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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Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man. Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
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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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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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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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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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