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

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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
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Make subtlety obvious.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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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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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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Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man. Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
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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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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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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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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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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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When Chaplin found a voice to say what was on his mind, he was like a child of eight writing lyrics for Beethoven's Ninth.
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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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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 have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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The best director is the one you don't see.
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