Quote

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.

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
Main
Warm
Events
Life
Chamberlain
Spain
Wasted
Hitler
Event

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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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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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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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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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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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The best director is the one you don't see.
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God save me from myself.
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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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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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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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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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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
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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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Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man. Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
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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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Make subtlety obvious.
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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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