Quote

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.

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
Children
Chaplin
Writing
Ninth
Mind
Beethoven
Like
Lyrics
Eight
Child
Voice
Found

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 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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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 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.
Billy Wilder
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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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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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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.
Billy Wilder
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
Billy Wilder
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
Billy Wilder
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I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
Billy Wilder
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Make subtlety obvious.
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?
Billy Wilder
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Well, nobody's perfect.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
Billy Wilder
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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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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