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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
Subtlety
Obvious
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More quotes by Billy Wilder

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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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The best director is the one you don't see.
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.
Billy Wilder
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If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
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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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
Billy Wilder
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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
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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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
Billy Wilder
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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.
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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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
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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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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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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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
Billy Wilder