Top Billy Wilder Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Billy Wilder Biography

Samuel "Billy" Wilder (/ˈwaɪldər/; German: [ˈvɪldɐ]; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist whose career spanned more than five decades. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. With The Apartment, Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter for the same film.

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Billy Wilder Quotes

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.

Daughter, Father, Says, Sees, System, Thinking

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.

Critical, Dark, Member, Together, Work

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

Liked, Made, Pictures, See

They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.

Keep Trying, Original, Originals, Tried, Trying, Undoubtedly

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

Happiness, Jack, Lemmon, Working

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.

Animal, Bunk, Elephants, Pink, Turkeys

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.

Class, Harvard, Law, Rational, Restaurant, School

Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You've got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven's "Pastoral. " A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.

Hitting, Lilacs, Morning, Ohio, Rain, Writing

Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.

Appears, Became, Book, Fighting, Medium, Stupid

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

Funny, Inspiring, People, Sarcastic, Truth

After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano. She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you're really in the presence of something. In that league there's only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It's a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you've found it.

Girl, Know, Real, Stars, Thin

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.

Collectively, Genius, Idiot, Persuade, Single, Tricks

Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood's Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it's getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

Fabulous, Joan, Known, Mean, Tell, Towns

On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

Culture, Directors, Door, Doors, Ernst, Open

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Hate, I Hate, Seriously, Taken

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

Critics, Dirty, Foreign, Lust, Lusty, Naughty

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

Bathroom, Hotel, Sleep

Make subtlety obvious.

Make, Obvious, Subtlety

You're as good as the best thing you've ever done.

Best Things, Done, Good, Thing

My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.

Archbishop, Arnold, Mixture, Mixtures, Schwarzenegger, Tutu

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