Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilderwas an Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist and journalist, whose career spanned more than fifty years and sixty films. 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 June 1906
CountryUnited States of America
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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.
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.
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.
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.
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.
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.
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
It was hell at the time, but after it was over, it was wonderful.
France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.
I, you know, am all over the place -- every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent. I could not make, like Hitchcock did, one Hitchcock picture after another. . . . I wanted to do a Hitchcock picture, so I did "Witness for the Prosecution," then I was bored with it, so I moved on.
I would worship the ground you walk on, Audrey, if you only lived in a better neighborhood.
he was himself, with all the quirks that a human being has.