Billy Wilder was an 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 the Hollywood Golden Age of cinema. 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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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
France is the country where the money falls apart and you can’t tear the toilet paper.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Nationality, Nation, Nationalism, Nations
Don’t be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Audiences
Hindsight is always 20/20.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Remorse, Repentance, Regret
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Regret
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Intuition, Instincts, Trust
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
Topics: Praise, Audiences
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Religion, Churches
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
Topics: Perspective
If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.
—Billy Wilder
Topics: Truth
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