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Billy Wilder Quotes

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born American film director and screenwriter 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.Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity , a film noir. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend , about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard, as well as Stalag 17 in 1953.

From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot , and satires such as The Apartment . He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Wikipedia  

✵ 22. June 1906 – 27. March 2002
Billy Wilder photo
Billy Wilder: 23 quotes17 likes

Famous Billy Wilder Quotes

“You’re only as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.”

Billy Wilder

“Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.”

Billy Wilder

David Ben-Gurion, as quoted in Israel : Years of Crisis Years of Hope (1973) by Roman Frister, p. 45
Misattributed

“You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.”

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder Quotes

“A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead.”

Billy Wilder

As quoted in Culture and Commitment, 1929-1945 (1973) by Warren Susman, p. 180
Context: 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.

“I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore.”

Billy Wilder

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 206
Context: I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”

Billy Wilder

“The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.”

Billy Wilder

Die Österreicher haben das Kunststück fertiggebracht, aus Beethoven einen Österreicher und aus Hitler einen Deutschen zu machen. <br class="br">As quoted in DER SPIEGEL (16 May 1994) http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-9281967.html?name=Sp%26auml%3Bte+Heimkehr)

“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

As quoted in The New Hollywood : American Movies in the '70s (1975) by Axel Madsen

“An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.”

Billy Wilder

As quoted in The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily (1970) by Tom Wood, p. 20

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

Billy Wilder

As quoted in &quot;Billy Wilder&quot; at The Indian Prairie Public Library http://www.indianprairie.lib.il.us/images/stories/Movies_Music_More/wilder1.pdf

“People copy, people steal. Most of the pictures they make nowadays are loaded down with
special effects. I couldn’t do that. I quit smoking because I couldn’t reload my Zippo.”

Billy Wilder

“If you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are
happy with your own work first.”

Billy Wilder

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

Billy Wilder

“I was the only director who ever made two pictures with Marilyn Monroe. Forget the Oscar,
I deserve the Purple Heart.”

Billy Wilder

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