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
I hate that word. It's return--a return to the millions of people who've never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
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.
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along the street. How can I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
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.
I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.
Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.
An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.