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'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
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.
An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
I just always think, 'Do I like it?' And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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.
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.
It used to be that we in films were the lowest form of art. Now we have something to look down on. (Of Television)
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.
he was himself, with all the quirks that a human being has.