If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
Interpretation
The issues we face often stem from earlier decisions or actions.
This quote by Billy Wilder emphasizes the idea that problems we encounter later in a process are often rooted in earlier stages. It suggests that to truly understand and address our current challenges, we must look back to our initial decisions and the groundwork we laid. By recognizing that early choices influence later outcomes, we can gain valuable insight into resolving current difficulties and improving future actions.
In practice
In a workshop about project management, this quote can be used to stress the importance of thorough planning.
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.
What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.
Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.
Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.
In the end, we are our choices.
Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.
In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.
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