The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
Interpretation
Creative endeavors that challenge norms are the most valuable.
Billy Wilder's quote emphasizes the importance of pushing boundaries and taking risks in the creative process. By 'playing with fire,' he suggests that true artistry involves experimenting with bold ideas and concepts, even if they may lead to failure or controversy, as these are often the works that leave a lasting impact.
In practice
An artist could use this quote when discussing their approach to new projects in an interview.
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.
Mike Forsberg's images give us bright openings onto a world. . . . Here on the Great Plains both people and trees and everything else are in some way shaped by wind and weather. This book, too, has been shaped by where it comes from, and that's just a part of its beauty.
When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.
At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world.
When I was younger, I thought I had to shut myself off, work really hard to cry. I learned after a while that that's just not... You know, often in life, you cry when you're caught off-guard. That's where I need to be when I'm acting, too.
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