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.
Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?
New Jersey is the most poetic state: close enough to New York to be urban and cosmopolitan, far enough to be desirous and unsure; densely populated, but full of farms and woods, with the most deer of any state.
Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking.
A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.
When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come.
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