“Forgotten Hollywood”- Out of the Mouth of Billy Wilder…

Posted on February 24, 2014 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here…

   Thanks to David Christopher Loya of Vision4Media, who passed along advice from the iconic sage of cinema… Mr. Billy Wilder. David received this insight from the Gotham Writers website:

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Billy Wilder was one of the greatest writer/directors in film history, having co-written and directed such classics as The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and Double Indemnity. What screenwriter wouldn’t want advice from him?

Well, here are some of Wilder’s screenwriting tips: *

  1. 373px-Billy_Wilder_-_Kamerablick_-_Boulevard_der_Stars_croppedThe audience is fickle.
  2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
  3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
  4. Know where you’re going.
  5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
  6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
  7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
  8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
  9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
  10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.        BILLY WILDER

* From Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 24th, 2014 at 12:02 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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