Jean-Paul Sartre? George Carlin? Slavoj Žižek? O. O. McIntyre? Sewell Ford? Billy Wilder? Leo Rosten? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Philosophers, linguists, and humorists enjoy the following joke about tacit knowledge: A person enters a café and requests coffee without cream. After a delay the waiter returns and says “I’m sorry. We’re out of cream. …
Tag Archives: Billy Wilder
Quote Origin: You Have To Have a Dream So You Can Get Up in the Morning
Charlotte Chandler? Billy Wilder? Lyn Erhard? Stanley Kramer? Pablo Picasso? Question for Quote Investigator: Your alarm clock sounds, and you wake up groggily. You press the snooze button to get ten more minutes of sleep. The alarm buzzes again, and you press the button again. How can you prevent this unhappy cycle? Instead of returning …
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Quote Origin: If You Want To Tell People the Truth, You’d Better Make Them Laugh or They’ll Kill You
George Bernard Shaw? Oscar Wilde? Cecile Starr? Billy Wilder? Richard Pryor? James L. Brooks? Dustin Hoffman? Charles Ludlam? Question for Quote Investigator: Dramatists have discovered that challenging material often elicits hostility or boredom. This is dangerous for creators because jobs in the entertainment industry are precarious. Yet, a provocative production leavened with humor is often …
Quote Origin: Storytelling: Just Give Them Two and Two and Let Them Add It Up
Billy Wilder? Ernst Lubitsch? Ted Elliott? Terry Rossio? Ray Bradbury? Vince Gilligan? Andrew Stanton? Question for Quote Investigator: On the commentary track of a video I once heard a screenwriter discuss the requirement to engage the audience’s cognitive powers while spinning a tale: Give the audience two plus two, and let them come up with …
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Quote Origin: Kissing Marilyn Monroe Is Like Kissing Hitler
Tony Curtis? Charlton Heston? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Tony Curtis was a wonderful actor, and I was saddened when he passed away in 2010. For years I have wondered about a quotation that he supposedly said. The story goes that he was asked what it was like to kiss Marilyn Monroe and he said: …
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