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Who really said it

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out

Spoken by Alfred Hitchcock 1899–1980 · English film director
Verified In copyright

Hitchcock said it on the record, and the popular wording is his. Columnist Leonard Lyons quoted him saying “After all, drama is life with the dull bits cut out” after a preview screening of The Man Who Knew Too Much, in a column syndicated on 2 March 1956; he made the same point at book length to François Truffaut eleven years later.

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out” Alfred Hitchcock, speaking after a preview of The Man Who Knew Too Much; reported by Leonard Lyons, "The Lyons Den," March 2, 1956. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Alfred Hitchcock; the 1967 volume Hitchcock is published by Simon & Schuster, and the 1956 column was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Alfred Hitchcock — English film director, the "Master of Suspense". Theme: "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where it comes from

Speaker
Alfred Hitchcock
Earliest record
“The Lyons Den” by Leonard Lyons, 2 March 1956
Occasion
Remarks after a preview screening of The Man Who Knew Too Much
Restated in
Hitchcock by François Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 71

Movies have lost a lot by this new trend towards documentary realism at the sacrifice of fantasy. After all, drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Reported speech, not a transcript

Lyons’s report of what Hitchcock said to the room after the showing. “The Lyons Den” was a nationally syndicated column, which is why the same dispatch ran the same day in papers as far apart as the Pittsburgh Press and the Reading Eagle.

Scanned book
Borrow the 1967 Simon and Schuster edition of Truffaut's Hitchcock at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator's full chronology, from the 1956 Lyons column onward

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ traces the line to a syndicated gossip column: on 2 March 1956, Leonard Lyons reported that Hitchcock, speaking after a preview of The Man Who Knew Too Much, said “After all, drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” QI’s verdict is unhedged — Hitchcock should be credited.
  • Barry Popik ↗ arrived at the same earliest citation independently — the same Lyons column of 2 March 1956, as it ran in the Reading Eagle — and documents nothing earlier. Two researchers, one origin point.
  • Hitchcock said it again, at length. QI cites page 71 of the 1967 Simon and Schuster edition of François Truffaut’s Hitchcock ↗, where he argues a story “must be dramatic and human” and asks: “What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.”
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line among Hitchcock’s quotes with no disputed or misattributed flag, citing a BBC Picture Parade broadcast of 5 July 1960 — a citation the quote researchers do not discuss either way.
In copyright

Both documented sources are modern: the Lyons column was published in 1956 and Truffaut’s Hitchcock in 1967, so neither is in the US public domain — the pre-1931 cutoff is nowhere near either date. The eight-word remark is reproduced here as brief attributed quotation for the purpose of establishing its provenance, not as public-domain text.

Fact-check

The wording drifts

The attribution here is sound — this really is Hitchcock. What goes wrong is the wording. The line circulates in several tidier forms that nobody has tied to him, and the underlying idea has been borrowed and re-aimed at other subjects entirely.

“Cinema is life with the dull bits cut out” unsupported variant

Quote Investigator ↗ notes that The Times Book of Quotations (2000) credited this version to Hitchcock, but reports it has found no substantive support for the variant. Hitchcock is documented saying “drama,” not “cinema” — which matters, because the point of the 1956 remark was drama as against realism.

“Movies are like life with the boring bits cut out” unsupported variant

This “boring” form opened a 1987 New York Times piece by Steven Rattner, per QI’s chronology ↗, which likewise records no substantive support for it as something Hitchcock said.

Applied to Shakespeare borrowed idea

In 1992, voice coach Patsy Rodenburg wrote in The Right to Speak that Shakespeare’s writing could be described as life with all the boring bits cut out — as QI records ↗. A reworking of the thought, not a Hitchcock quotation.

The version that survives scrutiny is the plainest one. Per the earliest known record ↗, Hitchcock said: “After all, drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” If you want to quote him, quote that.

Context

Why he said it

It reads today like a breezy aphorism about storytelling. In 1956 it was a shot fired in an argument. Hitchcock had just previewed The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the sentence immediately before the famous one tells you what he was actually annoyed about: “Movies have lost a lot by this new trend towards documentary realism at the sacrifice of fantasy.” Gritty location realism was the prestige move of the moment, and Hitchcock — a builder of storyboards, process shots and impossible set pieces — was defending artifice.

So the line is not advice about pacing. It is a definition, offered as a rebuttal: drama earns its name precisely by not being a faithful record of life. The dull bits are not an accident to be trimmed in the edit; cutting them is the whole job. Eleven years later he made the same case to Truffaut in gentler terms — a story “can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal” — before landing on the identical question about drama.

The dull bits are not an accident to be trimmed. Cutting them is the whole job.

Read the full story

A note on the evidence, since gossip columns are not usually where verified quotations come from. Leonard Lyons wrote “The Lyons Den” for the New York Post from 1934 to 1974, syndicated nationally — which is why the same 2 March 1956 dispatch ran that day in the Pittsburgh Press and the Reading Eagle, and why two researchers working separately found it in two different papers.

What makes this attribution unusually solid is the second, independent record. A columnist’s paraphrase alone would leave room for doubt about the exact words. But Hitchcock returned to the same formulation in a book-length interview he sat for himself, published in 1967 — the phrasing shifts slightly (“What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out”), and the six words that matter do not move at all.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Creativity Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Drama Is Life with the Dull Bits Cut Outquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the full citation chronology from 1956 to 2000, and the verdict that Hitchcock should be credited.
"Drama is life with the dull parts cut out of it"barrypopik.com

Independent corroboration by lexicographer Barry Popik, citing the same 2 March 1956 Lyons column as it ran in the Reading Eagle.
Alfred Hitchcocken.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Hitchcock's quotes, unflagged, citing a BBC Picture Parade broadcast of 5 July 1960.
Hitchcock by François Truffaut (1967)archive.org

Scan of the 1967 Simon and Schuster English edition — the book QI cites at page 71 for Hitchcock's own restatement.
Hitchcock/Truffauten.wikipedia.org

Background on the interview book: Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock (1966), drawn from a week of conversations at Universal in 1962.
Alfred Hitchcocken.wikipedia.org

Biography of the director — dates, the six-decade career, and the "Master of Suspense" epithet.

The true author

The man who said it

Alfred Hitchcock

1899–1980 · English film director, the “Master of Suspense”

Born in Leytonstone in 1899, Hitchcock directed over fifty features across six decades, from the British silent era through Psycho and The Birds, moving to Hollywood at David O. Selznick’s urging by 1939. He became as famous as his stars — a rare thing for a director — through his television host duties, his cameo appearances, and his gift for the quotable line. That gift is exactly why this quote survives scrutiny: Hitchcock talked to the press constantly, and reporters wrote it down.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Leonard Lyons, "The Lyons Den," Pittsburgh Press, March 2, 1956, 19; syndicated the same day in the Reading Eagle, March 2, 1956, 10. Restated in François Truffaut, Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 71.

MLA (9th ed.)

Lyons, Leonard. "The Lyons Den." Pittsburgh Press, 2 Mar. 1956, p. 19.

APA (7th ed.)

Lyons, L. (1956, March 2). The Lyons Den. Pittsburgh Press, 19.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Drama is life with the dull bits cut out’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/drama-is-life-with-the-dull-bits-cut-out

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