Conversations with Wilder - Wilder, Billy, 1906-2002

408 Pages·65.058 MB·English

by  Cameron Crowe

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In Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood’s legendary
and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for
the first time to talk extensively about his life and work.
Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650
black-and-white DC rae eee te ern film posters,
stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from
Wilder’s own collection—the ninety-three-year-old icon
talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today’s best-known
writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of
Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work,
set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the
studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we
hear Wilder’s insider view on his collaborations with
such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn
Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, William Holden,
Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo (he was a writer at
MGM during the making of Ninotchka). Here are
Wilder’s sharp and funny behind-the-scenes stories
about the making of A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity,
Sunset Boulevard, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It
Hot, The Apartment, and Ace in the Hole, among many
others. Wilder is ever mysterious, but Crowe gets him
to speak candidly on Stanwyck: “She knew the script,
everybody’s lines, never a fault, never a mistake”; on
Cary Grant: “I had Cary Grant in mind for four of my
pictures ... slipped through my net every time”; on the
“Lubitsch Touch”: “It was the elegant use of the super-
joke.” Wilder also remembers his early years in Vienna,
working as a journalist in Berlin, rooming with Peter
Lorre at the Chateau Marmont always with the same
dry wit, tough-minded romanticism, and elegance that aN
are the hallmarks of Wilder’s films. This book is a clas-
sic of Hollywood history and lore. WEEE eee sensesecese, csecs
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THIS [IS A BORZO! BOOK
PUBLISHED BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 1999 by
Cameron Crowe
All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto. Distributed by Random House,
Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House,
Inc.
Olea mem Genta carn Ort elesaletse e
Publication Data
AVsICeCSem esha
Conversations with Wilder / by Cameron
Crowe. — 1st ed.
rey o00e
Includes indexes.
ISBN 0-375-40660-3 (hc.)
1. Wilder, Billy, 1906— Interviews.
2. Motion picture producers and
directors—United States Interviews.
I. Crowe, Cameron, 1957—
II. Title.
PN1998.3.W56A5 1999 olee evee
791.43'0233'092—dc21 Oy
Manufactured in
the United States of America
Published November 10, 1999
Second Printing, December 1999
| 31143006561501 (Previous page) Billy Wilder and, across
B- WILDER, 8. the table, Charles Brackett, his collabora-
i\Crowe, Camerangy 9575
tor, playing “the word game” with other
Conversahionm with "Wilder
writers at the Paramount commissary