AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MASTER

Billy Wilder is one of my heroes. If he had made only Sunset Blvd. or Double Indemnity he would rate a spot in the pantheon of great filmmakers, but his roster of movies is staggering, as co-writer and director: Some Like It Hot, Stalag 17, The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, A Foreign Affair, Love in the Afternoon, Witness for the Prosecution, The Apartment, One Two Three...the list goes on and on. His earlier screenwriting collaborations include such wonderful films as Midnight, Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, and Ball of Fire.

I even like some of Wilder’s later work, like Avanti!, which has yet to be rediscovered, and Buddy, Buddy, which was reviled when it came to theaters in 1981. I’ve never warmed up to The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but I still hope someone will undertake the task of restoring it to its proper length some day. (The late Ronald Haver, who rescued A Star is Born, got Wilder’s blessing to embark on that project years ago, and learned that the negative material still existed in London, but Wilder warned him, “Don’t expect another Greed.”)

Kino Video has just released Billy Wilder Speaks on DVD, and if you think it’s merely a reproduction of the program that aired not long ago on Turner Classic Movies, you’re wrong. That TCM special was derived from a much longer documentary hosted and directed by the estimable German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff, whose credits include The Tin Drum, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, and the underrated English-language film The Ninth Day. Fortunately the new DVD release includes seventy—yes, I said seventy—minutes of additional material that was pruned for the American broadcast. Schlondorff sat down with Wilder for a series of filmed conversations in 1988, and if you’re like me you’ll savor every moment.

Of course, Wilder is a spieler who loves a good audience, and he tells many of the same stories he’s recounted before; some of them are just that, “good stories,” and not necessarily the truth. The beauty of Schlondorff’s film is that he also captures Wilder in more casual moments, and especially in the “bonus” material, asks about films he didn’t often discuss in later years.

Wilder made a rare television appearance playing himself on "The Jack Benny Show"
in 1962. Benny, of course, starred in a
great film for Wilder's hero Ernst Lubitsch,
To Be or Not To Be.

In an article Schlondorff wrote for the Los Angeles Times, he revealed that Wilder was his role model, and recalls, “I still remember how proud I was the day I received a letter from him. He had seen The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum and he wrote, ‘...simply the best German picture since Fritz Lang’s M.’ I drafted one reply after another—but, in the end, I was too embarrassed to send anything. Then, one day, I got a chiding call from Wilder’s agent: ‘He sent you a fan letter months ago, which you didn’t even seem to feel the need to reply to. Mr. Wilder is in Munich, staying in the Four Seasons Hotel, Come and apologize!’ ” Thus began a twenty-five year friendship.

The first time I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Wilder was in a telephone interview some twenty years ago. This was arranged by a publication which asked me to contribute a short piece to promote a local Wilder film festival, and I happily agreed. To my surprise, however, Wilder asked that I send my questions in advance. I was taken aback because I’d always heard what a great talker he was, and couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t be agreeable to a more spontaneous conversation. I quickly learned that the submission of questions was more of a test to see my level of knowledge and interest; once we started talking I found I could ask about anything at all.

Wilder was known for his quick wit, and was constantly spouting epigrams, many of which he invented on the spot. When I asked him about Preston Sturges, he was full of praise but said Sturges overextended himself. “A man for all seasons,” he said, then corrected himself, “A man for too many seasons.”

When I said it seemed to me that Fedora was almost a followup to Sunset Blvd., which he’d refuted in some interviews at the time of his release, he replied that he wouldn’t fight the notion. “If you want to call it Sunset Blvd. II, that’s OK with me,” he said, making reference to the recent spate of Hollywood sequels with numerals after their titles.

Wilder peers over the shoulder of his great friend Marlene Dietrich as she pays a backstage visit to Maurice Chevalier after a Hollywood concert. Alongside her are director Mitchell Leisen and Charles Boyer. Wilder had nothing but unkind things to say about Leisen's treatment of his scripts Midnight and Hold Back the Dawn (which starred Boyer) but most film buffs, including me, like them just fine.

I also talked to him about the great Ernst Lubitsch, and when I told him I thought he captured the Master’s touch in his Love in the Afternoon, with Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn, he thanked me for the compliment but insisted, “One can be Lubitsch-like but there is only one Lubitsch.”

Years later I read that Wilder was finally writing his autobiography; which was eventually published, but only in Germany and France. When I had occasion to chat with him briefly before a panel discussion on Some Like It Hot, I asked when we would see it here in the U.S. and he was deliberately vague, saying he hadn’t really finished it. Later that night Jack Lemmon told me that Wilder called him repeatedly to talk about the manuscript; the actor got the impression that, for all his candor and wicked wit, Wilder was concerned about offending anyone.

One doesn’t need to be a psychology major to realize that Wilder used his ability to form instantaneous wisecracks as a defense mechanism to keep people from getting too close to him. (Schlondorff manages to prod him into talking about his first wife and their children, but only briefly.) As outsiders, we may never get to know the real Billy Wilder... but we can always revel in his work, and be grateful that he was so prolific.

A final memory: for the last decades of his life, Wilder was often profiled and interviewed in print, with the authors properly bemoaning the fact that in spite of his track record he and his longtime partner I.A.L. Diamond couldn’t get a movie off the ground. When I started working for Entertainment Tonight in 1982 I was told that he had turned down all requests for interviews because, apparently, he wasn’t comfortable talking on camera.

One night my wife and I attended a tribute to filmmaker Fred Zinnemann at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. We were new to Hollywood and wide-eyed at the turnout of luminaries. Suddenly I noticed Billy Wilder, and made a bee-line in his direction. I said hello and received a friendly handshake as I told him he was one of my heroes.

“Well, that’s very nice, but you know, this is Freddy’s night,” he replied.

“I know,” I said, “and I’m a great admirer of his, but I just wanted the chance to say hello and pay my respects.”

“And what do you do?” he asked.

“You should pardon the expression,” I said, “But I work in television.”

“Fine, fine,” said Billy Wilder, the pragmatist. “Just so long as you’re working.”

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HOW QUICKLY THEY FORGET...

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m usually one of the last people out of a theater or screening because I’m a compulsive credit-reader. While scanning the cast list of Phillip Noyce’s Catch a Fire, I noticed the name Marius Weyers, who has a small role as a police brigadier. It took me a moment to connect the dots in my brain and then I remembered: he was the star of The Gods Must Be Crazy.

In the Age of Amnesia, no one that I’m aware of has taken notice of his presence in the new movie; in South Africa he’s never stopped working and has a long list of credits in recent years. (He also appears in a recent Hilary Swank movie that’s gone straight to DVD called Red Dust.) But moviegoers of a certain age will surely remember the phenomenon of Jamie Uys’ word-of-mouth comedy hit The Gods Must Be Crazy...a movie that slowly but surely took the world by storm, in spite of its remote African setting and lack of familiar stars. Last year Warner Home Video released a two-pack DVD of the 1980 film and its less successful sequel. I revisited the original just to test my memory and I’m happy to report that it’s just as disarming and funny as it seemed so many years ago. And, apparently, its leading actor is alive and well...and gainfully employed.

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The year-end movie rush, which used to make December such a harried month for me and other film critics, has pushed forward this year. A day doesn’t go by without at least a handful of new screening notices and meet-and-greet opportunities, all geared to call attention to “prestige pictures” that are vying for attention, especially as we come closer to year-end Ten Best Lists and the race to Oscar.

I was so flummoxed the other day about which screening to choose, trying to prioritize by release date in order to keep up with the weekly studio movies as well, that I became paralyzed with indecision. Finally I realized what I wanted and needed to do on Wednesday night was to attend AFI Fest’s screening of the recently-restored 1922 Mabel Normand feature Head Over Heels. My wife agreed wholeheartedly. There will be other chances to catch up with the year-end 2006 movies, but there aren’t many occasions when one can see a 35mm screening of a long-lost silent film. (I was out of town when it screened at this year’s Cinecon.)

Head Over Heels isn’t what I’d call a major rediscovery, but frankly, any film with Mabel Normand is worth its weight in gold, and this is no exception. It’s a lighthearted vehicle in which she plays (improbably) an Italian acrobat who’s signed to a contract by American roué Adolphe Menjou (billed here as Adolph Jean Menjou)...who never dreams that she’ll show up on his doorstep. Normand doesn’t have to do very much to charm me; she has a personality that lights up the screen, and I was delighted to spend quality time in her presence.

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