Conversations with Wilder, Cameron Crowe

If it’s a dumb question, he says, “That’s kind of a dumb question.”

Or like this excerpt from the interview: “So you see, it is not that I am tossing up and down in my bed like Goethe conceiving art, and wind is playing in my hair, and I plan it all out to the last detail. No.”

I love Wilder’s words on the counter-intuitive casting of Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity:

He has to be seduced and sucked in on that thing. He is the average man who suddenly becomes a murderer. That’s the dark aspect of the middle-class, how ordinary guys can come to commit murder. But it was difficult to get a leading man. Everybody turned me down. I tried up and down the street, believe me, including George Raft. Nobody would do it, they didn’t want to play this unsympathetic guy. Nor did Fred MacMurray see the possibilities at first. He said, “Look, I’m a saxophone player. I’m making my comedies with Claudette Colbert, what do you want?”

“Well, you’ve got to make that one step, and believe me it’s going to be rewarding; and it’s not that difficult to do.” So he did it. But he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to be murdered, he didn’t want to be a murderer.

Wilder made all kinds of films – famous comedies (“Some Like it Hot” being the most obvious example, but there are so many more) – but then, on the flipside he made these film-noir classics. Double Indemnity. Sunset Boulevard.

An incredible man, incredible director.