{"id":104178,"date":"2026-06-22T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=104178"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T13:38:20","slug":"happy-birthday-billy-wilder-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=104178","title":{"rendered":"“You don\u2019t want to see ‘plots’. You want to see stories develop<\/i>.” — Billy Wilder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sc00072f2e\"<\/a>
\nBilly and Audrey Wilder<\/i><\/p>\n

It’s his birthday today.<\/p>\n

I love him for his humor, his cynical pessimistic view of human beings – which, honestly, just feels realistic, his versatility with material (noirs, melodramas, war movies, comedies). Sunset Boulevard<\/i>, Stalag 17<\/i>, Some Like It Hot<\/i>, Double Indemnity<\/i>, The Lost Weekend<\/i>, The Apartment<\/i>, the prophetic Ace in the Hole<\/i>. His life spanned from pre-Hitler Vienna to the early 2000s. His entire family was killed in concentration camps. He emigrated to the US shortly after Hitler took power. <\/p>\n

Here’s a letter to Wilder from Alfred Hitchcock after seeing The Apartment<\/i>:<\/p>\n

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\nI love his tips for screenwriters (#6 helped me enormously when I was writing my own script and problem-solving the final scene.) <\/p>\n

Billy Wilder’s Tips for Writers<\/big><\/p>\n

1. The audience is fickle.<\/p>\n

2. Grab ’em by the throat and never let ’em go.<\/p>\n

3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.<\/p>\n

4. Know where you’re going.<\/p>\n

5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.<\/p>\n

6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.<\/p>\n

7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.<\/p>\n

8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they are seeing.<\/p>\n

9. The event that occurs at the second-act curtain triggers the end of the movie.<\/p>\n

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then —<\/p>\n

11. — that’s it. Don’t hang around.<\/p>\n

Taken from the essential “Conversations with Wilder<\/a>\"\"“, by Cameron Crowe<\/i><\/p>\n

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\nThese two are up to no good.<\/i><\/p>\n

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\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n