{"id":1590,"date":"2004-08-19T12:23:14","date_gmt":"2004-08-19T16:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1590"},"modified":"2022-03-20T21:05:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T01:05:31","slug":"billy-wilder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1590","title":{"rendered":"<i>Conversations with Wilder<\/i>, Cameron Crowe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imagesjournal.com\/issue10\/features\/wilder\/\">A great interview with him about film noir<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite books, at least in the realm of the art of film-making, is Cameron Crowe&#8217;s wonderful book <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0009GIDSG?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=thesheivari-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=B0009GIDSG\">Conversations with Wilder<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B0009GIDSG\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>.  Wilder was always famously honest, if even a little bit cranky in interviews &#8211; something that I find very charming and refreshing.<\/p>\n<p>If it&#8217;s a dumb question, he says, &#8220;That&#8217;s kind of a dumb question.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or like this excerpt from the interview:  &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I love Wilder&#8217;s words on the counter-intuitive casting of Fred MacMurray in <i>Double Indemnity<\/i>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He has to be seduced and sucked in on that thing. He is the average man who suddenly becomes a murderer. That&#8217;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&#8217;t want to play this unsympathetic guy. Nor did Fred MacMurray see the possibilities at first. He said, &#8220;Look, I&#8217;m a saxophone player. I&#8217;m making my comedies with Claudette Colbert, what do you want?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;ve got to make that one step, and believe me it&#8217;s going to be rewarding; and it&#8217;s not that difficult to do.&#8221; So he did it. But he didn&#8217;t want to do it. He didn&#8217;t want to be murdered, he didn&#8217;t want to be a murderer. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wilder made all kinds of films &#8211; famous comedies (&#8220;Some Like it Hot&#8221; being the most obvious example, but there are so many more) &#8211; but then, on the flipside he made these film-noir classics.  Double Indemnity.  Sunset Boulevard.<\/p>\n<p>An incredible man, incredible director.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0375406603&#038;asins=0375406603&#038;linkId=V3AGPXUK6PQQHTRO&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great interview with him about film noir. One of my favorite books, at least in the realm of the art of film-making, is Cameron Crowe&#8217;s wonderful book Conversations with Wilder. Wilder was always famously honest, if even a little &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1590\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,24],"tags":[310,1454,481,465],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101818,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions\/101818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}