Thursday, July 30, 2009

1992 - BILLY WILDER SPEAKS and speaks and speaks and speaks

Filmed by Volker Schlöndorff in 1992 and edited down from a 3 hour documentary. Wilder rehashes the same stories he has told about his films and himself many times before. Since Wilder lived to be 96 years old, he had a lot of time to get his version right.
   

Even at the age of 88 when this was film was shot, Wilder still carries on at great length about the problems he had working with Marilyn Monroe while filming Some Like It Hot. Humphrey Bogart doesn't come off much better when Wilder discusses Sabrina. For Wilder, time did not heal old wounds.  
 
 
Wilder was a prickly verbally abusive kind of guy. He always worked with a co-writer when preparing his films and usually these writers couldn't stand to work with him again. His longest partnership with writer I.A.L. Diamond supposedly survived because Diamond was pretty much a human doormat.

 

Billy Wilder also kept an experienced editor on set with him while filming. This was to ensure that he didn't miss getting all of the required shots he needed during a scene. He stopped doing this in the mid 1960's which interestingly enough is when his hot streak finally ended. None of this comes up in the interview, no idol criticizing allowed in this film.

A disappointing film, you're probably better off reading the biography On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Time of Billy Wilder.

71 minutes. 

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