Speaker 1: Okay, we're live. How this is William Ramsey.
Speaker 2: Welcome to William Ramsey investigates on today's show of a
Speaker 2: very special guest or returning guest. His name is Joseph McBride.
Speaker 2: We spoke recently about a book he published in December
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one title Political Truth, The Media and the
Speaker 2: Assassination of President Kennedy. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: another book he published in twenty twenty one. The title
Speaker 2: of that book is Billy Wilder Dancing on the Edge,
Speaker 2: and it's a very thorough detailed study memoir about really
Speaker 2: an important director of so many important films doublin dimnity
Speaker 2: some like it hot, very important cultural films.
Speaker 1: But I got a lot of background. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: I know my parents love his films, so I've seen
Speaker 2: them in black and white, but I didn't know he
Speaker 2: had a really fascinating background. And we're going to learn
Speaker 2: more about that. But Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter,
Speaker 2: and professor in the University in the School of Cinema
Speaker 2: at San Francisco State University. Published twenty four books since
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, including acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John
Speaker 2: Ford and Steven Spielberg. He's done a number of inquiries
Speaker 2: into the JFK assassination, which we talked about last time,
Speaker 2: and he had definitely Novelist Thomas Flanagan and The New
Speaker 2: York Review of Books called McBride's wide knowledge of American
Speaker 2: social history, which informs his work in the JFK Assassination
Speaker 2: and in this book. But he's also written I'm not
Speaker 2: going to list all of his books, but a few
Speaker 2: of the other titles are Whatever Happened to Orson Wells,
Speaker 2: a portrait of an independent career, The Whole Durned Human
Speaker 2: comedy life according to the Cohen Brothers, Frankly Unmasking Frank Capra,
Speaker 2: and then another one another biography that ties into this book,
Speaker 2: character and filmmaker I didn't know much about. But the
Speaker 2: title of that book is how did Lubitch Do It?
Speaker 2: And Lubich ties in as an acquaintance and friend of
Speaker 2: Billy Wilder. But you can find more about that. But
Speaker 2: those are just some of the books and his long career.
Speaker 2: In this book he has he can talk about that,
Speaker 2: but he has a signed picture of Billy Wilder in it,
Speaker 2: but I'm delighted to have him back. So Joseph McBride,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the show. Thanks for ging to the interview.
Speaker 3: Thank you, William, it's going to be back with you,
Speaker 3: and thank you for mentioning those books. Yeah, I had
Speaker 3: four books out since October. It's been a busy period
Speaker 3: for me the last two or three years. The Wilder
Speaker 3: book was long in the works, as was Political Truth,
Speaker 3: and the Wells book is I did an epilogue to
Speaker 3: book I published earlier. It's the first time it's in paperback.
Speaker 3: And the Cohn Brothers book is partly new and partly
Speaker 3: based on a long essay I did on them in
Speaker 3: a book till five years ago called Teachers for Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It's a collection of my short work, but I wanted
Speaker 3: to spin off the Cone Brothers into their own book.
Speaker 3: But Wilder has always been one of my very favorite
Speaker 3: directors and I've admired him. I've been writing about him
Speaker 3: for more than fifty years now. My first article about
Speaker 3: him was published in nineteen seventy and Film Quarterly with
Speaker 3: my collaborator Michael Wilmington, who died recently, and Mike and
Speaker 3: I were writing articles and films together and we did
Speaker 3: a piece called The Private Life of Billy Wilder, which
Speaker 3: was a career overview, and we were quite young when
Speaker 3: we wrote it, but I still think most of it
Speaker 3: holds up pretty well. And so you know, I've been
Speaker 3: following him all those years. I did an essay in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two seventy three on his film Avanti, which
Speaker 3: I like very much, which was underrated, and also Mike
Speaker 3: and I reviewed Private Life for Showlike Holmes, and then
Speaker 3: the film was These films are beloved by Wilder fans,
Speaker 3: but they were not popular at the box office because
Speaker 3: he was in his later work. He was known earlier
Speaker 3: for being very a cerviic and sarcastic, hard edged social statirists.
Speaker 3: But he made some ramantic comedies. He was trying to
Speaker 3: emulate Lubitch, his mentor, and they weren't totally successful until
Speaker 3: he made a Banti, which I believe is one of
Speaker 3: his best films, and it says here, wasn't he the director?
Speaker 3: They got to film the alleged atrocities at Auschwitz. Well,
Speaker 3: first of all, those weren't alleged, they were real electrocities.
Speaker 3: He didn't film them, per se. He worked on a
Speaker 3: film called Death Mills, which the US Army did right after.
Speaker 3: Right at the end of World War Two, Wilder was
Speaker 3: assigned to the Army in Germany to handle the dinassification
Speaker 3: of the German film industry. He was supposed to sort
Speaker 3: out the Nazis from the non Nazis, and that didn't
Speaker 3: pan out because the Americans were trying to kind of
Speaker 3: play ball with a lot of the form Nazis, especially
Speaker 3: in the intelligence agencies after the war, so we didn't
Speaker 3: denotify as early as we could have. But Death Mills
Speaker 3: was a film that another director had put together, and
Speaker 3: Wilder did some re editing and rewriting of the dialogue
Speaker 3: actually the narration, and it shows a number of death camps.
Speaker 3: Wilder believed his mother died in Auschwitz, but two ostro
Speaker 3: and biographers found a record at yad Va Shem in Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: the Holocaust Center there from his mother's brother testifying that
Speaker 3: she died at the Plashau camp in Krakau, which if
Speaker 3: you've seen Schindler's List, that's the camp that's run by
Speaker 3: the psychopathic Nazi played by Ray Fines. And his stepfather
Speaker 3: died at another camp, and his grandmother died at another place.
Speaker 3: And one of the ironies was Wilder wanted to make
Speaker 3: Schindler's List as a tribute to his family who died
Speaker 3: in Auschwitz. Is the way he put it. Excuse me,
Speaker 3: but he never knew that his mother actually died at
Speaker 3: the camp. Was portrayed in the film.
Speaker 2: Yea am On Goth was the psychopathic monster who tortured
Speaker 2: a lot and murdered a lot of people. And it
Speaker 2: was interesting. That was the one thing I learned in
Speaker 2: your book about Billy Wilder is his interest his connection
Speaker 2: to the Holocaust, but his interest in wanting to make
Speaker 2: this film with or by himself, and his communication with
Speaker 2: Steven Spielberg. I found that very interesting. Yeah, he this
Speaker 2: is really at the very end of his career. He
Speaker 2: hadn't been able to make a film since nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3: But the book by Thomas Canneely came out in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two and he tried to buy it. That Sid
Speaker 3: Sheinberg at Universally had a production there, had bought it,
Speaker 3: helping Spielberg would make it. Sheinberg was kind of Spielberg's patron,
Speaker 3: and Spielberg wasn't ready to make it. He kept hesitating
Speaker 3: for about a decade he didn't think he was mature
Speaker 3: enough to make the film, and then he finally decided
Speaker 3: to make it. And during that time Wilder had talked
Speaker 3: to Spielberg. Spielberg was a big admirer of Wilder and
Speaker 3: still is, and Wilder said, you know, I could produce it,
Speaker 3: you could direct it, or vice versa or whatever. And
Speaker 3: finally nothing was happening for a long time. Wilder called
Speaker 3: him in the early nineties and said, you know, how
Speaker 3: about Schindler's List, We could still do it together. And
Speaker 3: Spielberg had to tell him where in pre production were
Speaker 3: starting in a few months and I'm sorry, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm making the film, and Wilder took it well, and
Speaker 3: Spielberg said it was the most difficult phone call of
Speaker 3: his life. Wilder loved the film. He said it was
Speaker 3: the best film he ever saw on He wrote an
Speaker 3: essay on a review for a Bavarian newspaper or magazine
Speaker 3: and it's interesting he chose Bavaria because that's where the
Speaker 3: Nazis originated and he read about Holocaust. Well, he said
Speaker 3: it really made him feel that he was there, you know,
Speaker 3: which I interviewed to a lot of Holocaust survivors from
Speaker 3: my book on Spielberg, and that's what they all told me.
Speaker 3: They told me two things. Every thirty five Holocaust survivors
Speaker 3: said that it made them feel like they were back
Speaker 3: in that time and place, which is a high compliment
Speaker 3: for a filmmaker to do that. But they all said
Speaker 3: the only flaw they saw on the film was that
Speaker 3: Gross was played by actor who was handsome, and he
Speaker 3: was not a handsome man. He was ugly and tesque,
Speaker 3: and I think Spielberg cast finds aside from the fact
Speaker 3: that he's a very good actor, but he wanted to
Speaker 3: make him more humanized so you could understand him evil.
Speaker 3: If he was a caricature or just gross looking person,
Speaker 3: people might not have been able to kind of care
Speaker 3: about understanding him, I think was the reason. But these Holocausts,
Speaker 3: and I interviewed one one man whose job was to
Speaker 3: He was a teenager and he handled the German shepherds
Speaker 3: that Girth used at the Flaschno camp to attack Jews.
Speaker 3: And here's this Jewish kid who's caring for these German shepherds,
Speaker 3: and they would you know, Garth was torturing and killing people,
Speaker 3: and he would sick the dogs of people, and this
Speaker 3: kid had to take care of them anyway. Wilder at
Speaker 3: the end of his review, he brought up Holocaust revisionism
Speaker 3: and said that there are people who don't believe it happened,
Speaker 3: and he said, I for those people, I have just
Speaker 3: one question, where is my mother? All Right?
Speaker 2: And it goes back to his childhood in Middle Europa, right,
Speaker 2: So he came from that environment. He was really an
Speaker 2: excellent refugee. I think that theme you point out is
Speaker 2: in his life and in the films too.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was in exile five times over. I believe
Speaker 3: he was born in what's now Poland. It was then
Speaker 3: part of the Austro Hungarian Then they moved to Poland,
Speaker 3: to Krakau in Poland, and his father ran railroad cafes
Speaker 3: and then he had a hotel in Krakau, and so
Speaker 3: Wilder lived there for a few years, and then they
Speaker 3: moved to Vienna, and it turned out Wilder it's, you know,
Speaker 3: a great city of the arts and things. But Wilder
Speaker 3: felt it was even more anti semitic than Berlin, ironically,
Speaker 3: where he moved after that. But he lived his formative years,
Speaker 3: for his adolescent and young adult years in Vienna. He
Speaker 3: started working for a newspaper and magazines there. And there's
Speaker 3: a whole book of his Vienna journalism published in German
Speaker 3: that I read. And then there's a book of his
Speaker 3: German journalism, separate book, and it's very interesting stuff. And I,
Speaker 3: since I'm an old journalist and I like to follow
Speaker 3: an artist progression and growth, I really studied his journalism
Speaker 3: to see how he developed as a writer. He always
Speaker 3: thought of himself primarily as a writer, but also there
Speaker 3: are seeds of his later films in some of the articles,
Speaker 3: like there's he was very enamored of a girl's band
Speaker 3: and dance troupe called Tiller Girls came from England to
Speaker 3: Vienna and he met them at the train and he
Speaker 3: wrote this gloring, kind of heavy breathing article about them.
Speaker 3: He was a very free spirited journalist. He didn't write
Speaker 3: staid prose. He wrote kind of impressionistic essays in effect
Speaker 3: for these papers that allowed him to do that in
Speaker 3: the magazine, and he actually fell in love with one
Speaker 3: of the dancers, his name was Olive. And then he
Speaker 3: got to Berlin because he was a big fan of
Speaker 3: American jazz. He's a fan of American movies, American jazz,
Speaker 3: like a lot of Europeans were in those days. And
Speaker 3: Wilder loved Paul Whiteman, the American bandleader who he popularly.
Speaker 3: He's a white band leader, but he kind of popularized
Speaker 3: jazz with white audiences acrossover. The former Duke Ellington was
Speaker 3: very high on Whiteman, and he was a very popular man,
Speaker 3: and Wilder just idolized him and he got it. He
Speaker 3: talked himself into a job with Whiteman to go to
Speaker 3: Berlin with him and his band to be a publicist,
Speaker 3: and he wrote another glowing review of Whiteman in Berlin
Speaker 3: that may have been kind of a quick for a quote.
Speaker 3: But he got out of Vienna. I got to Berlin,
Speaker 3: which was probably the most exciting city in Europe at
Speaker 3: that time, full of cultural firm engine political unrest, and
Speaker 3: they had a lot of magazines and newspapers. So he
Speaker 3: was one of many journalists and he struggled, you know,
Speaker 3: to make a living because there's a lot of competition.
Speaker 3: But he kind of made a name for himself. He
Speaker 3: wrote a famous four part series called Waiter, Bring Me
Speaker 3: a Dancer, which was about his time as a tea dancer.
Speaker 3: It's called an eintencer dancing for chips with older ladies
Speaker 3: or even younger ladies that with a couple of hotels
Speaker 3: in Berlin. It's really wonderful writing. It reads like a film,
Speaker 3: and it could be a film. And he told me
Speaker 3: it was partly fantasy, partly fictionalized, partly real. And for
Speaker 3: a long time there was a debate whether it was
Speaker 3: he really a tee d answer and then decided to
Speaker 3: write about it or did he take the job so
Speaker 3: he could write about it, And he admitted to me
Speaker 3: he really was a tee d answer in between newspaper gigs.
Speaker 3: And then he thought I could write this as well,
Speaker 3: and that helped make a name for him. And then
Speaker 3: he became a screenwriter in Berlin, and I studied his
Speaker 3: German screenwriting, which was very interesting and mixed bag with
Speaker 3: some good films and some not so good films. And
Speaker 3: then he came to America when Hitler took over. He
Speaker 3: actually he went to France first. He spent a year
Speaker 3: in Paris. He directed his first film there called Mobile's
Speaker 3: Ground which means bad seed. It's kind of a proto
Speaker 3: new wave film about Karthie's young Carthy's a fun movie.
Speaker 3: And then he came to America in thirty four, and
Speaker 3: he struggled again in Hollywood to re establish himself. Writing
Speaker 3: in a new language is difficult for anybody, and he
Speaker 3: was just another writer in Hollywood. But he started getting
Speaker 3: some credits, but most of the films weren't very good.
Speaker 3: He was kind of typecast as a writer of operettas,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of Schmallsey Viennese type of operettas, which
Speaker 3: he had written some in Berlin as well. And we
Speaker 3: don't think a Wilder as a musical director. He only
Speaker 3: directed one fulcal edge of musical in Hollywood. It's called
Speaker 3: The Emperor Waltz, which came out recently in blu Ray
Speaker 3: and I did the commentary for it, which is actually
Speaker 3: kind of a disguised metaphor for the Holocaust. It gets
Speaker 3: very grim sometimes underneath the surface of beautiful things.
Speaker 2: And it also kind of shows his European heritage, right,
Speaker 2: So he brought that sensibility from growing up in all
Speaker 2: these hotels, dance in hotels at the kind of center
Speaker 2: of Berlin, brought some of those ideas to these states.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, He and Luvich mostly that Levich came in
Speaker 3: twenty two and Wilder, with his dark humor, said that
Speaker 3: wild Luvitch was one of the talented ones who was
Speaker 3: brought to Hollywood and didn't have to flee like I
Speaker 3: and other people did. But Luvich was brought over because
Speaker 3: he was the most important director in Germany at the time,
Speaker 3: and he revolutionized the American films. He invented the musical
Speaker 3: and invented the romantic comedy basically and set the pattern
Speaker 3: for everybody. Tremendously influential. But he also brought a new
Speaker 3: European sophistication, as you're suggesting, to American films, which were
Speaker 3: still in the throes of Churchianism and Victorianism at the
Speaker 3: time due w Griffiths films, etc. And Leuvich brought this
Speaker 3: racier sensibility, very sophisticated romantic comedies and approach to sex,
Speaker 3: and the American audists really loved that, and other people
Speaker 3: began imitating him, and Wilder was doing the same kind
Speaker 3: of films to some extended Berlin. And then the way
Speaker 3: he came to America. The thing was he was typecast
Speaker 3: as doing Schmaltz, and his natural tendency was more a
Speaker 3: cerbic social satirist in those days, and he didn't get
Speaker 3: much of a chance to exercise that until he worked
Speaker 3: for Luvich on Liberard's Eighth Wife and Nanatchko, which was
Speaker 3: Wilder's really big breakthrough in America. It's a great film
Speaker 3: with Greta Garbo in nineteen thirty nine, and it established
Speaker 3: him as a top screenwriter with his partner Charles Brackett,
Speaker 3: and then they went out from there to do more films.
Speaker 3: Then Wilder began directing again in Hollywood in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: And then his assent wasn't assure.
Speaker 2: Like he said, he was sleeping in like a closet
Speaker 2: at the Chateau Mormont, struggling to find food when he
Speaker 2: was here. So he may not have been like Lubachi,
Speaker 2: who was kind of established and moved over.
Speaker 3: He got very very different circumstances. And yeah, he was
Speaker 3: actually sleeping, he claimed he was sleeping in the ladies
Speaker 3: room at the Chamo there. You know, there was kind
Speaker 3: of like a parlor before the bathroom part, and he
Speaker 3: you know, the parlor or whatever you call it, had
Speaker 3: a cot in there for women to lie down and
Speaker 3: and he commentered that cot, he said, and women would
Speaker 3: come in and go to you know, peeing in the
Speaker 3: background and kind of give him a funny look. And
Speaker 3: he may have exaggerated that a little bit. It may
Speaker 3: have been a room like right off the bathroom. But anyway,
Speaker 3: that was kind of his low point in America. But
Speaker 3: he only was there for a brief time. But he
Speaker 3: spent uh some time at the Chateau Marmau. He had
Speaker 3: his own little room after a while, and that's still
Speaker 3: a famous solarooch hotel. A lot of European people stay
Speaker 3: there and it's you know, books have been written about it.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I've done I've actually interviewed an author who
Speaker 2: Levy uh oh thing on Chatau more months. So people
Speaker 2: want to learn more about that, they can listen to that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just looking chat to more mon of my Shoes one
Speaker 2: of my past shows. Sean Levy, Sorry, Sean Leevy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm glad. He was a very good writer. And that's
Speaker 2: the next time book and full of stories.
Speaker 3: That's the hotel where John Belushi died, among other things,
Speaker 3: and all kinds of stories having there. Wild Boulevard, which
Speaker 3: Wilder later claimed his own cinematic territory with his great
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty films. Since a Boulevard. But so Wilder was
Speaker 3: marked by the Holocaust and anti Semitism. He had suffered
Speaker 3: through some of that, and then he was very traumatized.
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty five, he had scraped together some money
Speaker 3: as a screenwriter and he went to Vienna to see
Speaker 3: his mother and stepfather and he tried to persuade them
Speaker 3: to move to America because he knew as a journalist
Speaker 3: that Hitler was on the rise and he would take
Speaker 3: over Austria, and which happened not too long after that.
Speaker 3: But the mother and stepfather were older, they were kind
Speaker 3: of said in their ways, and he couldn't persuade them
Speaker 3: to leave, and he felt terrible about then they felt
Speaker 3: guilty about it when the war came, and knowing that
Speaker 3: he didn't know what was happening to them, and he
Speaker 3: felt a sense of survivor guilt which never left him.
Speaker 3: And that permeates his films to some extent, the echoes
Speaker 3: of the Holocaust and a number of his films and
Speaker 3: the dark side of human nature. That's one of the
Speaker 3: most important things about his work is that he was
Speaker 3: a great comedy director, but he also dealt with He
Speaker 3: made dark comedies, He made heavy dramas, He made black comedies,
Speaker 3: all kinds of films. He mixed comedy and drama very well.
Speaker 3: And I asked him in nineteen ninety five, I interviewed
Speaker 3: him a lot, and I gave him the LA Critics
Speaker 3: Career Achievement Award, and at the luncheon, I said, what
Speaker 3: do you think is your best film? And he said
Speaker 3: The Apartment And I said why and he said, because
Speaker 3: it's my best mixture of comedy and drama, which is
Speaker 3: what I was trying to land all my life.
Speaker 2: And he got the Academy Award for Screenwriting with Diamond
Speaker 2: on that film, right was it?
Speaker 3: Nineteen sixty one, nineteen sixty They got the award in
Speaker 3: sixty one with Il Diamond for writing it, and then
Speaker 3: he also got Best Director and Best Picture as producer.
Speaker 3: So he was the first person who got three Oscars
Speaker 3: for one film for those three key categories, and eight
Speaker 3: people have done it since. But he was a ground director,
Speaker 3: so that was kind of the summit of his success.
Speaker 3: Although his film Arwell Leduce in nineteen sixty three was
Speaker 3: his most popular film in the box office, but after
Speaker 3: that he kind of lost his connection with the audience.
Speaker 3: He was out of sync with them. We can talk
Speaker 3: about why. But I like his later films, but that
Speaker 3: is kind of an argument I'm making in the book
Speaker 3: his later films, or it's one of his most pertal periods,
Speaker 3: unlike what a lot of people think.
Speaker 2: Right, And he, I mean, he had an interesting arc
Speaker 2: because he was writing all the time and he meets
Speaker 2: up with kind of the opposite, kind of a polar
Speaker 2: opposite of him in this Bracket character. He's a wealthy,
Speaker 2: blue blooded white Anglo Saxon Protestant. But they had a
Speaker 2: productive twelve year writing career together.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they were a great team, as you say,
Speaker 3: for those reasons seemed Wilder were very different. And Bracket's
Speaker 3: diaries were published recently and they were a bit shocking
Speaker 3: because it revealed a strong streak of anti Semitism in Bracket.
Speaker 3: Being a wasp. He looked down on Wilder as the
Speaker 3: European Jew, and he thought he was not as well
Speaker 3: educated as him and Brackett went to Harvard, et cetera.
Speaker 3: There was a real social disdain that he had, and
Speaker 3: he didn't like some of Wilder's habits, like he was
Speaker 3: kind of a playboy and he was a wisecracker and
Speaker 3: he would pace up and down in the office. He
Speaker 3: was a very restless man in his whole life, and
Speaker 3: I think that's part of being an exile. Never sat down.
Speaker 3: Jack Lemon said, there's a picture wild sitting down and
Speaker 3: should be in the Smithsonian because it's probably very rare.
Speaker 3: But Brackett didn't like the Wilder head. When he walked around,
Speaker 3: he would have a writing crop or a whip. He
Speaker 3: would crack it and I drove Cracket crazy. And so
Speaker 3: he makes all these comments from almost the beginning of
Speaker 3: their partnership in nineteen thirty sixty, saying how can I
Speaker 3: get get away from this guy? And then he never does.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like a a bad marriage in a
Speaker 3: sense where he keeps saying, I want to divorce my wife,
Speaker 3: but the next day, oh, okay, back to work, you know.
Speaker 2: But it's kind of like a Ying and yang. Because
Speaker 2: he was more reserved, intellectual, wild There's more frenetic, better
Speaker 2: kind of sense of wit. So it seems like they
Speaker 2: needed each other because his language skills were never perfect, right,
Speaker 2: Wilder's Yeah.
Speaker 3: I interviewed Paul Diamond, who is Iel Diamond's son. Paul's
Speaker 3: a screenwriter two and he said there was nobody more
Speaker 3: witty than Wilder, but he always Wilder always felt a
Speaker 3: little insecure about his English because, as Paul pointed out,
Speaker 3: his father, Il Diamond, who they called Is, came over
Speaker 3: as a boy. I think he was nine from the Romania,
Speaker 3: and he didn't know any English, but he learned quickly.
Speaker 3: And kids who come over often pick up English very well.
Speaker 3: So he didn't have an accent. But Wilder came over
Speaker 3: at a more advanced agent. So he always said that accent,
Speaker 3: which was a delightful accent. But some people would make
Speaker 3: fun of himportant. He was a little self conscious about it,
Speaker 3: but people it made him. A quote character in Selka Bertel,
Speaker 3: who was an important exile Maven, and she had a
Speaker 3: salon in Hollywood. The Wilder and many other important people
Speaker 3: were part of it. She said that when you're an foreigner,
Speaker 3: people say, oh, you have such a cute accent. It's
Speaker 3: so funny, and it's so fun of patronizing people. But
Speaker 3: so Wilder stood out as a foreigner, and he needed
Speaker 3: a writing partner. And also he was a kind of
Speaker 3: guy who didn't like to write alone because he always
Speaker 3: wanted to collaborate. He wanted somebody in the room to
Speaker 3: talk to.
Speaker 1: And he was very.
Speaker 3: Sociable when he made films. On the set, he would
Speaker 3: always welcome visitors, whether they're members of the press or
Speaker 3: just friends or kivtzers. And that bothered some actors who
Speaker 3: don't like strangers in the set, but Wilder reveled in
Speaker 3: the kind of party atmosphere. But Brackett was a novelist.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a great novelist. He was okay, but not
Speaker 3: first rate, and that's why one reason he came to Hollywood.
Speaker 3: But he was also he had been the drama critic
Speaker 3: of the New Yorker, so he had that literary pedigree,
Speaker 3: and he was part of the Algonquin roundtable, and so
Speaker 3: he's a sophisticated literary man, well read. And Wilder was
Speaker 3: well read but didn't have that rbal dexterity. And when
Speaker 3: Wilder got the Felberg Award from the Academy, he thanked
Speaker 3: Bracket and he said he thanked him for his patients
Speaker 3: with my English. You know, he really helped me to
Speaker 3: learn English better. And after I think Wilder said, three
Speaker 3: years in Hollywood he could start thinking in English. But
Speaker 3: when he came over he listened to the radio a lot.
Speaker 3: That's where he got a lot of his English. He
Speaker 3: would play soap operas and sports programs and music shows
Speaker 3: and things and pick up the argot. And then he
Speaker 3: would date a lot of young women, American women, partly
Speaker 3: because he was the ladies man, but partly to listen
Speaker 3: to them talk, you know. And so he learned. But
Speaker 3: for a while he had to write in German and
Speaker 3: have somebody surrepticiously translated his work into English to give
Speaker 3: the studios. He had to kind of hide it from
Speaker 3: the studios that he couldn't speak English very well.
Speaker 2: Right, And that was kind of like one of his
Speaker 2: things is that he was on Exiley you call it,
Speaker 2: and they think the first chapter was ouse Landish, right,
Speaker 2: So he's kind of having to adapt. But I mean,
Speaker 2: it's incredible because his early output, those movies are classics.
Speaker 2: Double Indemnity. People are still watching that today, I mean,
Speaker 2: and you I think one of the things you mentioned
Speaker 2: in your book too, is he was very self conscious
Speaker 2: of about not getting typecast, right, Like he didn't want
Speaker 2: to just be like a Hitchcock or something like that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he told me, he said, you know, I really
Speaker 3: admire Hitchcock. For example, but he usually makes the same
Speaker 3: kind of film, and he said, I wouldn't be happy
Speaker 3: doing that because you know, Wilder was very parapatetic and
Speaker 3: had a lot of interest, and so he you know,
Speaker 3: he said, also, if I feel bad, I'll make a tragedy.
Speaker 3: If I feel good, I'll make a comedy. And I
Speaker 3: remember it was the other way around. I forget. He
Speaker 3: was paradoxical, but he liked to make a different blend
Speaker 3: of moods and sometimes in the same film. But Double Indemnity,
Speaker 3: I mean, has a lot of humor, but it's a
Speaker 3: very dark film, film noir classic helps set the mold
Speaker 3: for film noir. It's a murderous couple, but there is
Speaker 3: there is humor in it. And Last Weekend is a
Speaker 3: very dark drama about an alcoholic It's a very strong film,
Speaker 3: kind of hard to watch, good, good film that you
Speaker 3: wanted to out of me work for directing that as well,
Speaker 3: and Raymond Land when they ask her for playing the part.
Speaker 3: But Wilder would tend to follow dramas with the comedy
Speaker 3: and change the pace. And Susai Boulevard is funny but
Speaker 3: a tragic film as well, And so he was all
Speaker 3: over the map in terms of the kind of films
Speaker 3: he made, and he liked different genres. I mean, he
Speaker 3: didn't do all the genres. He directed twenty five films
Speaker 3: in Hollywood, and he didn't do every genre, but he
Speaker 3: tried a number of them and did well in several genres.
Speaker 3: That was part of his personality he was and you
Speaker 3: get that partly, I think from being a newspaper person.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was a reporter. I'm still a journalist.
Speaker 3: One of the fun things about the job is you
Speaker 3: go to work every day you really don't know what's
Speaker 3: going to happen. You know, you're at the mercy or
Speaker 3: as the fun part is the news happens and you're
Speaker 3: sent out to cover some breaking news or you're told
Speaker 3: to interview somebody. And Wilder like that excitement as well,
Speaker 3: and I think he liked that in his films. He
Speaker 3: was very as I say, restless person, right.
Speaker 2: And he also he had people said part of his
Speaker 2: character he was a quick witted person, but he could
Speaker 2: also be a cerbic and you know, kind of dressed
Speaker 2: people down a little bit too, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had a sharp tongue and then he sometimes
Speaker 3: you know, could wound people with his wed I saw
Speaker 3: him exploded a bunch of paparazzi once in Hollywood. He
Speaker 3: was quite harsh with him. They were just trying to
Speaker 3: take his picture and they were actually being kind of nice.
Speaker 3: Sometimes Hollywood paparazzi could be very obnoxious, but these people
Speaker 3: were being nice and he but he was late for
Speaker 3: an appointment. This is after our LA Film Critics Award show.
Speaker 3: He kept he thought it would be over before it was.
Speaker 3: But it dragged on, as these things tend to do.
Speaker 3: And while the producer of pulp fiction was getting his
Speaker 3: word and going on and on and on, Wilder was
Speaker 3: muttering under his breath next to you know, and he
Speaker 3: kept getting anxious about going, And so I helped him
Speaker 3: through the lobby, I mean, to navigate his way through
Speaker 3: the crowds. And it turned out he had a four
Speaker 3: o'clock meeting with somebody he thought might give him money
Speaker 3: to make a film. So he was naturally anxious about that,
Speaker 3: and he hadn't made a film for a while, and
Speaker 3: so he really didn't want to pose for photographers, so
Speaker 3: he really snapped at them and it was kind of stunning.
Speaker 3: But a lot of times he would make funny jokes,
Speaker 3: but one time. For example, in Playboy, he referred to
Speaker 3: the producer Hal Wallace as the prisoner of Fazenda because
Speaker 3: he was married to Luis Fazenda, who is a comedy
Speaker 3: actress from the Silent period, the prisoner of Fazenda, which
Speaker 3: is pretty funny. But he said he told me he
Speaker 3: had to. He called hal Wallace after that and said,
Speaker 3: I never said that, and you know, I apologize. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to hurt your what I was feeling or
Speaker 3: you're feeling. So he would sometimes have you double thought
Speaker 3: about what hexcept. But he made many many great crips
Speaker 3: and he was a great person to interview. He would
Speaker 3: have loved to have interviewed Hi because he just was
Speaker 3: like a Roman candle full of wonderful constantly talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he insulted Xanak.
Speaker 2: I was he surprised, Like he was pretty bold because
Speaker 2: that was at that time.
Speaker 1: He was like one of the.
Speaker 2: Most powerful, if not the most powerful person in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: But of the incident with ueby Mayor, oh was it Mayor?
Speaker 1: Oh? Sorry?
Speaker 3: He was Mayor for a long time and he was
Speaker 3: in his waning period, but he was still very powerful,
Speaker 3: kind of you know, most powerful man in Hollywood for
Speaker 3: a long time, and Wilder showed Sense of Boulevard to
Speaker 3: a few people at Carmount and Mayor saw it, and
Speaker 3: Wilder came out into the lobby and Mayor was standing
Speaker 3: there with a bunch of his stooges and he was saying, oh,
Speaker 3: that son of a bitch Wilder. You know, he was
Speaker 3: floating in the water. And we put out our hand
Speaker 3: to pull him off out of the water, and we
Speaker 3: gave him the place to live and regain the job,
Speaker 3: and we saved him from you know, hit laring all this,
Speaker 3: and Wilder claimed that Mayor said he should be deported
Speaker 3: for making this film, for biting the hand that feeds him.
Speaker 3: And then Mayor saw Wilder standing there, and wild Wilder said,
Speaker 3: mister Mayor, I'm Billy Wilder. I made this film, Fuck you,
Speaker 3: mister Mayor, which was a very bold thing for a
Speaker 3: filmmaker to say, especially an immigrant filmmaker. And also at
Speaker 3: that time, Wilder was opposing the Hollywood Blacklist, which was
Speaker 3: rampant at that time from forty seven onwards. And the
Speaker 3: Bracket Book makes it clear that's why they actually broke up,
Speaker 3: and that was sort of unclear until the diaries came
Speaker 3: out that they had disagreements, like, for example, Brackett didn't
Speaker 3: want to work on Double Indentity because he thought that
Speaker 3: James mk novel was too sordid, so Wilder got Raymond
Speaker 3: Chandler to work on it. But the real reason was
Speaker 3: Brackett actually approved of the House Committee in an American action.
Speaker 3: He's forcing people to say if they were communists, sympathizers
Speaker 3: or communists. And Wilder thought there was against the First Amendment.
Speaker 3: He as an immigrant, he believed very strongly in the
Speaker 3: Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court. He said, who's
Speaker 3: the most important thing about America? I wonder what we
Speaker 3: would say today. But Brackett and he got into big
Speaker 3: arguments about Dalton Trumbo refusing to testify, et cetera. And
Speaker 3: Wilder said at that time, I don't want to work
Speaker 3: with you anymore, you know. But they still did Senset Boulevard.
Speaker 3: I guess they had one more film they wanted to
Speaker 3: do and had our time to break up. And then
Speaker 3: Wilder just said that's it, and Brackett acted surprised, even
Speaker 3: though there been many warnings where Wilder said, I want
Speaker 3: to be more free. I want to do certain films
Speaker 3: that you don't want to do, and he warned them
Speaker 3: and then they broke up and Brackett was really kind
Speaker 3: of berefed after that. And Wilder worked with a number
Speaker 3: of different writers in the fifties until he found Diamond,
Speaker 3: and they were really simpotic. They're both European Jewish refugees,
Speaker 3: and they both had similar sensibilities, and they talked the
Speaker 3: same language, and they were had similar senses of humor.
Speaker 3: Diamond was more of a comedy writer. He came from
Speaker 3: screenwriting and review writing. He wrote the school reviews for
Speaker 3: Columbia University for three years and they were so good
Speaker 3: that they were reviewed by the New York Times and
Speaker 3: they gave him glowing reviews, and that's how he got Hollywood.
Speaker 3: And so he wasn't a literary man like Bracket. But
Speaker 3: Wilder by that time was, you know, a master of screenwriting,
Speaker 3: and Diamond had a lot of experiences as screenwriters, so
Speaker 3: they worked really smoothly together. And all of Wilders screenplays
Speaker 3: with both collaborators are misterpieces of structure and construction, which
Speaker 3: William Goldman said, screenplays are structure. That's the most important
Speaker 3: thing about a good screenplay, and they really work well,
Speaker 3: like you planted something early in the film that pays
Speaker 3: off later, maybe up two or three times, and then
Speaker 3: pays off in a graduate at the end. They're very
Speaker 3: carefully constructed, not only the great dialogue, but the great
Speaker 3: storytelling skills. And so him Diamond were like brothers, kind.
Speaker 2: Of called him and the wild and Wilder didn't want
Speaker 2: his scripts changed. He didn't want improvisation or any anybody
Speaker 2: to adjust the dialogue.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were very strict about that, and Wilder, you know,
Speaker 3: some actors didn't like that. I mean, like Shirley maclain
Speaker 3: came from the more modern school of the actress studio
Speaker 3: and stuff, and she liked to improvise, and he wouldn't
Speaker 3: let actors improvises. Diamond said, if you ever listened to
Speaker 3: actress talk, you wouldn't liked them improvised. And because they
Speaker 3: both of them said, if you know, if you spend
Speaker 3: six months in the office writing the dialogue, an actor
Speaker 3: on the spur of the moment is not going to
Speaker 3: come up with a better line. I mean, I've I've
Speaker 3: worked in films. I've worked with Arson Wells and he
Speaker 3: helped he me write my dialogue with him before. I've
Speaker 3: seen those unusual but once in a while an actor
Speaker 3: does have a good idea and they put in some lines.
Speaker 3: Shirley McLain in the apartment, for example, when they had lunch,
Speaker 3: she said she was having an affair with the married man,
Speaker 3: and she said when you have when you're having an
Speaker 3: affair with the married man, you shouldn't wear a Maskkara
Speaker 3: wildly thought there was a greade line and put that
Speaker 3: in the film. And then she also said something like
Speaker 3: why do people have to love people anyway? Why can't
Speaker 3: we love zebras or giraffes or something. He said, great, okay,
Speaker 3: and he rebuilt the set and had her say why
Speaker 3: do people have to love people anyway?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: So he would listen to the actors and they often
Speaker 3: rewrote the last part of the script to incorporate some thoughts.
Speaker 3: And also they were writing for specific people and they
Speaker 3: know who you know. Jack Lemon and McLain were Fred
Speaker 3: mc murray and how they would talk. But I was
Speaker 3: on the set of The Front Page for a day
Speaker 3: and watch while they're shooting, which was really a great
Speaker 3: experience for me as a critic and future author of
Speaker 3: a book on him, and I noticed that Diamond would
Speaker 3: sit on the side of the set on a little
Speaker 3: stool or applebox, and his job was to police the dialogue,
Speaker 3: he told me, and he actually had to write. Normally,
Speaker 3: the writer is not even on the set, and then
Speaker 3: when they are in the set, we're not supposed to
Speaker 3: interrupt the action. But Diamond had the license to interrupt
Speaker 3: the actors, and I saw him do that sometimes with Welder,
Speaker 3: math Out would say a line. Actually, Vincent Gardenia as
Speaker 3: a police chief threw in some goddamnits or something, and
Speaker 3: Wilder said, do we have too many goddamits? And Diamond
Speaker 3: looked at the script and he ran his finger down
Speaker 3: and said, yes, we have three damns and two god
Speaker 3: damits for something. And so he tells him not to
Speaker 3: say goddamn it too often. Another time, Wilder Matho was
Speaker 3: supposed to tell the sheriff, we're going to throw you
Speaker 3: out and your fat can, and he kept saying big
Speaker 3: fat can. And then he turned to Diamond and he
Speaker 3: knew the drill, and he said, I've been throwing in
Speaker 3: a big before fat can. Is that okay? And Diamond
Speaker 3: sort of sniffed. He said, yes, I didn't say anything
Speaker 3: about that, you know. In other words, they would allow
Speaker 3: little changes if it seem more natural, and sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: if they felt the need for adding something. As Diamond said,
Speaker 3: there was a poker game and running poker game in
Speaker 3: the film with the reporters. He said, that's the kind
Speaker 3: of thing where you need to write some dialogue got
Speaker 3: on the set to cover the action in the poker game.
Speaker 3: And but while Theer and Diamond would go off and
Speaker 3: spend half an hour, you know, writing, the dialogue got
Speaker 3: on the set, you know, which is unusual. But they
Speaker 3: did not wing it like some directors like to do, and.
Speaker 2: Some people I think you mentioned, but people perceived his
Speaker 2: films as cynical, like he had a dark kind of
Speaker 2: view based upon the films. But there's a counter point
Speaker 2: or countervailing point that he was really a moralist. So
Speaker 2: he was exposing these foibles, human foibles. What what's your
Speaker 2: thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big theme of my book. I'm glad
Speaker 3: you brought that up, William, because I wanted to counter
Speaker 3: You know, one reason I write books is usually because
Speaker 3: there's some injustice that has been done. Somebody has been
Speaker 3: underrated or misunderstood for years, and even a great director
Speaker 3: like Wilder is somewhat misunderstood by certain people. He has
Speaker 3: a lot of fans, he had a lot of awards,
Speaker 3: but he has just detractors as well, and they usually
Speaker 3: say the same thing. They say he's too cynical, he
Speaker 3: hates his characters, etcetera, etcetera. And I really don't believe that.
Speaker 3: Diamond said Wilder was a disappointed romantic, which I think
Speaker 3: is a good phrase. And he said he was like
Speaker 3: Arthur Schitzler, the Viennese playwriter read Laurent and he wrote
Speaker 3: the novel that Eyes White Shot.
Speaker 1: Is based on the Dream Dream story. He was a.
Speaker 3: Trenchant observer of sexual mores. He was that are scandalous
Speaker 3: at the Simon. He was very ahead of his time
Speaker 3: and a very good writer. And Diamond thought that Wilder
Speaker 3: was like Schmitzler because he had the Viennese bittersweet quality
Speaker 3: to his work and he really understood people. And I
Speaker 3: don't think Wilder hated his characters. I think there are
Speaker 3: there are few characters, very few actually in his films
Speaker 3: who were really lowsome villains. Fred mc murray in the
Speaker 3: Apartment was pretty unredeemable character. The way he exploits Shirley
Speaker 3: maclain and other women. But again there's there's a moralism
Speaker 3: that I find that in Luvitch too, that both Luvich
Speaker 3: and Wilder are moralists, but they're against conventional morality. There's
Speaker 3: a difference, I think. And Noel Coward's Private Lives is
Speaker 3: the line that I like where Amanda mentions morals and
Speaker 3: somebody said, what do you mean by that? Because they're
Speaker 3: very sophisticated characters, and she says, morals what one should
Speaker 3: do and what one shouldn't do. And I think that's
Speaker 3: when lubach is films are about how men should treat
Speaker 3: women and how women should treat men. Underneath the jokes
Speaker 3: and all that, that's the serious underpinning of his great
Speaker 3: films like Trouble and Paradise and Designed for Living and
Speaker 3: chopp Around the Corner, et cetera, and then Wilders films.
Speaker 3: The Apartment is a very it's a morality play, but
Speaker 3: you know it's it's it's not one thing Lubits does.
Speaker 3: He's in favor of adultery a lot of these films,
Speaker 3: which is kind of an un American attitude that's not
Speaker 3: what you usually see in American films because he's as
Speaker 3: a European sophistication. He's not prudish, and he's you know,
Speaker 3: in Europe sometimes marriages tolerate partners having something going on
Speaker 3: on the side. It doesn't destroy the marriage, and it
Speaker 3: can enhance the marriage. Who portrays that and then Wilder
Speaker 3: has the same kind of attitude. But he also shows
Speaker 3: how people can really be hurt by people using them sexually,
Speaker 3: and that is one of the common themes in his
Speaker 3: films is the clash between casual sex and true love,
Speaker 3: or sex for money and love. A lot of his
Speaker 3: films deal with prostitution or various forms of prostitution. You know,
Speaker 3: a man giving a woman money was his mistress, etc.
Speaker 3: Or a man doing things for money like in the
Speaker 3: Apartment to Jack Lemon, character is like a company's letting
Speaker 3: out his apartment to his superiors so he can rise
Speaker 3: in the career. And Wilder, I guess part of that
Speaker 3: stems from his experiences as a teat answer he makes
Speaker 3: pains in that series of articles to say he never
Speaker 3: slept with women, but who knows. But he also when
Speaker 3: he went to high school, he said he would stare
Speaker 3: out the window at a brothel across the street all
Speaker 3: day long, and there was a prostitute who had red hair,
Speaker 3: curly red hair. They called it red Fritzy, and he
Speaker 3: was really taken with her, and he saved up all
Speaker 3: his money to score with Red Fretzy once. And you know,
Speaker 3: this was when he was in high school and he
Speaker 3: registered at the hotel under the name of one of
Speaker 3: his teachers he didn't like, which was a Wilder kind
Speaker 3: of joke. But so Wilder was very you know, advanced
Speaker 3: in terms of his sexual understanding of what people do,
Speaker 3: and he was not condemning sex workers. For example, like
Speaker 3: in Kiss Me Stupid, which I think is a great film,
Speaker 3: it's very underrated and scandalize people in America. Kim Novac
Speaker 3: plays of prostitute and she's really the most admirable character
Speaker 3: in the film. The men in the film are awfully
Speaker 3: slazy and the wife. It's about a man hiring a
Speaker 3: prostitute to maskrat as his wife so he can sell
Speaker 3: a song to Dean Martin. And what happens is the
Speaker 3: wife winds up sleeping with Dean Martin for a night,
Speaker 3: and the prostitute winds up sleeping with the songwriter for
Speaker 3: one night, and she says, for one night it was
Speaker 3: good being a housewife or my wife, and then the
Speaker 3: wife says, for one night, it was good being Hollywood pistol.
Speaker 3: And that outrage audience is in nineteen sixty four, it's
Speaker 3: ironic today things have changed so much. When I show
Speaker 3: that filmly my class, what scandalizes them is not the
Speaker 3: wife being a prostitute for a night, but the prostitute
Speaker 3: saying she wants to be her wife for one night
Speaker 3: because she never had anybody treat her with respect or
Speaker 3: she hasn't not at home, you know. But today's audience,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's shocking.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He kind of pushed the boundaries with kind of the section.
Speaker 2: But it comes from his background too, right, So some
Speaker 2: like it Hot comes from the Weimar Republic, the kind
Speaker 2: of cee, the sexual ambiguity of where he was.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that was a time when they had a
Speaker 3: lot of sexual underbending and gay and lesbian clubs, and
Speaker 3: you know, Christopher Isherwood was writing his Berlin stories about
Speaker 3: that cabarets from one of the two that period was
Speaker 3: like look at Cabaret. So Wilder was influenced by all that,
Speaker 3: and some like an Hot is also influenced by that
Speaker 3: Girl's band. I told you about the Taellor girls. They
Speaker 3: came by train. They had a very stern woman as
Speaker 3: they're kind of chaperone, just like in some Like an
Speaker 3: Hot And it's filled with music from the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: It's said in the twenties and transplanted to America, but
Speaker 3: it's a lot of it is taken from his memories
Speaker 3: of that, and Marilyn Monroe's character is you know. I
Speaker 3: talked to Howard Hawks did a book on him called
Speaker 3: Hawks and Hawks, and he and Wilder are the only
Speaker 3: two people who ever directed Monroe twice in complete films,
Speaker 3: and Hawks said that Monroe there was nothing realistic about her.
Speaker 3: She was a creature of fantasy all the time in films,
Speaker 3: and that's how he used her in films, and she's
Speaker 3: very good in that. But Diamond Wilder. First, Wilder put
Speaker 3: her in some seven year ritch where she is literally
Speaker 3: a creature of fantasy. She's basically Marilyn Monroe living upstairs
Speaker 3: from this orny married man and it's all fantasy. He
Speaker 3: has fantasies of having a flame with her, and the
Speaker 3: sensors wouldn't allow him to do that. But when they
Speaker 3: come to something like it Hot, she plays a very realistic,
Speaker 3: very poignant character who's bitter sweet. She's looking to marry
Speaker 3: a rich man, which is kind of her flaw in
Speaker 3: a way, but she wants to be treated better. And
Speaker 3: the whole film is about Tony Curtis, who's a cat,
Speaker 3: learning to treat her with respect and affection. And that's
Speaker 3: what the morality of the film is. But it's very
Speaker 3: unusual situation for American films. I remember when I first
Speaker 3: saw that film. I was twelve, I guess, and I
Speaker 3: was really amazed by that film. It opened my mind.
Speaker 3: Billy Wilder is kind of my sex education teacher. I
Speaker 3: think I was a repressed Catholic kid, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 3: that feelings really really sexy and wild. And then I
Speaker 3: went to see Aramel Deduce. I had a funny experience.
Speaker 3: First time I saw it, I walked down in the middle.
Speaker 3: I was kind of scandalized by it. And then the
Speaker 3: second time then I went back to it, and I
Speaker 3: kept being drawn to it, and I made it all
Speaker 3: the way toward the end when Charley McLean has her
Speaker 3: baby in church while she's getting married, and I was
Speaker 3: scandalized by then I walked out again. The third time
Speaker 3: I went to it, I made it all the way through,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of matured thanks to Wilder. And
Speaker 3: soon after that they had the Legion of Decency Pledge,
Speaker 3: which they had every year. You had to stand up
Speaker 3: in church and pledge you wouldn't go to movies and
Speaker 3: were condemned by the Legion and I refused to stand
Speaker 3: for that. My father was upset, but I had been
Speaker 3: changed by Billy Wilder and a few other things, and
Speaker 3: I was starting to become a film person instead of religious,
Speaker 3: and I broke away from the church. So, yeah, Wilder
Speaker 3: was pushing the envelope. I'm personally here to tell you
Speaker 3: how I worked in those days, right.
Speaker 2: And he what the It wasn't until sixty eight that
Speaker 2: the I forgot what the name of it was, like
Speaker 2: the Decency Act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the production code was differently. He is a
Speaker 3: Catholic group, but they had a lot of cloud and
Speaker 3: they intimidated Hollywood, and Hollywood had to kind of couch
Speaker 3: out of them because they told Catholics not to go
Speaker 3: to from their cut into the box office a lot.
Speaker 3: So the code was written by a priest originally, and
Speaker 3: so they had a lot of influence on that. But
Speaker 3: the production code was opposed by the studios from the
Speaker 3: thirty four onward, and it changed Lubitch's films because he
Speaker 3: was he was very risque before that, and then he
Speaker 3: had to be more oblique and more subtle, and that
Speaker 3: actually was good for him in a sense. But Wilder
Speaker 3: kept pushing that envelope. And Wilder and other directors from
Speaker 3: that period told me that even though they chafed about
Speaker 3: the code and the restrictions, which were kind of ludicrous,
Speaker 3: like you couldn't have a married bull in bed together,
Speaker 3: even a merried couple of the advent supper beds and
Speaker 3: things like that, but it made them think of more
Speaker 3: ingenious solutions, to be suggestive rather than blatant. Showing people
Speaker 3: bouncing around the bed is not particularly sophisticated form of storytelling.
Speaker 3: And so Wilder kind of thrived by pushing the envelope.
Speaker 3: I see him as the bull in the China Shop
Speaker 3: and American puritivism. And but when the code was abolished
Speaker 3: in sixty eight, in the rating system was opposed, which
Speaker 3: has its own problems. The China Shop, all the crockery
Speaker 3: was broken and anything went for a while. You know,
Speaker 3: they made Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider and all kinds
Speaker 3: of racy films and films with profane language, you know,
Speaker 3: I can. He was afraid of Virginia Wolf, etc. And
Speaker 3: Wilder didn't want to do that explicit kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: He didn't think it was witty or funny, so he
Speaker 3: became more openly romantic. He was like a closet of
Speaker 3: romantic and his romanticism came out of the closet and
Speaker 3: he made He was kind of also traumatized by the
Speaker 3: reactions Christmas Stupid, which was pretty, you know, ronching film,
Speaker 3: but it was a restoration comedy, as Diamond said, the
Speaker 3: audience didn't get it. But then they made The Private
Speaker 3: Life of Sherlock Holmes, which is a beautiful film, and
Speaker 3: they spent ten years writing that and it was a lovely,
Speaker 3: bittersweet romantic film. And unfortunately the varioush company cut a
Speaker 3: lot out of it after some bad previews, and Wilder
Speaker 3: was kind of forced to accurates, and they cut out
Speaker 3: a couple of humorous episodes at the beginning that are
Speaker 3: a loss, But the biggest loss they cut out a
Speaker 3: flashback in which the whole film is about what is
Speaker 3: Sherlock Holmes's attitude toward women? You know, Some people also
Speaker 3: say that Wilder is a misogynist. I don't think he is.
Speaker 3: I think he criticizes both men and women equally, and
Speaker 3: he doesn't undamentalized women. And Mollie Haskell, who's a great
Speaker 3: writer about women in film, said in my book that
Speaker 3: one reason Wilder is so modern today is that he
Speaker 3: doesn't sentimentalize women like a lot of the films did
Speaker 3: in the old days. And we look back at them
Speaker 3: and we think they're kind of phoning or limited. But
Speaker 3: Wilder didn't hesitate to criticize women, but only about three
Speaker 3: women in his films who were just out and out
Speaker 3: nasty people of Harbus Stanwick and Double and Dmnity, Jan
Speaker 3: Sterling and Ason Hall and Judy West and Fortune Cookie.
Speaker 3: The rest are a mixed group of real people, and
Speaker 3: some of them are very good people, like Betty Schaeffer,
Speaker 3: the story editor and Sense of Boulevard is my favorite example,
Speaker 3: and Shirley McLain and Nancy Olsen plays that character. Shirley
Speaker 3: McLain is a wonderful character in the Apartment. She's flawed,
Speaker 3: but she's a lot. You love her. You understand why
Speaker 3: she's falling for the wiles of this married man. And
Speaker 3: doesn't understand that the guy who really loves her when
Speaker 3: she should regret until toward the end of the film.
Speaker 3: But she's a very real person. And when my students
Speaker 3: saw that film recently, they said, Wow, that film is
Speaker 3: so modern. It's just like sexual relationships today, and we're
Speaker 3: really impressive. So that's kind of what wild they're brought
Speaker 3: to American films, right.
Speaker 2: And you can just see that, you can see that
Speaker 2: kind of different mores, different sensibilities, definitely more European breaking
Speaker 2: down the kind of puritanism that lasted really to the sixties,
Speaker 2: I think, so, yeah, really fascinating.
Speaker 3: After the color broke up, he had to kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, as I say, he went very romantic. But
Speaker 3: in Sherlock Holmes, I was going to mention there's a
Speaker 3: scene there where he falls in love with a spy
Speaker 3: who's in effective prostitute for Germany, who's seducing him as
Speaker 3: a spy, and he's tricked by her, and he explains
Speaker 3: why he has a view of women that when he
Speaker 3: was at Oxford he won a crew race. He was
Speaker 3: the captain of the crew and as a reward, his
Speaker 3: team bought a prostitute services for him and he had
Speaker 3: been worshiping from Afar, this beautiful blonde who would go
Speaker 3: to a church with a bunch of other girls and
Speaker 3: things like that. He could see her from the fire,
Speaker 3: and then when he gets the prostitute, he's very shy,
Speaker 3: and she turns around and she's the girl that he's
Speaker 3: been worshiping and idealizing, and that's a terrible shock Tom
Speaker 3: and he runs out. And Maurice Solatov, who's one of
Speaker 3: Wilder's biographers, claimed that Wilder had a similar experience as
Speaker 3: a young man, that he was in love with a
Speaker 3: girl named Ilsa who he had idealized, and that his
Speaker 3: friend said she was turning tricks in the local park
Speaker 3: and he went there and was terribly disillusioned. But I
Speaker 3: asked Wilder about that, and he said, absolute bullshit. Never happened.
Speaker 3: He said, as a young man, I wouldn't sleep with
Speaker 3: the prostitute because you know, he'd get syphilis one and
Speaker 3: number two I couldn't afford it. But he didn't actually
Speaker 3: deny the story, and actually the Red Fritzy story a
Speaker 3: kind of belies the thing that he wouldn't sleep with
Speaker 3: the prostitute and didn't have the money and he admitted
Speaker 3: to Kevin Lalley, another biographer, that yeah, I did date
Speaker 3: this girl, Elsa, but I knew she was of her,
Speaker 3: you know. It's a different version of the story, but
Speaker 3: something like that happened to him. So that's that's a
Speaker 3: really tragic loss in Sherlock Holmes of that scene, which
Speaker 3: was very short they could have kept it is missing.
Speaker 3: I have a still from it in my book Bill
Speaker 3: Wilder Dancing on the Edge. But then he did Avandi,
Speaker 3: which is a very romantic film about a again, a
Speaker 3: guy who's sort of callous and just believes in extramarital
Speaker 3: sex without emotional entanglement. Jack Lemon's character an American businessman
Speaker 3: what we call the ugly American kind of character, while
Speaker 3: they had a lot of them in his films, and
Speaker 3: he goes to Europe. He meets this young, attractive english
Speaker 3: woman who is more open about sexuality, and they have romance,
Speaker 3: reenacting the romance of their dead parents. It's a beautiful,
Speaker 3: tender film that looks back to the traditions of Luvich
Speaker 3: and all that. But in nineteen seventy two, the word
Speaker 3: romantic was kind of a dirty word. If people wanted
Speaker 3: to put you down, they'd say, oh, you're a romantic,
Speaker 3: like that meant that you didn't understand life or something,
Speaker 3: because true love was the big thing. And Wilder was
Speaker 3: against that concept because he believed in emotions, and so
Speaker 3: that's why he's not a cynic or misogynist. He believes
Speaker 3: in people treating each other decently and cares about the
Speaker 3: emotions of both genders. And also he's interested in things
Speaker 3: like cross stressing. And masquerading is a big theme.
Speaker 2: And right, you said, masquerades are a very important theme,
Speaker 2: or people masquerades of the individual characters too, putting on
Speaker 2: kind of a masquerade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many instances. Almost every Wilder film it
Speaker 3: was kind of a masquerade of some kind of or
Speaker 3: con game is some kind where people are fooling people
Speaker 3: by being something. The art and I talked about that
Speaker 3: for a long time, and then I realized, oh, well,
Speaker 3: that's common to exiles, and I started I read a
Speaker 3: lot about exiles, and people say that when you're in
Speaker 3: exile and you come to a new country, you are masquerading,
Speaker 3: whether you want it or not, in fact, because you're
Speaker 3: adopting the language and customs of a new country, and
Speaker 3: sometimes the clothing or the jobs or whatever, and you
Speaker 3: have to do that to survive in the country. Some
Speaker 3: people are more able to do it than others, and
Speaker 3: some people resisted. But Wilder wholeheartedly became an American, but
Speaker 3: he was still a European and he's later a work
Speaker 3: When Hollywood was not financing him much, he became a
Speaker 3: European filmmaker again, and so he deals a lot with masquerating,
Speaker 3: but that also is a way in which he deals
Speaker 3: with people fooling people and exploiting people and then getting
Speaker 3: their come up. In Fedora, his last good film, it's
Speaker 3: all about masquerating about a an old actress who her
Speaker 3: face has become disfigured through plastic surgery, bad clastic surgery,
Speaker 3: and so she turns her daughter into effects similary of
Speaker 3: herself and passes off her daughter as herself, and people
Speaker 3: marvel at how useful she looks at all. That it's
Speaker 3: a terrible mask, great of ruins its young woman's life,
Speaker 3: and it's a tragic film, and it's a dark film
Speaker 3: about film business, and it's related to the sense of boulevard,
Speaker 3: but even more tragic. And that's a fascinating, flawed film,
Speaker 3: that fascinating and he.
Speaker 2: Kind of had that whole theme of disillusionment as well.
Speaker 2: And some people, I think you compare him to Peck
Speaker 2: and Pon in some way some ways because as somebody
Speaker 2: who was contemporary, they had kind of a broken.
Speaker 3: Hearted view of the world, like, yeah, this is how
Speaker 3: it can be. That's a good point. I said to
Speaker 3: wild there was kind of without thinking I referred to
Speaker 3: cynicism in his work. And he says, but if I'm cynical,
Speaker 3: what adjective do you have for pecan pot pictures. I
Speaker 3: thought it was a greade line. That's great win And
Speaker 3: I said, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way.
Speaker 3: You know, cynical is just another word for realistic, isn't it.
Speaker 3: And he said, yeah, every play by Ibsen was cynical, right,
Speaker 3: every play by Strindberg was cynical. And what was the
Speaker 3: thing you were mentioning?
Speaker 2: That just like the Broken Heart and also disillusion that
Speaker 2: people got disillusioned with things or or you know, they
Speaker 2: had to adapt to the corruption of the world and
Speaker 2: how they how they manage that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another critic had a good point there was a
Speaker 3: broken heart and Wilder that he said made him very
Speaker 3: poignant and he was not hard hearted, cynical guy. His
Speaker 3: broken heart was constantly on display. And the character's hearts
Speaker 3: are often broken because they either start out being a
Speaker 3: fearless or there they've been jaded, and then they they
Speaker 3: come to love, you know. He deals a lot with
Speaker 3: people who have the broken heart. And this critic was saying,
Speaker 3: I see the broken heart in Pekapa on display, even
Speaker 3: though he was very violent filmmaker, But the characters that
Speaker 3: are fascinating because they're complex. But he said, I don't
Speaker 3: see the broken heart, and say, Robert Altman, A lot
Speaker 3: of modern filmmakers are not. They're not as much into
Speaker 3: vulnerability as Billy Wilder was. And that's one of the
Speaker 3: qualities that I really love and admire about him. And
Speaker 3: you love a lot of his characters and you understand them,
Speaker 3: even a terrible person like Barbus Stanwick and Double Identity
Speaker 3: sort of understand why she's doing what she's doing to
Speaker 3: get out of this bad marriage. She's going to kill
Speaker 3: her husband. But then Fred mc murray is a great
Speaker 3: piece of casting. He's a likable fellow, a kind of
Speaker 3: all American guy. And Wilder had written one of the
Speaker 3: interesting discoveries. I saw a film called Champagne Waltz in
Speaker 3: the thirties, Wilder had co written. It was rewritten after
Speaker 3: he left, but it's the first Wilder character in an
Speaker 3: American film. Buzzy Blue is a character played by McMurray
Speaker 3: who's kind of wise cracking, gum chewing jazz man who
Speaker 3: goes to Vienna and he puts a Viennese waltz palace
Speaker 3: out of business, and he feels guilty about it because
Speaker 3: of the young woman who's getting interested in and he's
Speaker 3: ruining her business. And then she goes to America with
Speaker 3: him and they kind of combined jazz and Viennese waltz
Speaker 3: is in a kind of unlikely combination. But it's a
Speaker 3: very Wilder character. In his love of music, which is
Speaker 3: one of the great things about his films. He always
Speaker 3: picked the right songs for his films with a lot
Speaker 3: of residents, a lot of symbolism, and his use of
Speaker 3: background scores. He picked great proposals to work with, so
Speaker 3: that McMurray he saw the darker side underneath the surface charm,
Speaker 3: and he used him in double identity. He is kind
Speaker 3: of a regular guy. We could all kind of relate
Speaker 3: to this guy, but he comes to lust and and
Speaker 3: he wants to outwit his father figure, who's great performance
Speaker 3: by Edward G. Robinson. There's a great insurance investigator and Worry,
Speaker 3: like a lot of people, thinks he can out with
Speaker 3: somebody who's really brilliant, and then he fails, although he
Speaker 3: does not rid him for a while. And it's it's
Speaker 3: really as wild he said, it's a love story between
Speaker 3: two men, not between the man and the woman. They
Speaker 3: have a murderous relationship, but he betrays his father figure
Speaker 3: and it's a very poignant ending where they kind of
Speaker 3: expressed their love for each other in oblique place. It's
Speaker 3: very moving from Joseph.
Speaker 2: We are at about sixty minutes. Is there anything you'd
Speaker 2: like to add or anything I miss? I mean, really
Speaker 2: fascinating discussion and great book, very detailed. I learned so
Speaker 2: much in the I mean, it's over five hundred pages,
Speaker 2: but it really Billy Wilder is really a fascinating figure.
Speaker 2: I didn't know his childhood back I have vague I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew he's from Germany, but I didn't know a
Speaker 2: lot of the details about that.
Speaker 3: But I really like to go into the backgrounds of characters.
Speaker 3: I've done there with Spielberg and Luvich and Ford and Wells.
Speaker 3: And one thing I'll say is Wilder's German films are
Speaker 3: not seen very much, and some are really hard to see.
Speaker 3: I had to go to Germany to see some, and
Speaker 3: some you can get copies, you know, through the collector network.
Speaker 3: But he did a marvelous so called People on Sunday
Speaker 3: in Germany. He was the main writer on that, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of a near realist film about ordinary people
Speaker 3: on a bittersweet weekend jaunt and they cast non actors
Speaker 3: for their roles. It's really a terrific film, and Criterion
Speaker 3: has a disc of that. And then he did Amil
Speaker 3: and the Detectives, which is based on a children's novel.
Speaker 3: It's very good about a gang of children who crooked
Speaker 3: adult and there have been several versions of that. Wilders
Speaker 3: is really terrific. And then he did a film called
Speaker 3: The Blonde Dream. If anybody can dig that one up,
Speaker 3: it's just a very moving film. It's a mixture. Like
Speaker 3: when he was in Germany. The head of the oof
Speaker 3: A company was a Hitler sympathizer, and he made them
Speaker 3: put in sort of conformist elements and songs extolling conformism
Speaker 3: and how we're all happy even though we're poor, and
Speaker 3: all this kind of insense. But the main character is
Speaker 3: a woman who wants to go to Hollywood, and so
Speaker 3: this isetting seen Lilian Harvey plays and she's marvelous. She
Speaker 3: goes to Hollywood in a dream sequence and it becomes
Speaker 3: a nightmare for her. It's kind of like Sense of
Speaker 3: Boulevard where the men treated really badly. And this is
Speaker 3: so contemporary because it's just like the Me Too movement,
Speaker 3: and she winds up staying in Germany, which is kind
Speaker 3: of a depressing ending, but it's a very interesting film.
Speaker 3: She has some very beautiful songs in the comment So
Speaker 3: he did some good films. He made another one called Scampalo,
Speaker 3: which is a girl of the streets, a good fether.
Speaker 3: Dolly Haas is very much like Adrea Hepburn. Wilder directed later,
Speaker 3: so it's worth exploring the more obscure Wilder films. So
Speaker 3: I really paid attention to all those films that he
Speaker 3: wrote before he became a director, which you know, you
Speaker 3: don't really understand him if you just look at the
Speaker 3: films he directed. If you have to understand, Okay, how
Speaker 3: did he get to be that very assure guy. When
Speaker 3: he started directing in Hollywood with the major and the minor,
Speaker 3: he was already during accomplishment. How did that happen? You know?
Speaker 3: And I delve into that's I find that really interesting.
Speaker 3: I think most people like to know that.
Speaker 1: I did, for sure. I mean it was interesting.
Speaker 2: I was watching looking at the movies he had made
Speaker 2: and checking on YouTube, so I saw some of them.
Speaker 2: One was what the was a weekend? I forgot what
Speaker 2: it was about, a weekend with a guy and a girl,
Speaker 2: and that's on YouTube.
Speaker 3: So some of them I think is it's in the
Speaker 3: Van s district of Berlin, which is kind of the
Speaker 3: resort area. And one of the chilling things about that
Speaker 3: film that's where the Holocaust was planned at the Vance
Speaker 3: conference in nineteen forty two. There have been two movies
Speaker 3: about that. Kind of our knowledge of what happened to
Speaker 3: Germany shadows some of those early films. Wilder made it
Speaker 3: a great film in nineteen forty eight which most people
Speaker 3: don't know about, called Foreign Affair with Jeane Arthur and
Speaker 3: Marlena Dietrich and John Lund. It's about an American congresswoman
Speaker 3: who goes to Germany and she's kind of like Sarah Palin,
Speaker 3: the conservative Brudish congresswoman, investigating the morale ofy gis who
Speaker 3: were all, you know, pooling around with German women and
Speaker 3: selling stuff in the black market. And Wilder has a
Speaker 3: very tolerant attitude toward a lot of that, and the
Speaker 3: congress woman is sort of opened up by that. She's
Speaker 3: like one of the Zuglar American characters who becomes her
Speaker 3: deeper feelings come out and she falls in love with
Speaker 3: this gi who's kind of fooling her. And it's a
Speaker 3: marvelous film that Wilder and Bracket. The Bracket was nervous
Speaker 3: about the subject under that's one of the really edgy
Speaker 3: political films while they're made that got some criticism for them.
Speaker 3: But today it looks very refreshing. It's so realistic and
Speaker 3: so truthful about the post war period and all the corruption. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent book, Really fascinating and you can tell your
Speaker 2: knowledge of the film industry, and you bring in so
Speaker 2: many of these other characters that I know about Isherwood Sturges.
Speaker 2: That really makes for great great history book as well
Speaker 2: cultural book. Where's the best place to get this book?
Speaker 2: Billy Wilder Dancing on the edge. Well, it's from Columbia
Speaker 2: University Press.
Speaker 3: You can buy it on their website or you can
Speaker 3: get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and it's
Speaker 3: been available since October and bookstores there are too many
Speaker 3: bookstores left, but they're having some bookstores. And but you know,
Speaker 3: Columbia University Press website is a good place to get it.
Speaker 1: And then just please continue.
Speaker 3: No, I hope people will read it because it's I.
Speaker 1: Hope so too.
Speaker 2: It's really fascinating. And do you where's the best place
Speaker 2: for people to reach out to you if they want
Speaker 2: to contact you? You have a website or social media?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, I had a website and then
Speaker 3: I got so busy the last three years, so I
Speaker 3: was doing four books. I neglected to renew the website,
Speaker 3: Joseph mccride film dot com, so it disappeared, unfortunately, and
Speaker 3: I've got to get a new one put up. I've
Speaker 3: been so busy I haven't had a new one put up.
Speaker 3: I have websites for my other some of my other books.
Speaker 3: I get into The Nightmare and how Did You Do It?
Speaker 3: In the Broken Places? But in political truth, the media
Speaker 3: and the assassination of President Kennedy, which I think is
Speaker 3: a book that I cared deeply about. I've had a
Speaker 3: lot of many years of research into that book and
Speaker 3: the whole subject of the assassination of it, studying for decades.
Speaker 3: In the acknowledgments or in the front of the book,
Speaker 3: I have my address because it's self push through a
Speaker 3: fulfillment house and you can only get it through Amazon,
Speaker 3: but on the copyright page it has my address and
Speaker 3: my email. J O E M A C A O
Speaker 3: nine at gmac gmail dot com. J O E M
Speaker 3: A C H A O nine at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: I love hearing from readers. It's one of the pleasures
Speaker 3: for an author who is getting feedback from readers. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate it when somebody writes me I think that's
Speaker 3: very nice. We don't I'm not doing in personal events
Speaker 3: right now because of the pandemic. But one of the
Speaker 3: pleasures for writers when you write a book, they let
Speaker 3: you out of your page for a while and you
Speaker 3: get to go and meet your readers at signings and things.
Speaker 3: And I'm not doing that right now, but it is
Speaker 3: you're right for the unknown reader, the ideal reader, and
Speaker 3: then it's very nice when you meet the actual people
Speaker 3: and get their reactions to the book.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 2: And I actually came across your name in my GfK
Speaker 2: researchers because you we're trying to ask press former President
Speaker 2: George H. W. Bush where he was. I think you
Speaker 2: had some kind of interaction. I saw that on a
Speaker 2: different documentary.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I was the guy who exposed Poppy Bush's
Speaker 3: early CIA connections, which he still denies in the Nation.
Speaker 3: I did some research on him back in the eighties
Speaker 3: and I have thirty five pages into The Nightmare on
Speaker 3: Bush's CIA background and his involvement with the Kennedy assassination.
Speaker 3: This has sort of changed bush research, uh. And so
Speaker 3: those two books in the Assassination are very important to me.
Speaker 3: And I really appreciate your broad range of interests that
Speaker 3: you're interested in that and the film film books too,
Speaker 3: And you know, film is my kind of official job,
Speaker 3: but the Kennedy Assassination is sort of my my real
Speaker 3: avocation in life. But you know, I do both. I'm
Speaker 3: fascinated by both areas. I'd like to go back and forth,
Speaker 3: and I write other kinds of books to but those
Speaker 3: are the two areas that.
Speaker 1: Keeps you, keeps you nimble. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so people can go back and listen to the
Speaker 2: earlier discussion you and I had political truth, the media
Speaker 2: and the assassination of President Kennedy. Another very well, superbly
Speaker 2: detailed book about all of your research. So both these
Speaker 2: books you have their commonalities. A great writer to your
Speaker 2: ex superb prose writer to thank kudos to you so again,
Speaker 2: people go get this book. Title is Billy Wilder Dancing
Speaker 2: on the Edge by Joseph McBride.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for your time, Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for all right say