The American spirit as captured through the eyes of Billy Wilder

In the book "Conversations with Billy Wilder," Cameron Crowe reads an old newspaper quote from Hollywood's Golden Age to Billy Wilder in which a commentator observed the irony that the heart of the American Spirit was being captured onscreen by an Italian (Frank Capra), a German (Ernst Lubitsch), and an Austrian (Billy Wilder).

In reality, it wasn't just those three (although, it could be debated whether Lubitsch catered to Americana) but much of Hollywood in the 1930s and '40s was composed of immigrants. Many Jewish filmmakers escaped to America to escape Nazi persecution and other filmmakers were pushed over to America because Hitler dissolved the country's prominent film industry and replaced it with a wartime propaganda department. 

Among the directors from Germany's Ufa Studio (which in some ways was more progressive than the United States) were Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Edward Dmytryck, Douglas Sirk and even Alfred Hitchcock who was British but interned with Ufa. They influenced the American film industry through their aesthetic. Without them, the film noir movement, which captured the country's pessimistic mood, would have never taken hold. Greg Toland, one of these German emigrees first infused the expressionist style into American films with Citizen Kane, but Billy Wilder fused that styling with the pulp novel mystery to create the first true film noir in Double Indemnity (1944) and had shades of it

so he was a cornerstone of that movement to which Dmytryck, Lang, Preminger and others followed suit. But like the quote said, Wilder didn't just infuse the German aesthetic into American film, like some of the immigrant directors who stayed in the film noir genre. 

He experienced the American dream, going from rags as a poor immigrant going through Ellis Island, to riches. He was transformed by it and was an ever-present observor of that dream. The Apartment, although considered a comedy, was a brilliantly dark satire about the sacrifices people are forced to make for that dream. Perhaps one can imagine Billy Wilder having been The Apartment's C.C. Baxter at some point in his life, having to sell his dignity to work his way up the corporate ladder at the Studio. Through tools of humor with Ball of Fire, romance with Sabrina, and blatant sexuality with Some Like it Hot he dissected the hypocrisy of a class in America. 

He also was proud of being one of the first to explore alcoholism in The Lost Weekend. When Crowe asked Wilder about his thoughts on this quote Wilder said it was funny because he couldn't make a European movie. Consider the dud Irma La Douce, which he conceded was a failure because he just couldn't make Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine come off as European. Wilder had lived the American dream and it became an inescapable part of him.

Book review: Conversations with Billy Wilder

I just read the book Conversations with Billy Wilder and it reminds me a little of Tuesdays with Morie only the interviewee and the interviewer are both famous. Cameron Crowe, most people know from "Jerry MaGuire" and "Almost Famous," but it's a shame not enough people know about Billy Wilder, because he was one of the greatest film geniuses who ever lived. He made some of the most definitive film noirs in Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, a great war film in Stalag 17, the first film to feature an alcoholic in the oscar-winning The Lost Weekend, the definitive love story in Sabrina (remade in the 1990s), and some of the funniest comedies ever made in The Apartment and Some Like it Hot. To be able to take such sharp wit and use it to explore such dark moods as well as humor was something no one did better than Wilder. What I knew of Wilder before was that he was a German immigrant (he came in the wave along with Premminger, Lang, Dymitrick, and Lubitsch). I also knew that he always wrote his films as well as directed them and that he wrote with collaborators.

The idea for the film, covered in the introduction, started when Cameron Crowe came to Billy Wilder's office wanting him to play a small part in Jerry MaGuire and Wilder was like "yeah, maybe, give me a call," but he was kind of old and senile at the time and he forgot about it and didn't return his phone calls. So Crowe positions an intern outside his office and Wilder never comes out of his office, and in the meantime, Crowe is bragging to everyone how he got the famous Billy Wilder to be in his movie. Eventually, Wilder answers his phone and is like "leave me alone, go away." So on the first day of production when Wilder doesn't show up, Cameron Crowe explains with dissapointment that Wilder turned him down, and Tom Cruise offers to go with him (Crowe) personally to his house, since his agent kows where it is, to try to convince him to be in the film. They hold up production for like an hour visiting Wilder, and Cruise is trying to charm him and they're explaining that they just want him to be in it for symbolic purposes, and he says "no, i'm not an actor, you've got the wrong guy, pick someone else." He does give them some script advice, and chat with Cruise, answering questions about his films for him. They finally give up and shoot the movie without him. When the movie's successful Wilder gives Crowe a call and congratulates him and a mutual friend suggests a book deal, and slowly Crowe wears Wilder down into revealing the secrets of his life and work.

With Cameron Crowe it's not like an interview, but it's like chatting from one writer-director to another and covers all of his movies, collaborations and writing methods in depth. They don't get too technical about it, so it's not boring at all. Wilder also spouts his views on movies that he thought sucked (he didn't like Titanic), and ones that he thought were awesome, and is pretty funny about it. Wilder had this very refreshing blue collar attitude about his job as a movie director. He absolutely wanted to make a good product out of his films, but he didn't take himself seriously and that was refreshing. He had a very systematic, almost mathematical, mind to writing his screenplays (he was more passionate about the writing than the directing, it seemed) where he treated it like a puzzle and took joy in trying to work his way through the obstacles.

He was a big, big admirer of Lubitsch who he once wrote a script for. It was almost like he worshipped him. I say that because like those WWJD bracelets that Christian youth group members where today, Wilder had a sign in his office that says "What would Lubitsch do?" He explains, that when he's stuck in a writing, he tries to imagine how his mentor would have done it. Personally, I found that odd because I've always felt Lubitsch was an inferior version of Wilder, but that's just me.

My favorite part of the book was when Cameron Crowe, who's a former rock journalist asked Billy Wilder about whether he liked rock and roll and he was like "no, that was all crap, it's all for the young kids" and he didn't even know what MTV was. He was like "back in the day we had Ira Gershwin and Rogers and Hammerstein to chose from, no one's better than they were." That must have been dissapointing to Crowe.