They Shoot Horses Don't They: The Film vs The Book

Based on the fascinating sub-culture of dance marathons that popped up as a form of exploitative Depression-era entertainment, They Shoot Horses Don't They was written by Horace McCoy in 1935 based on his own experience as a bouncer at some of them in California. It took over three decades to adapt the film. By that time, it was more of a time capsule than period commentary.

Both the film and book feature an extremely depressed character who has to be put to death through assisted suicide (sorry about the spoiler but the title sort of gives it away in both case), but the book portrays the lead character as someone who can't see the hope in her lot in life whereas the film is more of a direct commentary on how capitalism has created a crapsack world for the people at the bottom. After all, they're forced to dance for their supper, what could be more metaphorical.

First some background:

The idea of a free dance contest with the last man standing winning a big prize seems like an easy idea to romanticize alongside Gatsbyesque parties. At the time, dancing was associated with the liberation of the jazz age and  a healthy rebellion against puritan mores. But with the desperation bought on by the depression, contestants became more and more adept at gaming the system. The contestants learned to sleep standing up and were increasingly ok with a small chance in hell of getting a prize because the guarantee of free meals, health care, and shelter was enough. The promoters made bank on offering these as cheap sideshow attractions where people could spectate and feel superior to the dancers.

Now back to the film:

In the world of dance marathons, we find Gloria (a young Jane Fonda) who is pretty much at the end of her rope in terms of hope for herself or the world around her. It's a novelty in and of itself that a character in such a state of depression was made the protagonist of a film in the first place. The book offers some more backstory about how she had to enter into a sexless marriage in Texas just to have a roof over her head. Gloria exists in a time and place where she doesn't have agency to earn a living. Her decision to go to Hollywood isn't driven by the kind of "42nd Street"-type dream of being a star. Rather she just thinks she might be able to make some cash as an extra.

Gloria is paired up with a down-on-his-luck actor named Robert (Michael Sarrazin, if you haven't heard of that name, don't worry) who has grander artistic ambitions (again, the book delves into this by mentioning that he'll use his prize money to finance a short film) but needs the immediate money of a good project.

The story features an eclectic cast of characters for the other dancers. In both the book and the film, experienced couple Ruby and James (a young Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia) represent the true-to-life phenomenon of professional dancers entering the contests to provide fame recognition. There's also a temptress for Robert played by Susannah York and a chipper elderly sailor (who only exists in the film) played by Oscar-winner Red Buttons.

In the book, there's also a contestant who is forced to leave the contest because he's wanted for murder, a jealous Spanish dancer, Pedro, who shoots the organizer in frustration, and her partner who doubles James and Ruby in being experienced and providing exposition.

One might assume these characters were eliminated in the film adaptation because they have their own storylines that complicate the central theme of doom. Pedro, like Gloria, chooses to want to throw away his future which is contrasting to those who play by the rules of the contest. I originally assumed that Buttons' character was added into the cast as a way to add color and diversify the age range, but his demise (I won't spoil his fate completely) adds to the sense of doom.

And then there's the devious show promoter, Rocky, who riles up the audience on the mic. Character actor Gig Young won an Oscar for the role as a man who knew how to keep the crowds entertained. As York's character has a nervous breakdown, he shows a shred of humanity in getting her to safety, but for the most part, the film hinges on the slow reveal of just how villainous he and the contest are.

The book actually splits Rocky's role into two: Rocky is the announcer but the man behind the scenes is his boss Socks Donald takes over behind the scenes. For the most part, they're relatively moral people trying to make a buck.

Additionally, Gloria's negativity is countered with far more first-person narration talking about just how miserable Robert is because Gloria is his partner. It's possibly repeated so often because Robert is dealing with guilt for shooting Gloria.

Book vs Movie
The movie has the electric performances of Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern, Gig Young, and Red Buttons, but the book is more than just a cesspool of depression. A depressed character in a depressed world isn't as rich as a depressed character in a difficult world whose choice to give up is contrasted by various people with the same circumstances across the spectrum of hope.

Proof of Life: The book vs. the movie Part II

Part I Here



I rewatched "Proof of Life" the film and the book drew connections between characters and turned a good yet flawed film into a spectacular narrative. It feels like the author of the book reverse engineered the script to make it appear as though this 3-star movie came from a 4-star source. 

Case in point: In one scene near the beginning of the film, protagonist Alice Bowman is at a party with her husband before he's eventually kidnapped by a Colombian paramilitary faction (the plot of the story) and one of the two ballroom dancers takes her hand and asks her to dance. 

In the book, it's explained that she takes his invitation because she's been feeling distant from her husband as he's gotten more involved with his work and when he starts getting enraptured in the conversation, she partially accepts the dance invitation from the stranger because she wants to make her husband notice her more. 

It's later revealed that the person who asked her to dance is actually the hostage negotiator leading a double life and Russell Crowe's character, Terry Thorne, suspects that he was planted at the party to get a better read on the couples. 

That's a twist that's not covered in the book. 

Additionally, the dynamics of the Alice-Terry relationship is changed once you read the book. The story presents a very interesting love triangle in that Terry is fully committed to saving Alice's husband and the plot is about Alice and her husband reuniting but there's a strong relationship that's also developing between Terry and Alice and neither one of these two relationships of Alice are treated as invalid or wrong in the face of the other. In the movie, a forbidden kiss at the end is what all the sexual tension leads up to. In the book, that sexual tension is expanded on and it's revealed that Terry had those rather instant feelings for her the moment he saw her and had to consciously fight them off the whole time even when he's giving the outward appearance that he cares about his job. 

One thing that makes the film weaker in comparison to the book is Meg Ryan.  Alice is too complex of a character- her conflicting feelings towards two men, her determination, her sense of quiet fear-for anyone but the best of actresses to portray. When Alice Bowman expresses cautious surprise at Terry's arrival or when she says her penultimate line "You have to know how much you mean to me, you know that", neither of those moments are sufficiently convincing. At the same time, my opinion of the adaptation would surely be changed with a better actress.

The film makes it seem like Russell Crowe locked lips with Meg Ryan pretty much because he's Russell Crowe and she's Meg Ryan and that's what they inevitably do. The drama behind that kiss (and a one night stand that's added to the book and better explains why the kiss isn't accompanied by conversation) isn't fully realized in the book because it doesn't explain that Crowe broke his own code for her and what was at stake for him. 

Of course that's inevitable since books can more easily fill in inner monologue, but that's better served here. 

Bottom line:
I'm not suggesting that all books are better than movies: I'm obviously a movie person. I AM suggesting that THIS book is better than the movie despite the bias against it since it came after the film. 

Open question: Does a novelization of a film count as a novel?

On a recent episode of "The Mindy Project" (note to self: make sure your next blog post does not accidentally relate to The Mindy Project), Mindy is making small talk with an intelligent teenage girl in her apartment building and asks her what she's reading. The teenage girl is reading Jonathan Franzen (my outsider status to the literary world is apparent here as I have to ask Jonathan who?) while Mindy sheepishly replies that she's reading a novelization of the book "Iron Man." The implied joke here is that novelizations are a cheap form of literature.

I just found myself in the same conundrum. After feeling so proud of myself for finishing the novel "The Paperboy" (and blogging about it here), I went in search of another novel for all the same grandiose reasons that anyone has when they decide to turn off the TV and try reading instead: I wanted to be cultured, I wanted a greater intellectual challenge, and I wanted to lengthen my attention span.

The book "Proof of Life," based on a 2000 film about the kidnapping and ransom industry in South America, was already on my bookshelf and looked immensely promising: It was based on a film I'd seen and it was about something interesting. The book was riveting until I discovered halfway through that this wasn't the novel that the film was based on. Instead, this was a novelization of the movie. The front of the book reads "A novel by David Robbins...Based on the Screenplay by Tony Gilroy." Am I an idiot or what?


So the big question is: Are the intellectual riches I would have gotten from reading a novel still valid now that I know I'm reading a novelization? Am I still reading a novel?

Responses when I asked this on the IMDB Message Board:

• "Counts as a novel, just not necessarily a good one." -BloodVVank
• "Technically, yes. Intellectually, no." -Shantytown1212
• "If film adaptations of novels count as films, then novel adaptations of films count as novels." -GrimlocksNewBrain
• "Someone wrote it to the best of their ability - I say yes!" -Chason_S
• "They may not be great works of literature, but it's still reading a novel. An author spent quite a bit of time writing it after all." -Unwantedaddress
• "Sounds like you're reading for all the wrong reasons." -Dio52
• "Does reading the Cliff Notes count as readng the book?" -Dolfanatic313
• "I didn't even know those still existed, seemed like an 80's thing to me, but I don't see why it wouldn't count as reading a book. It probably won't count as reading a good book, and probably won't make you necessarily more "cultured", but " -Shagrroten

The Paperboy: The Book vs. The Movie

I'm thrilled to say that on a recent vacation to Florida I read a book. It wasn't assigned to me by an English teacher, I didn't do it to maintain my status in a book club, I didn't see the movie first, and it wasn't a really hook-laden thriller, comedy book, or hot cultural buzz item of the moment (ie Hunger Games, Da Vinci code both of which I read).
The book was The Paperboy which recently was released as a film under the screenplay and direction of Lee Daniels (Precious) and having seen both I'll discuss the differences BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD:

1. Jack is emotionally catatonic in the book-Jack is never particularly outward with his emotions as the narrator. His highs aren't particularly high and his lows aren't particularly low. Having just been expelled from college, he's somewhat numb: Thoughts of returning to college don't interest him, he's somewhat blank to what he wants to do in life; aside from an abstract attraction to Charlotte, he's not particularly interested in sex and socializing; and aside from his brother and a passing hint of attachment to his dad and housekeeper, he's fairly uninterested in people.

In the movie, any actor with a working pulse would be livelier than the description of Jack in the book. Enter smiley, bubbly Zac Efron from High School Musical and Jack's depression suddenly seems a lot less acute.
Verdict: The movie. It's probably too much to expect Zac Efron to go full Jennifer Anniston in "The Good Girl" and I am not sure that I would've wanted him to either. The story was about a kid who was lost in the world but it wasn't really about a kid who was entirely emotionless.
It was nice to see Jack smile in moderation.

2. In the book, Jack doesn't necessarily have sex with Charlotte, Jack doesn't confront Charlotte over Yardley, and Charlotte doesn't directly discuss with Jack her having sex with him-
In the book, Jack is so distraught after Ward's beating that Charlotte rocks her and "holds him in her arms" all night or something like that. It's kind of vague but more to the point, Jack doesn't run around the next morning feeling like a changed man because he got lucky the night before with the woman he's been longing for. His thoughts are mostly with his brother and everything else seems like a blur. In the book, Jack is sexually awakened by Charlotte but longs for her in an abstract sense. He is more distraught by the idea of the wrong man having her instead (i.e. Hillary van Wetter, Yardley) and is too shy or disinterested to confront Charlotte directly about her dalliance with Yardley. In the book as in the movie, Charlotte tells Jack that he needs to get laid. In the book, however, Charlotte and Jack never approach the topic over whether she'd be the one he should get laid with.

Verdict: On all three counts, the book.  The did-they-or- didn't-they dynamic would have given viewers something to talk about and better reflects the rich emotional space of Jack's head. Getting the girl of his dreams and it barely registering with him is an effective way to illustrate just how devastated he was with Ward's beating. It's also better that Jack did not have either of those conversations directly with Charlotte. Addition by subtraction.

3. Charlotte pees on Jack-This wouldn't be a major deal except for the fact that this film is now known as "the one where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron" and speculation over whether the scene was real (answer: yes, Nicole Kidman is a method actress even when its gross) dominates discussion of the film. In the book, it's some nursing students who save Ward's life. In the film, the fact that they are nursing students, who first try some non-peeing methods of recovery on Jack, is omitted.
Verdict-Score one for the movie-It would have been helpful to know that the girls who initiate the peeing incident are nursing students because otherwise that gives the impression that everyone knows that peeing is the cure for jelleyfish stings. On the whole, however, it is an improvement because Jack and Charlotte were subconsciously really wanting to exchange some bodily fluids with each other anyways.

4. The entrance of Ellen Guthrie in the story-In the movie, Ellen Guthrie is Jack's father's ladyfriend and subordinate and eventually becomes his wife and co-editor of the newspaper. There's not really much more to it then that in the film.
In the book, Ellen Guthrie is someone who is much more of a character. She enters the story when there's a party being thrown on Ward's behalf at the household and Jack meets her outside the household as she's drinking and she's dressed procotavely enough get Jack a little sweaty. Like Charlotte, she temps his sexually-inexperienced confusion by telling him that if he were four years younger, he would be an ideal bedmate for her. Jack briefly ponders the act of bedding Ellen, and then an Oedipeal nightmare occurs: the sexually charged Ellen winds up sleeping with dad that night. Ellen then calls Jack to apologize for being a tease and invites him to her apartment, Jack seems to alternate between being disinterested and confused, and next thing you know the opportunity is lost and Ellen goes from being potential sex partner to new mommy.
Verdict-What the hell was Lee Daniels thinking? Book scores a billion points here. This love triangle between Ellen,

5. The Death of Ward-In the book, Ward (somewhat of a perfectionist) falls into despondency upon realizing his error that won him a Pulitzer led to Charlotte's death. He goes to California and drowns himself in the ocean. Although there's some wiggle room, it's treated by Jack as a suicide.
The Verdict-Slight edge to the book. If I was a purist, I might say the book is better or that the film is massively unfaithful. Then again, how do you have a filmically satisfying resolution to the brother flying off to California and possibly or possibly not drowning himself. Also, Van Wetter did kill ward in a metaphorical sense by exposing his flaw as a reporter, so this is close to an acceptable shortcut. Still, the site of Zac Efron caring two dead bodies is a little heavy of an ending and I think a distraught Matthew M. (Who's acting stock has gone up as of late) could have given a good scene expressing that dismay before he went off into the ocean.

6. Yardley got the job through unorthodox means-In the movie, there's a throwaway line where Yardley directly tells Jack that he got his position as Jack's partner through
performing oral sex on him. In the book, Yardley and Ward are an odd couple. Yardley is less of a perfectionist and is more concerned about the big picture. This figures into the plot because Ward trusted the key piece of evidence to Yardley and knew deep inside that Yardley would be too lazy to pursue the evidence.
Verdict: Oh god, Lee Daniels, TMI, the book. But in all seriousness, learning more about Yardley than how he compares to Ward and Jack is detrimental to the story. This isn't Yardley's story but the story of two brothers and a story about the write-up to a murder investigation. Which brings us to the biggest change of all....

7. Yardley is Black-In the book, he's known for being a smooth lothario. In the movie, he is known for being "the black guy."
Verdict: The book. Yardley wasn't a broken character that needed fixing. He was clearly meant to be a doppelganger for the two brothers. He's a sexual rival to Jack (in that he likes Charlotte and does something about it). He's also a lazier and less thorough version of Jack. Bringing in race politics (especially amplified from 1965) distracts from Yardley's commonalities with the two brothers.

8. Anita, the housekeeper, is the narrator in the movie-In the movie, Jack is the narrator. The director, Lee Daniels, is a prominent voice in the African-American filmic community and said he felt a need to respond to The Help and so wanted to elaborate on Anita. That is also why he wanted to make Yardley black.
Verdict-From a filmic standpoint, the book wins here too. Except for a few lines in text that show Jack has a clear attachment to Anita, The Paperboy is not thematically synonymous with The Help in any way, shape, or form. It was a big stretch. This was Jack's story. How do we even explain Anita having a good sense of detail for the crime scenes? She wasn't present at 90% of the scenes in the movie.

Eleven things I learned from reading Adam West's memoirs

This is what I learned from reading Adam West's book "Back to the Batcave" from 1994:


1. Adam West still defends his work in the original show to this very day, despite the fact that many adults look back at it and see it as melodramatic drivel. He says that Batman was slightly over-the-top but that it was less ridiculous than the comics of the time. He also did not like the use of the word "campy" and did not know what camp meant when reporters suggested it to him. He preferred the word "pop art" and likened the "pow"s and "oomphs" that would appear on screen to Andy Warholesque touches. He maintains that the light-hearted and fun version of the times was exactly what the public needed because it was a very stressful era and tumultuous time. He said that a serious version of a superhero comic would have failed, and he cites the fact that the Green Hornet only lasted one season as evidence of that. Most importantly, Batman would have been cancelled if it weren't for the popularity of the TV show. The sales on the comic were rapidly declining and DC Comics told Bob Kane to hang up his pen at the time.

2. At the same time, West was also slightly delusional. When it was time to reinvent Batman for the movies, West thought that Tim Burton made a mistake by not casting him, despite the fact that he was well into middle-age and the 1966 TV Batman was way behind the times.

3. Adam West also claims to be a serious actor who actually did research and devoted energy into making his part believable. This is particularly surprising because it looks like West was either a guy who didn't try very hard or a very poor actor whose overdelivery of the dialogue made the show hard to take seriously. But Adam West's overacting was all very calculated and came after months (not hours, I repeat, but months) of thinking about how he'd approach this character and came up with a list of 6 constants that Batman should have.

4. Despite rumors that Adam West was seducing costars left and right, West claims that he had mostly professional relationships with the costars because he didn't want to endanger the show. He said some of them like Julie Newmar were incredibly tempting and it was INCREDIBLY difficult for him to maintain professionalism on the set by Newmar, in particular. The book is rather vague about whether Newmar and West actually did do anything illicit. He does claim to have had a very active sex life having been approached with groupies everywhere who made it all incredibly easy for him. He dated Lana Wood, however, and it also sounds like he lightly dated Natalie Wood. He unsuccessfully pursued Jill St John (guest star from the very first episode). St. John and him are still good friends. Throughout the show, he still pined for his ex-wife with whom he shared kids.

5. Adam West claims life post-Batman was highly depressing because he could not get any work. It took him years to escape the clout of Batman. He was offered the part of James Bond and turned it down because he felt the role should have gone to an Englishman. This takes a great deal of integrity considering how desperate one might be for work.

6. Adam West enjoyed meeting a lot of great actors on set. He was good friends with the Riddler's Frank Gorshin. They went to an orgy once where they started acting in character just for kicks and got thrown out (what's the procedure for being throwing someone out of an orgy? Do you not get your parking validated or something?). He also really admired the worklike ethic of Meredith Burgess and Cesar Romero. He especially enjoyed meeting George Saunders (Mr. Freeze #1), Vincent Price (Egghead), Cliff Robertson (Shame) and Maurice Evans (The Puzzler, poor man's Riddler).

7. He did not enjoy Otto Preminger who played Mr. Freeze and his costars universally agreed. He hit on every woman on the set while simultaneously treating them like dirt. He also bossed everyone around as though he were the director when the show already had that part filled.


8. Many of the great actors who appeared on Batman didn't feel like it was dumbing themselves down to appear on the show. Classically-trained actors like Meredith Burgess, Cesar Romero, Maurie Evans (The Puzzler), David Wayne (Mad Hatter), George Saunders (Mr. Freze), Shelly Winters (Ma Parker), Cliff Robertson (Shame), and Vincent Price (Egghead) enjoyed being part of pop culture and gaining larger exposure and they also enjoyed taking a break from serious acting rules to be animated and comical.

9. Burt Ward (aka Robin) was kind of a brat. He insisted on being the last to leave his tstart at one point which led to a war of attrition between him and Adam West. He started out the show married but succumbed to the temptation of all the groupies and his marraige fell apart. He once came close to being beaten up by Bruce Lee during the Green Hornet crossover

10. Adam West had a few different careers before acting. He was a pilot in Hawaii and led airtours with a partner who later got him into acting on a kid's TV show with a chimp as his costar. He also met his wife in Hawaii- a Tahitian named Nga (short for Ngatokoruaimatauaia) and had kids with her. Despite his wild sex life, he still pined for Nga and was holding out for reconciliation with her

11. West was pretty uncomfortable in that outfit and that cowel restricted his lateral movement pretty intensely

Seven things I learned from reading Tracy Morgan's book

1)  Good thing there's probably some sort of statute of limitations on drug busts because Tracy Morgan flat-out admits to spending his youth dealing drugs (weed later followed by crack) for a living. In fact, I'd even say this book has educational value: I learned things about the illicit drug trade (particularly Bronx circa the late 1980's) that I never knew before reading this book. Tracy Morgan said that he liked drug dealing because it gave him opportunities to talk to people and even try out his comedy routines.

I'd imagine that crackheads would be too zoned out to appreciate a good stand-up routine and first-time buyers would be too nervous to be bombarded with a stand-up routine in a shady parking lot drop-off. The more I think about it, in fact, the more suicidally insane it would seem to use your job dealing in a shady parking lot in the Bronx as a platform to hone your comedic skills. If I had known Tracy Morgan at the time, I would have fervently advised him NOT to mix stand-up comedy with drug dealing.

2) Tonally, the book is very interesting in that Tracy Morgan likes to drop the f-bomb a lot and write as though he's speaking in a streetwise (I thought for a good 6 or 7 minutes about what adjective I wanted to use here and still feel like I failed) manner. At the same time, he's clearly picked up a lot from his environment. When he discusses the experience of being on TV shows,  he displays a fairly intellegent grasp of the vocabulary used by people in the TV industry. Additionally, when he's talking about writing comedy or the nature of comedy in general, he sounds very intelligent and clearly knows what he's doing. Other times, he makes really good use of metaphors: "My life growing up was like a twisted Bronx Tale version of The Color Purple." The odd effect of this mix of styles is that when he transitions from talking about a sketch he performed on SNL to something else, it looks as though he lapsed into illiteracy.

3) Tracy Morgan officially confirms the longstanding rumors that he and Tina Fey are BFF's. Tina Fey and Morgan had a strong bond since joining SNL at roughly the same time and notes that he was the first person to be called to be on the show preceding even Alec Baldwin's
casting.

Taking advice from one of his comedic idols Richard Pryor, Tracy Morgan believed that everything in his life should be used as comedic fodder. He gave Tina Fey carte blanche to use everything she knew about him for show material and believes that the character of Tracy Jordan was successful largely because he was based on a real person's body of experiences.

4) The after-after-after party cold open from the Season 1 episode "The Source Awards" was based on a wild night on SNL when Tracy Morgan got Tina Fey, Horatio Sanz, and Rachel Dratch among others to ditch the traditional after party and go to what sounds like the shadiest nightclub you've ever heard of. Tina encountered far wilder things than a clingy Wayne Brady that night.

5) If you're looking for dirt on other SNL members, Tracy Morgan reserves exactly two lines of his book to diss two former cast members in a disconcertingly vague way:
"All I have to say about that is, where's Chris Katan now? Where's Cheri Oteri now? That b***h can't even get arrested"
I'm going to go out and say it: This was highly irresponsible of Tracy Morgan. It's highly vague whether Katan and Oteri were actually mean to him or whether he's singling them out becuase they didn't go on to much fame. If Katan and Oteri were legitimately deserving of this, that's fine, but he doesn't go on to say much more, and either way, it's kicking two people when they're down.

In the meantime, the media picked up pretty heavily on that line of the book, with the end result that Oteri and Katan were dragged into the news cycle (Huffington Post, Celebitchy.com, TV Guide, USA Today,  Entertainment Weekly  the AV Club, and the grand mecca of all entertainment news: the Tampa Bay Times) because they were a-holes to Tracy Morgan. Imagine how their agents must have felt that virtually the only publicity those guys got after leaving Saturday Night Live is a vague line in Tracy Morgan's book about how they might be complete jerks. Even if they APPEARED to be jerks to Tracy Morgan, it's highly possible that they were just dealing with their own issues and might have been misunderstood. It's well-documented, after all, that SNL's hectic schedule is conducive to bringing out the worst in people. [Ed. note: apparently, in the reading of the audiobook a few months later, Tracy Morgan went off-script and elaborated a little more on Oteri and Kattan]

6) Tracy Morgan doesn't discriminate between his friends. He has "friends who are black, white, purple, gay, straight, Martian, yellow, old, and young." I'm glad his circle of friends extends to 25% of the solar system. In all seriousness, I love this line because Morgan has a persona that is batshit-crazy enough that I could see him literally believing in Martians.

7) It's entirely possible that Tracy Morgan is unaware of the existence of  Tim Meadows (as well as Dean Edwards and Jerry Minjor). Throughout his book, Morgan refers to himself as the show's only black castmember.
[Ed. note: In a later interview, Morgan clarified he doesn't have any animosity towards Tim but the two rarely interacted because they were from different eras and Tim had so much seniority when he came in]

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.