Conversations with Wilder - Wilder, Billy, 1906-2002 PDF
Preview Conversations with Wilder - Wilder, Billy, 1906-2002
oe cee In Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood’s legendary and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for the first time to talk extensively about his life and work. Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650 black-and-white DC rae eee te ern film posters, stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from Wilder’s own collection—the ninety-three-year-old icon talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today’s best-known writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work, set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we hear Wilder’s insider view on his collaborations with such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo (he was a writer at MGM during the making of Ninotchka). Here are Wilder’s sharp and funny behind-the-scenes stories about the making of A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and Ace in the Hole, among many others. Wilder is ever mysterious, but Crowe gets him to speak candidly on Stanwyck: “She knew the script, everybody’s lines, never a fault, never a mistake”; on Cary Grant: “I had Cary Grant in mind for four of my pictures ... slipped through my net every time”; on the “Lubitsch Touch”: “It was the elegant use of the super- joke.” Wilder also remembers his early years in Vienna, working as a journalist in Berlin, rooming with Peter Lorre at the Chateau Marmont always with the same dry wit, tough-minded romanticism, and elegance that aN are the hallmarks of Wilder’s films. This book is a clas- sic of Hollywood history and lore. WEEE eee sensesecese, csecs WILLIAM HOLDEN Gi SWANSON ERICH vo % romance. ea ant ' : WONDERFUL is the word for e with WALTER HAMPDEN + JOHN WILLIAMS MARTHA HYER +» JOAN VOHS Written for the Screen by BILLY WILDER, ™ SAMUEL TAYLOR and ERNEST LEHMAN Krom. ING PERSONAL ADVENTURE OF OUR TIME! ..as te world held its breath ~~ ei 3S BASED ON THE PUCITZER PRIZE WINNING BOOK BY HARLES A. LINDBERGH >oW ARNERCOLOR screen riay av BILLY WILaDnoW EENRDEL L MAYES ssw conoses sso FRANZ WAXHAW » av LELAND HAYWARD. owecieo av BILLY WILDER presenreo er WARNER BROS. \\) PRODUCE % =" WILLIAM HOLDEN - DON TAYLOR - OTTO PREMING | ao es and Directed by Bl LLY WwW i LD E R With JOWN McGIVER + Screenplay by BILLY WILDER and | A-L. DIAMOND»i Based on Noval by CLAUDE ANET > Musical Adaptation by FRANZ WAXMAN ae tre itiesy Ss re Peeie narello ct ih £ | 5 af CX oad ASA RL A A Fox So ROS lis ©yJ d 2 2) THIS [IS A BORZO! BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright © 1999 by Cameron Crowe All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. www.randomhouse.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Olea mem Genta carn Ort elesaletse e Publication Data AVsICeCSem esha Conversations with Wilder / by Cameron Crowe. — 1st ed. rey o00e Includes indexes. ISBN 0-375-40660-3 (hc.) 1. Wilder, Billy, 1906— Interviews. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—United States Interviews. I. Crowe, Cameron, 1957— II. Title. PN1998.3.W56A5 1999 olee evee 791.43'0233'092—dc21 Oy Manufactured in the United States of America Published November 10, 1999 Second Printing, December 1999 | 31143006561501 (Previous page) Billy Wilder and, across B- WILDER, 8. the table, Charles Brackett, his collabora- i\Crowe, Camerangy 9575 tor, playing “the word game” with other Conversahionm with "Wilder writers at the Paramount commissary
The list of books you might like
