Portrait of a '60% Perfect Man': Billy Wilder interview (1982)

[Music] you you [Music] [Applause] I don't know how to describe it except to say that unfortunately we've become very close friends and in all those years you know over 20 years now I've never spent 30 seconds that were dull ah I was doing my first screen test ever and Billy Wilder was the director it was seven year itch the pot eventually played by Tom Yul with Marilyn Monroe and I was a very argumentative stage actor and I argued a great deal with Billy I kept telling him that I felt rushed it was awful and it was a terrible experience and then I saw the Russians two days later and it was perfect I'll tell you one story about Billy which I think is typical about four months after we finished the apartment we were having dinner one night and sitting at the bar waiting for our table Billy said now I know how we should have done go back to he said we should have given lemon some sort of infirmity a clubfoot or something and then he would have been much more sympathetic Eric and I said nonsense then it becomes of why your and the whole thing becomes much dirtier but now by this time the picture is in release it's a big success but Billy's still be writing it in his head and redirecting it a little too he's exciting I think that's maybe the one of the greatest qualities about him as a picture maker and as a director he's so exciting to be with he gets you up I don't care what kind of a mood you may be in boom these parts to these turtles the questions that have gone over and bitterness to the lilies for the last 30 years will not be spilled over night I thought a Hollywood director would have a bigger office isn't it too small for you well it's small but it's completely as we say and I do have another room there go and look it's from my secretary that is if I can get rid of all that crap they're yellow yes water Lamia shows excuse me please it's mr. water matter it tries to tell me in French what is going to do and it's going to may take a long time continuum is your motto very good that was what the matter we just made a bit are we still running there okay good what is this birdcage up there well kind of symbolic gesture of my final freedom from from the imprisonment in studios I said where it's the bird that escaped the cages escaped the universal Warner's Colombia neighbored which I called the Bermuda Triangle what is your next question you were born in Austria near Vienna at the beginning of this century that's correct yes now in order to kind of familiarize you with the way I come from you muster because I was born in 1906 and you might think in terms of Austria in those days a huge monarchy of 56 million people austria-hungarian monarchy Czechoslovakia parts of Poland Yugoslavia and - my father by profession was in Hoonah of hotels railroad restaurants coffee houses spreads through the entire old monarchy which collapsed in 1918 as we know and I was born in a small town I was brought as a kid of as two and a half years old to be and I went there to grammar school then to high school what you would call this a and the great endeavor of my father was you know when you have two sons one will become a lawyer the other one kind of ducked well I had a brother neither did he become a doctor nor did I become a lawyer I became a newspaperman let's do another flashback further back in time how was the atmosphere in Vienna because it must have been a shock for you to this crumbling Empire I mean do you have memories of shrunk Joseph and absolutely I remember vividly the the time during World War one I was a little boy but I like everybody else I would I would have to stand in line for sometimes 16 18 24 hours just a couple of potatoes you know there was nothing to eat it was sort of to the end of the line I remember vividly the revolution I remember the did the decline of the Austrian gained monarchy and I also remember to go back in time I remember the Emperor Francis Joseph I remember vividly a kind of a an interesting moment Emperor Francis Joseph died in 1916 it was an enormous parade of the heads of other royal houses a fantastic kind of show I wish I could direct this thing with that many XS that many black horses and there was in that black thing that was moving slowly down the streets of Vienna there was a little white a little boy in white the hungarian uniform of a hundred who saw with the white feather there and that was circumference Otto and I envied that boy my god he one day will become the Emperor of the Austrian Empire of course two years later the hosting was over and finished and I remember I remember years later when I was working at Paramount somebody came up and said look we have a visitor here it was lunchtime commissary kind of restaurant and he is a a countryman of yours and would you like to meet him in as it was it and they said that the Crown Prince Sado the same very man you know and I said sure so I went to see him and he was sort of by this time a middle-aged man getting bald he was here giving lectures at universities and III and I said that was my dream come true I finally mythic the granted but he was a Crown Prince no more what kind of journalism we're doing what are the topics were you covering I was covering everything to tell you the truth I was doing sports which was mostly football in those days I was also doing some reportage of a criminal nature I would do the dirty work my job would be for instance to go to the parents of somebody who was a murderer but committed the murder to ask for a photograph or to somebody whose family had died in a fire to have the very very embarrassing sink hear from you did you meet famous people during your interviews yes I remember one day for the Christmas issue the overset in honk at one question which tape put up to many famous people and I had to cover some of those the question then was and I remember it vividly was about a new a new philosophy of politics something called fascism and it was a question about Mussolini and what does one thing about Mussolini and I was sent within one day he had the people that I covered in one day they wear Richard Strauss they were Schnitzler Freud in Adler and fright and that was of custom was interesting and I'm being constantly asked about that little episode you know because they are they are really exploring every single second in his life I remember that and I arrived and I gave my visiting card to the maid she said the professor varieties heading glances please announce me and I was there in the salon was waiting and I did see three crack in the door I saw the room with addy couch the famous [ __ ] a very small card tiny with in turkish carpet kind of flung over it and pretty soon Freud came out from the dining room with the napkins still around his neck and he was kind of staring it to think and he says are you heavy Luda and as it you have old her professor and he says your with this in this newspaper and it says about her professor and he says there's the door and he threw me out because he lost newspapermen I have the feeling talking with people of your generation and coming from Vienna and of Jewish origin that may be because of the anti-semitism there was not a love story between you and your native city that people of Vienna preferred Berlin am i right well it depends you see I the younger ones naturally did they preferred by then because that was the the vibrant modern city especially the period where I lived there between 1927 and 1933 those where 1926 that was there were the seven great years you know of a good break 10th Ave offer shown back end of the Bauhaus and it was things were happening [Music] in those days life was tough in Berlin to survive we are you doing only journalism well it was we were young and jazz came up and people started dancing the Charleston and God knows what enter I was one of those and since I was kind of a fairly good dancer and since times we're tough III did extent as a what you would now laughing because a gigolo kind of a dancer for money in in a hotel to eat in hotel in in in Berlin but they actually no it was not quite as romantic as it sounds actually I did it in order to write a series of articles on what it is to be a gigolo in Berlin and it sort of made a bit of a scandal I heard that you wrote dozens of scripts in Berlin the most famous was people on Sunday a forerunner of new realism yeah because my first picture is scenario silent mind you one of the last of the silent pictures was 28:29 and to Robert cieaned McClure stay directed but there it kind of gave me a foothold I sort of started to become a professional scriptwriter and I wrote many of these things therefore who find other companies did you feel already the nur of America in Berlin naturally everybody wanted to go to Hollywood but that it was the advent of of mr. Hitler that made us go into exile which ultimately would lead many of us to to Hollywood when when it became apparent that that that that Hitler was going to take over and what his what his politics are and it's going to be impossible for any of us to work the the Exeter's started some afraid that they could not speak any other language but german went to prod some went to Vienna but they were just fooling themselves because Hitler followed them and took over those countries basically I myself I went to Paris and I spent about a year there in in Paris made them one picture which daniel odary was very very young then they're called movies Graham was it a comedy no it was a serious picture kind of firm cinema verite as you call it about young kind of bit Aloni type kids who are stealing automobiles then you went to the u.s. to write scripts I went there and I never came back how did you manage to stay and work there you know when you are a writer when you are deprived of of your language you know you're more or less you did so I then just had to to sit down and start studying English I went to night school I had air I I searched for very handsome young ladies who only spoke English that that is a great help I listened to the radio I kind of tried to make a living by writing stories in German which were translated and I saw the couple here made a few thousand dollars and ultimately I I sold one of those two to Paramount and they gave me a little bit of an contract there in those days I'm talking now about 1934 all studios had a huge amount of writers under contract we had to deliver like I think it was 11 pages every Thursday we had to hand and 11 pages of script and you were assigned to pictures and you wrote two three four four pictures you were taken off pictures you will rewriting pictures it was like great at a great big assembly line a factory and ah the lucky break we got was that head of the writers department get an idea of teaming me up with Charles Brackett the novelist that he learned it and elegance man and he took us to see a little bit she was making two pictures at the time he was looking for four people who could write a script on Bluebeard's it's worth and that's the way we started subsequently we stayed with a little bit for ninotchka I think working for Lubitsch was a very important step to improve your craft absolutely enormous leap did you feel like many writers working in Hollywood at that time that the system was very constricting yeah it was constricting except that if you made a name for yourself it was beginning to become to become an honorable profession which it was did not know because people came to Hollywood you know to make quick money writers from New York stage actors novelists scott Fitzgerald whom I knew at Paramount by the way Faulkner they would all kind of put their fingers in the pie no but it not with any genuine interest they kind of looked down on movies which you know is my de la Gina because everybody has been looking down on movies you know if something can absurd rate until thank God the invention of television now we have something to look down on ball of fire directed by Howard Hawks was your last trip before becoming a filmmaker yes I wanted to direct in fact I spent all of my time on the set with Hawks and watched him during the shooting I didn't take any salary I just took a little learning vacation you wanted to communicate directing because you feel your scripts we are not we are betrayed or you cannot go ahead control now yeah I want to take more control and I just thought that directing was all the fun writing is misery I think it's wet writing is hard labor the fun is to be on the set if you have a good script and and capable or if you like enough to have outstanding actors that's a real fun you know that's that's the thing to do you mean the writing is the toughest part of the film I think for us it's too much to do stuff is bothering somebody absolutely holiday it's like making the bid for somebody and then then he hops into the bid you know and I go home you know I didn't remember at one time we had written a script for Mitchell Eisen in Otto Hahn below the producer called who'd backed it on with Bowie and was Olivia de Havilland and Paulette got it in a slew of other actors and it the basic point of the script was of the story of the theme was the the Romanian gigolo who would like to get into the United States but doesn't have a visa so he's now waiting for the quota number to come up in some lousy Hotel in Tijuana cross the border and he was lying there on the couch unshaven and disabled today and there was a cockroach I'm quoting the script now a cockroach was trying to kind of climb up the dirty wall and unto a little mirror that was there and he had a little little walking stick there or something and he would stop that cockroach any time it was it wanted to get onto the mirror and say wait a minute where you going have you got a visa that was basically to see so I I remember there was a restaurant across the street but looses and we went to lunch there bracken and I and I ran into boy in I said - what I do inkay said well we're doing the senior in there in the hotel is oh yes that scene with the [ __ ] cuts the good scene isn't it and the boy said yes sir you think it's a good scene yes as we cut it out because I refused to do it I said why and boy I said it's stupid it's idiotic he says why should I talk to a cockroach if the cockroach cannot answer me I'm not going to talk to cockroach and I looked at bracket black bracket looked at me and become very very angry and we went back to the office and we were still writing the final 20 minutes of that film and I was so angry I said I tell you I tell you this son of a [ __ ] if he doesn't talk to it backroad she won't talk to anybody and we gave him the absolute minimum for the end we gave everything to Olivia de Havilland out of anger you know now what had happened was you know that at this time Garamond was making like 4045 pictures a year they said well we like bracket and while there's a team we don't want to lose them if that silly guy wants to break his neck you know how good can it be and let me direct my very first picture but I knew what they were thinking so I found a story that was absolutely kind of foolproof it was the magenta man over with Ginger Rogers and we got the Midland with whom I avoid subsequently and I made a small a very successful picture it was a rather mild chaste version of Lolita that's what it was that 24 year old girl doesn't have enough money to get back on the train but has enough money for a child ticket which is half price and disguises herself as a child and runs into Ray Milland who finds himself curiously sexually attracted by not knowing and it disturbs him greatly since that was his successor to give me contact and I stayed on as a director but you were not really satisfied with the system because you wanted to achieve more control you switch from scriptwriter to director and director to producer producer director and that is the level of the producer who I'm talking about great producers like the Slovaks and the Selznick's and and the goodwin's I'm talking about a studio producer who you know since they cannot write since they cannot direct since they cannot act since they cannot compose they become the head of everything and that was the ultimate control so it was a question of not of power but of of ultimately having it as close to on the screen to what you what you first imagined to have it as close to that after the execution ace in the hole was your first film as a producer and believe me it was a very very harsh experience I almost left paramount because because that was before I had the controls the cutting control and other controls they just retitled the picture no it wasn't a hold it recorded the big carnival to recoup some money then it was a success in Europe but I I learned my lesson you know I insisted on certain things you know so they can't go behind my back and suddenly the picture is retitled it is it is recut it is redubbed rescored you know that is very important but however however being a very fast picture shooter shooter of pictures a picture maker and tenth a knotted not indulging in in kind of a masturbatory self exercises of a of a egocentric sub satisfaction no I ultimately achieved the cutting rights from the studio which is about the best that you can hope for the only walking about 5% of the time to just strikes out five come on that part of three three nights day come on your runners will be off on the pitch was throughout burgers and sons out there over there is to airport and this is where 20th Century Fox used to be and this is the beach this is where our house is way out there how about the drink let's go inside huh there's a little kind of catapult and stuff around Roman things and my little Japanese grew up to these come with me now all right now let's see here we have a couple of Picasso's and then we have a Jablonski and AVR and a brac and Shekau and appositive Kandinsky by Gabrielle Monta another Jablonski then we have here the two nudes by Kirchner then we have another nude by Susan Vlado a doofy promenade des anglais a blue Picasso a watercolor by Renoir another Picasso and way in the corner there we have a Giacometti and naturally in back of it you know other paintings where I don't even know where to hang them yet when did you start collecting all those paintings oh but fifty years ago way back in Berlin and I don't even consider myself a collector I consider myself an accumulator I have accumulated things like a like a packrat you know I I cannot have myself I just have that that sickness I've got to buy and acquire and I've got too much stuff and I've got it hidden under under the beds and in closets in warehouses I just cannot stop buying buying buying what does it correspond to I don't know grete if you want to call it or curiosity or passion but it is it is not an eclectic kind of let us say not a Catholic a kind of a collection I also collected Japanese dwarf trees and glass paper weights and Chinese jaw you just name it I collected but what is striking is that you tend to do like extremely avant-garde or abstract painting and we know that in matters of films you are a classic I don't think there is a contradiction I really think that I am an adventurer myself I do not mind the progress I do not mind a something totally new something revolutionary if it makes sense and if it belongs what I hate is as what I would call the phony innovator who to begin this is not an innovator at all because they have done everything before in in Russia and if a company in Berlin you know there's nothing really new but people who kind of do crazy stuff in order to astonish the middle class man a patellae bourgeois I I don't subscribe to that whatsoever and yet yourself you shocked few people with the Lost Weekend by showing the drama of an alcoholic at that time they used to make like comedies on the subject and in eating the whole you expose the methods of the yellow journalists who let a man die for a scoop and also later in some Market Hall on some Lackey that had no difficulties whatsoever there was there was some super-sensitive critics some not many who said mr. Wilder finds it necessary to find comedy intense bestit ISM having men dressed as women or it digs deep into the old Charlie's and cliched so but as fast the studio is concerned I had no difficulties whatsoever the vital thing was how Tony Curtis and I would look in the makeup when we were spending as I'd mentioned earlier 85% of the film you know dressed as girls and running around and drag how the wigs would look and how the makeup would look would it be believable that being crucial we spent almost a week every day going through a series of makeup tests and different sized lips with lipstick in different wigs and we were going crazy when we got Tony and I what we thought were the right makeups Billy said okay says now we were on the Samuel Goldwyn lot where we shot he said go to the ladies room and we said what he said you go to the ladies room they were going to find out whether this arts or not he says he go to the ladies room so when we went and boy the flop sweat was flying I was scared to death I felt so embarrassed but in we went all the women going in and out accepted us they just thought that we were extras or bit players doing a film a period piece in which we would be dressed in these costumes they thought we were women and we came out came back and said to Billy not one woman batted an eye ball he said that's it don't change anything that's the veil your honor look [Music] after the world just at the end of the world you wear one of the third directors in Hollywood who decided to shoot on location to go into the streets for a Lost Weekend double indemnity and later sunset bhuva why was this last weekend I wanted to catch the atmosphere of New York I needed I needed third Avenue at that time it they were still an elevated going up above I needed that it needed long vast vistas of of New York of skyscrapers of it when he's going absurd Avenue you know trying to hock to to pawn the typewriter because he needs money for some more booze personally just between you and me you know I I much rather to shoot inside the studio because I can control it I don't have to fight the light which is going all the time with the weather the Sun is going all the time oh it starts raining and then you reshoot but and then the Sun comes out again you know you had no controlling you compromise I'm embarrassed to tell you the truth and so many actors about shooting in front of a lot of people and tell you a good story about it just care for another drink okay now this is what happened we were shooting seven-year itch with Marilyn Monroe and you remember that famous shot you remember the winds that is lifting her skirt well we were all set up to shoot that thing you know on the 59th and Madison something like it I had in order to make sure that this skirt is being lifted not only that they were five and ultimately ten thousand people they were like there were the electricians intense the mechanics who were working the defend down below so that it would work right they accepted big bribes of people around they all wanted to be underneath there and look up Maryland good and and we did it and we did it and did it and it never quite worked and people were heckling from the sidelines you know and people were running up for autographs and it was very embarrassing I tell you and the Judy matcha who was at that time the husband of of Maryland you know he was watching it and he didn't like it very much his wife making a spectacle of herself and I didn't I didn't like the lack of control I couldn't really get it right and finally ultimately I did that shot in the studio it was perfect but when you should in studio then you asked for instance electronic rauner to be as precise as almost a documentary but you see when your managers you believe in you are in they are absolutely but you see the beauty of working with Donna is who I consider him of course the greatest actor actor he was he was he was working on the legs and found a parody and then dictated Bremen and all the great pictures he's an absolute master of the perspective in other words when I shot this scene in the apartment with the five thousand deaths everybody asked me where did you find that office you buy new york highway way what building was it was it the Rockefeller Center was it the new Seagram building where it was on stage five at Goldman's but the talent does something which is unique in is the master of the perspective but at I mean he had a hundred discs then he had another two hundred discs but in a smaller size and we had extra to a smaller ultimately div a tiny disk and they were dwarf extras and ultimately the very intimate cutouts they were this that worried about is large is this as this actually except without the ashes mastering tiny little discs and cutout to note and and in back of it you know you saw you saw you saw a little traffic or things were happening you know on strings you know he just gave you the illusion that's when when picture making becomes a real fun you know that you do it with mirrors you do it like a magician you know you pull the rabbits out of hats I would like to know the way you develop your scripts how does it start how you get your ideas and which stages you go through well you carry ideas with you all along you know you've got them somewhere in the back of your mind to the drawers of your desk let's take for instance say the apartment now I remember many many years ago I saw a beautiful picture by David Lean called brief encounter it was the love affair between a married woman and a man and in order to have their around the rules of love they used the apartment of a friend of this guy that's where they met because they could not be seen they could not go to a hotel or anything like that and I was thought that the guy whose apartment they used was an interesting character and I kept that in the back of my mind and I said that to be a wonderful character by by himself touching and funny at certain moments and the years later after we had finished some like it hot I wanted to make another picture with lemon and I thought that would be the perfect cast for this character but that's all I had was just that one character the theme of a man who who is being exploited or lets himself be exploited a man who upon coming home in the evening crawls into also he is lonely and a bachelor crawls into a bed still warm from the lovers who had been there before [Music] where are we exactly here is it Malibu it's it's part of Malibu called Trancas we spend about every weekend she especially in the summer just to recover from what I suffered through yesterday we were talking about the way you you get your script ideas and what is your working procedure here to quote mr. Churchill it's a blood sweat and tears believe me it is a drag it is it is hard work and it's not one of those kind of things people imagine that muses comment a kiss your brow and there you are kind of the poet in the clouds nothing like it we just sort of there that is an eye and now when we collaborate we we we get to the office like at nine o'clock in the morning you know like employees of a bank and we sit there and we try to find something sometimes nothing sometimes we just sit there and wait say is how would it be if their husband I don't like it why are you and sometimes the muse does come and kiss your brows and we just go at it if you write like 1012 pages a day when you write a script do you have an actor in mind most of the time certainly certainly we know who the lead is going to be when you when you when you prepare witness for the prosecution you must know that Lawton is going to play the lawyer and you write in a different way knowing that it's going to be Lawton and that Marlena Dietrich is going to be the wife of the type out we knew that when we when we did some like it had we started with lemon and Curtis and we were hoping for Marilyn Monroe we were not sure but thank God we did get now I can't do Billy's accent but anyway all I know is that this crazy man sat down and he says now look he said I got this script here and it takes it concerns the st. Valentine's Day Massacre and you are a musician and the other fella David you is a musician and you business the st. Valentine's Day Massacre and what you got to do is you've got to dress up and join an all-girl Orchestra because now they know that you've seen it and they may come and they go break it up are they're going to kill you and for 85% of the picture you're going to run around and drag good you want to do it and for some insane reason I said yes and under said how do you work with them did you give them a lot of free rein of course must be different with different actors absolutely it's very very difficult to to make a set rule you know where you treat every act of the same way it's like you know like a psychiatrist having various set patients of different illnesses the couch and you have to be all kinds of things not just a psychiatrist them you have to be a masochist you have to be in SS man you have to be a father confessor priest you have to cuddle them you have to be sweet to them be very severe with them it's just a pensioner they all thank god they're all human beings with different problems you'd like to direct a great number of actors but it seems that among them three standout Walter Matthau with whom you whom you director in three films Jack Lemmon in six films and William Holden in three films and they seem to represent three different aspects of man's personality how do you see them it just depends on the picture now if I if it's a picture but a likeable attractive slim eel natural that's lemon if it is if it is a strong very American straight faced businessman just hold and if I need the funny slightly devious kind of everybody's brother-in-law you take matter you couldn't do better you know those are highly original characters wait does not take an hour to establish the character it's like putting on an old pair of slippers if you know what I mean see Billy sees me Billy Wilder sees me as and I'm quoting as a loveable row scalawag a conman a deceiver and one who should never in any case under any circumstances play the love interest now I disagree with him but you see with the director you can't tell a director hey listen I'm a love interest type I mean women go crazy about me they see in me a large English Sheepdog you know and they want to grab my body and pet it and play around with me and so forth he doesn't see that Billy Wilder doesn't see me as a sex symbol and all my life I have I've been miserable because I I always wanted women to jump on me the way they jump on pretty pretty men like like Jack Lemmon I know somehow you had to deal in Europe Korea with to mix Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe which are the opposite of metal and lemon well much more everyday personalities I think you had some problems with the two of them well I had problems with her what was Bill that at the beginning of the of the shooting of Sabrina because he was not my first charge my first charge was was the Cary Grant but I just couldn't get him you go show up until four weeks people we started that it's going to me but he kind of never thought that he was part of what you may call kind of the while The Clique people who kind of need to know after shooting and have a cocktail or two he he he difficulties to depart he was not it was not natural to him no there was nothing tough there were no guns there was no suspense and there was not that that the mystique of of Rick in in Casablanca when they're almost a whole different story because Monroe I had no problem with Monroe Monroe had problems with Monroe she had problems with herself she was she was slightly discombobulated at all times she had great difficulties to concentrate something was always biting her eating her and it was like pulling teeth you know but by God you know when you were through with her when you suffered through that thing to the 30 40 50 takes sometimes or through her litmus you had something they know something absolutely unique that cannot be that cannot be duplicated and you forget after the pictures finished and you had a rough time before not that she was mean or anything like that she would have mental blocks she really should be required she really required the greatest of the analysts or a slew of analyst not just one you know to to unravel what was happening within her I'd never seen him stopped cold except by Marilyn we were doing the scene and all she had to do when Tony and I were the camera was on us she knocks on the door we quickly throw our wigs on because we were still disguising ourselves as girls and say come in Tony says come in she walks in the camera now is on her all she says is where is the Bourbon opens a drawer and says oh there it is that's all where is that bourbon oh there it is well about take 28 Billie had given her every single conceivable piece of direction he when she stopped again went over and said well okay Marilyn possibly if you and she interrupted and said Billie don't talk to me now I'll forget the way I want to play it [Music] there was another miss that you met in Berlin before she became a miss its Marlene Dietrich and the user later as an actress yeah we where we made two pictures together it was she was she was the exact opposite of what what she represented on the on the screen and when you saw in Schenck I expressed when you saw in in the blue engine when you know she'd ever said that that seductive or vampire that she is really a German house for all I know and that's what she likes the best she likes to scrub the floors and scramble your eggs and she says she said she is a great friend of mine and and and to be kind of obvious to laugh about about about the kind of thing they made out of her nothing like it [Music] when you went to shoot after the war for an affair how was Berlin you know since you had left it 15 years before oh it was a totally different world but I had been in Berlin long before that in 1945 I came to Berlin with them when I was with the army it was it was fascinating I tell you to leave afraid for my life and then come back you know it's one of the conquerors is it where when you shoot when you make a film you throw all taboos also terms you don't respect you show things as they are I mean for instance kiss me stupid that's a very important thing because you raise the hell in America what was you know well I raise Callie and I and I don't want to give you the feeling that I'm that I'm such an rebel against against the establishment and at all the trouble with with kiss me stupid which actually was a very chaste picture was about a man who is caught it is that eternal drama between between duty and desire he's a song right they wouldn't want to sell a song to a popular singer on the other hand the singer wants to have an affair with the wife of the composer and he does a substitution not only that that he did not permit his wife to have an affair with the thing he substituted to her with the prostitute and then he protected even the prostitute it was really a very innocent picture the problem there was a usually I don't talk in those terms you know was that I really was ahead of my time it was just before we started liberalizing our code of ethics you know when censorship was just running amok yes but nevertheless you should in you know in case Mississippi that the housewife liked to be a prostitute for one night and the prostitute enjoy to be a housewife well that that you're kind of you are you are sort of making a it kind of in a parallel sort of thing you know which makes four four four which makes it such a good newspaperman you'd it never cut did the wife to become a prostitute the one night she was crazy about the tick that particular singer Dean Martin you know she wouldn't have minded to have had an affair with him but but not really a prostitute and a prostitute you know played by Kim Novick she was hidden nice girl you know nothing wrong with her you also broke political taboos you know when you made ninotchka you were far in advance of its time it was when you wrote ninotchka it was a lightweight comedy but it tell told everything about the trials and purges in Russia and 30 years later you did one two three twenty-five years later which was a film about anticipating the whole Russian American connections business connections coca-cola one two three Rosa hell too I mean it was a tag by both lesson right in that match I love it you know to irritate everybody ultimately naturally going to put me against this cellophane wall and shooting from both sides the communist the capitalist I love it I was why did one two three will raise the true hell it did not want to say didn't raise any hell didn't raise enough hell if we'd raised a lot of clamour it would have been a bigger box office yet no no doctor the trouble was that on one two three the trouble was that while we were shooting the picture which played the West Berlin East Berlin and the endeavor of of the coca-cola colonialism it was a comedy everything seemed to be easy and fun and gay and then the all of a sudden in the middle of the film while we were working a trouble started there were too many people from East Germany escaping into into into West Berlin and West Germany and they they closed the border they put the wall up and it seems to be a comedy set up anymore and into the picture the picture was not what we expected it to be but it seemed that for you the the Russian people have not today I mean the Communists have not a great sense of humor don't you feel attracted by trying to tease them a little well maybe I'm very primitive you know back there but a Goethe you know is not their Forte I guess they have they have they have clowns in their circuses they have dancing bears they have kangaroos who play soccer and people are screaming with laughter but I thought my idea of of having a sense of humor and I think I will I will I will tell you one little anecdote about a Russian sense of humor we were in Berlin and we were shooting care one two three enter they invited us to the East German film club called amudha Segal we went there in time they had just run the apartment and they said it was marble it was wonderful and it really showed up the depravity of the capitalist system how a man can further his career by filthy tricks by giving away the key to his apartment and they said you know very typical typical typical of of America typical of New York and I told him look a story like this could happen anyplace it could happen not just in New York it could happen in Stockholm it could happen in Buenos Aires it could happen in Tokyo it certainly could not happen in Moscow I must bit to that and they were very very pleased to know that it could not happen mask on and I told you why I said it could not happen in Moscow because no God nobody can give you the key to your apartment so you can make love to a lady because if you give it a key to the apartment there are still six more families living in the same apartment that did not amuse them very much you ran out of questions and this is where almost 30 years after centered buthow you made fedora and of course there are echoes of the first film in fedora by echoes you mean echoes you know both of us have a nice little accent well all I can tell you is Michele if it's an echo of Sunset Boulevard I'm very proud and I think it was very smart to to try and make a picture with echoes of a very successful picture of mine the stupid thing would have been if I would have repeat it on a failure of man do you agree with that yes I think so yeah I also think that you are very far from Norma Desmond and Sidora because you don't live in a dream you look for reality and I think Sherlock Holmes is very close to you I mean he's a collector he's an Enquirer he's a man who wants to look for the truth yes he is also a dope addict and he is also in some versions maybe homosexual in client having something to do with the with dr. Watson that is Brad T smart he is enigmatic and I'll buy that what you think I'm Sherlock Holmes okay and he's a rational man who is afraid of giving way to too much emotion or too much passion we don't think I'm emotion or passionate do you want me to mention some names you want to ask some people well I think in a way that your later feels like precisely Sherlock Holmes and Avanti are ever more mellow mood and more romanticism don't say that that scares me I must stop that I don't want to be known as that I want to be known as a cynic is there somebody with a a bit triolic tongue I like that much better I don't going to be known as a softy we will keep that no no just we keep it but we keep it between us a secret okay you'd like to switch all the time I mean there's the wider touch but not awhile your specialty you go from drama than that to comedy from fast to suspense that's that's correct yeah I like other directors in that respect yeah well I I I have done every kind of picture except a Western however I think that that the wise man is Hitchcock you know who is known for his suspense pictures he does a certain kind of a picture does it beautifully and people know what to expect but it was sort of it would bother me it would bother me too I would find it boring you know to do always the same kind of a picture I tried to switch stars when I'm very very sad I'd like to make a comedy and when I'm in a very happy mood I'd like to make a very heavy drama but you're serious to the director I mean you're you're very kind Michele but just between the two of us you know I I don't think that making movies is my entire life now if there's one thing you know that I hate more than not being taken seriously is to be taken too seriously when you say that I'm searching for truth for now so you friends should know how to flatter somebody I'm just trying to make a living get two hours of film and I don't really give a [ __ ] whether how true it is I'm great it is just get it over with princess [Music]

Channel: FilMagicians

Views: 61,272

Rating: 4.9233532 out of 5

Keywords: Billy Wilder, interview, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, I.A.L. Diamond, Some Like It Hot, Marilyn Monroe, The Lost Weekend, The Apartment

Id: cg46YX1gqcU

Length: 58min 14sec (3494 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2017