Conversations with Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond [Part 1]

A 10-part series with the writers of The Apartment and Some Like It Hot.

I stumbled on a transcript of a sit-down interview with writer-director Billy Wilder and his long-time writing partner I.A.L. Diamond [date unknown]. It’s simply terrific. I thought over the next couple of weeks, I’d excerpt it here.

Question: You two have collaborated for an unusually long time, considering the high divorce rate of writer-director relationships. To put it simply, how do you two work together?

Billy Wilder: I imagine the collaboration between a director and writer varies. In the old days, some directors got a script handed to them on Friday and had to start shooting on Monday. But Mr. Diamond and I — and my former collaborators, Charles Brackett and Raymond Chandler — had a special kind of arrangement, since I myself started as a writer and still regard myself as a writer. So, don’t take our way of working as something that is normal. In fact, I think it’s rather abnormal, because from the day we sit down to start working on the screenplay until the time the picture is reviewed by Vincent Canby in New York, we’re always together.

I.A.L. Diamond: You obviously have to differentiate among directors who are just directors, directors who are also producers, and directors who are also writers. I think a normal course of events, if you sell a story or are assigned to a story, is to work first with a producer, and only when he was satisfied would the director come in.

Wilder: I’m asked all the time: When there are two names or three names on a screenplay, does one write one scene and the other another scene, and then do you meet every Tuesday and compare? Or does one write the action and the other write the dialogue? I’m already very gratified if anybody asks that question, because most people think the actors make up the words. But in our case it’s very prosaic; it sounds very dull.

We meet at, say, 9:30 in the morning and open shop, like bank tellers, and we sit there in one room ex. We read Hollywood Reporter and Variety change the trades, and then we just stare at each other. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it goes on until 12:30, and then I’ll ask him, “How about a drink?’’ And he nods, and then we have a drink and go to lunch. Or sometimes we come full of ideas. This is not the muse coming through the windows and kissing our brows. It’s very hard work, and having done both, I tell you that directing is a pleasure and writing is a drag. Directing can become difficult, but it is a pleasure because you have something to work with. You can put the camera here or there; you can interpret things this way or that way; the readings can be such or such. But writing is just an empty page. You start with nothing, absolutely nothing, and I think writers are vastly underrated and underpaid. It is totally impossible to make a great picture out of a lousy script. It is impossible, though, for a mediocre director to screw up a great script altogether.

Diamond: A writer named Hal Kanter once wrote a monologue for Groucho Marx which had the following line: ‘’Who needs writers? Give me a competent director and two intelligent actors, and at the end of eight weeks I will show you three of the most nervous people you ever saw.’’

Q: Could you take one of your original films say The Apartment, and trace its origins — where the idea came from, the problems in writing it?

Wilder: The genesis of The Apartment I remember very, very vividly. I saw David Lean’s Brief Encounter, which was based on a one-act play by Noel Coward, and in the play Trevor Howard was the leading man. A married man has an affair with a married woman, and he uses the apartment of a chum of his for sexual purposes. I always had it in the back of my mind that the friend of Trevor Howard’s, who only appears in one or two tiny scenes, who comes back home and climbs into the warm bed the lovers have just left, would make a very interesting character. I made some notes, and years later, after we had finished Some Like It Hot, we wanted to make another picture with Jack Lemmon. I dug out this notion, and we just sat down and started to talk about the character, started the structure, started the three acts, started the other characters, started to elaborate on the theme, and when we had enough we just suggested it to Mr. Lemmon and to Walter Mirisch and United Artists.

Diamond: We had the character and the situation, but we didn’t have a plot until there was a local scandal. An agent, who was having an affair with a client, was shot by the woman’s husband. But the interesting thing was that he was using the apartment of one of the underlings at the agency. That was what gave us the relationship — somebody who was using somebody lower than he in a big company, using his apartment.

Wilder: In those days it was a very, very risqué project. Today, of course, it would be considered a Disney picture.

Diamond: I also remember some construction problems. There was one point in the second act where Billy kept saying, ‘’The construction is humpbacked.’’ He meant that we were faced with two exposure scenes back to back. In one scene Fred MacMurray’s secretary gives away to his wife that he is having an affair. This is immediately followed by a scene in which the guys who had been thrown out of the apartment give away to the girl’s brother-in-law that she’s staying with Lemmon. Those scenes came back to back, and Billy kept saying, ‘’It’s humpbacked. It’s humpbacked.’’ But it was the only way we could arrive economically at the third act.

Wilder: But nobody notices any more because neat constructions are out. Third acts are out. Payoffs are out. Jokes don’t have toppers. They just have an interesting straight line, and let the audience write its own toppers. We come from a whole different school. A comedy like Shampoo I don’t think was constructed at all. What makes it successful, I guess, is that it’s slapped together with verve and overt language and naked behinds and God knows what. It is a kind of super gusto, sex, chutzpah — whatever you want to call it, that makes it come off. It’s not constructed in the way we learned. But if you come now with any kind of experience in that direction — I’ve been at it for forty years and construction is frowned upon, it’s not being done, it’s old-fashioned. I guess it is, but that’s the way we’ve been doing it, and that’s the way we’re going to do it until they take
the cameras away. The idea that people in a picture can sit around a campfire and break wind and scream for fifteen minutes seems very strange to us.

Diamond: Everybody in this room, I am sure, can quote half a dozen good lines from Casablanca, from Ninotchka, from The Maltese Falcon, and any number of other pictures. Now, you know what got the two big laughs in Shampoo — I think this is hardly a substitute for wit, except among eleven-year-olds when if you say a dirty line it’s considered daring. But it doesn’t put very much of a premium on writing clever dialogue.

Wilder: But Shampoo had an absolutely marvelous idea, the ambulatory hairdresser with the penis hairdryer under his belt, chugging around Beverly Hills, and it had those couple of dirty lines. ‘’Hey, have you seen Shampoo?’’ “Does she really say that?’’ ‘’Yeah.’’ ‘’I’ve got to see that.’’ People wait for that, and then they leave. But it did have a showmanship idea, and it did have Warren Beatty. He was just right for the part, and the movie came at the right time. But I would be embarrassed to write it. I personally would be embarrassed to go to Julie Christie and say, ‘’Here’s the dialogue for tomorrow.’’ I would run and hide somewhere.

A scene from the movie The Apartment:

SHELDRAKE
(into phone)
The reason I called is -- I won't
be home for dinner tonight. The
branch manager from Kansas City is
in town -- I'm taking him to the
theatre Music Man, what else? No,
don't wait up for me -- 'bye,
darling.
(hangs up, turns to Bud)
Tell me something, Baxter -- have
you seen Music Man? BUD
Not yet. But I hear it's one swell
show. SHELDRAKE
How would you like to go tonight? BUD
You mean -- you and me? I thought
you were taking the branch manager
from Kansas City -- SHELDRAKE
I made other plans. You can have
both tickets. BUD
Well, that's very kind of you --
only I'm not feeling well -- you
see, I have this cold -- and I
thought I'd go straight home. SHELDRAKE
Baxter, you're not reading me. I
told you I have plans. BUD
So do I -- I'm going to take four
aspirins and get into bed -- so you
better give the tickets to somebody
else -- SHELDRAKE
I'm not just giving those tickets,
Baxter -- I want to swap them. BUD
Swap them? For what?Sheldrake picks up the Dobisch reports, puts on his glasses,
turns a page. SHELDRAKE
It also says here -- that you are
alert, astute, and quite
imaginative -- BUD
Oh?
(the dawn is breaking)
Oh!He reaches into his coat pocket, fishes out a handful of
Kleenex, and then finally the key to his apartment. He holds
it up. BUD
This? SHELDRAKE
That's good thinking, Baxter. Next
month there's going to be a shift
in personnel around here -- and as
far as I'm concerned, you're
executive material. BUD
I am? SHELDRAKE
Now put down the key --
(pushing a pad toward him)
-- and put down the address.Bud lays the key on the desk, unclips what he thinks is his
fountain pen, uncaps it, starts writing on the pad. BUD
It's on the second floor - my name
is not on the door -- it just says
2A --Suddenly he realizes that he has been trying to write the
address with the thermometer. BUD
Oh -- terribly sorry. It's that
cold -- SHELDRAKE
Relax, Baxter. BUD
Thank you, sir.He has replaced the thermometer with the fountain pen, and
is scribbling the address. BUD
You'll be careful with the record
player, won't you? And about the
liquor -- I ordered some this
morning -- but I'm not sure when
they'll deliver it --He has finished writing the address, shoves the pad over to
Sheldrake. SHELDRAKE
Now remember, Baxter -- this is
going to be our little secret. BUD
Yes, of course. SHELDRAKE
You know how people talk. BUD
Oh, you don't have to worry -- SHELDRAKE
Not that I have anything to hide. BUD
Oh, no sir. Certainly not. Anyway,
it's none of my business -- four
apples, five apples -- what's the
difference -- percentage-wise? SHELDRAKE
(holding out the tickets)
Here you are, Baxter. Have a nice
time. BUD
You too, sir.Clutching the tickets, he backs out of the office.

And the two creative geniuses hard at work:

Tomorrow: More from Wilder & Diamond.

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