Conversations with Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond [Part 2]

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

More excerpts from a sit-down interview with writer-director Billy Wilder and longtime screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond:

Q: Do you tend to have a star in mind when you’re writing a script? In The Apartment you wanted Lemmon, and I suppose you adapted your dialogue to his personality.

Diamond: I’d say that most of the time we have known pretty early on in the script who was going to be in the picture, which of course makes it much more comfortable for the writer.

Wilder: In Some Like It Hot we were way into the script when we found out that Marilyn Monroe was available and wanted to do the picture. I think, as a rule, it’s bad to tell the actors, ‘’I’m doing something for you and only you can play it.” They don’t like that. You just say, “I know that you can do it. You can interpret it because you can play anything.” They love to hear that.

Diamond: In the old studio days you would start out writing a comedy for Cary Grant, and you would wind up with Robert Hutton.

Q: You made two films with Monroe. What was your experience working with her?

Wilder: My God, I think there have been more books on Marilyn Monroe than on World War II and there’s a great similarity. It was not easy. It was hell. But it was well worth it once you got in on the screen. I’ve forgotten the trouble I had, and the times I thought, this picture will never be finished. It’s all forgotten once the picture is done. The beauty of working with actors — not just Monroe — is that you’re not married to them. The whole damn thing lasts twelve, fourteen, maybe sixteen weeks That’s why I admire so greatly Fellini, because he lives with actors for three years. Or Bertolucci. My God, to be with the same actor or actress for three years — it’s not easy.

Diamond: I think that the most interesting trend in movies today is that they are starting to kill actors on the screen — the so-called snuff film. I think it’s the greatest development in films. You finish the picture, finish the actor, and that’s it!

Wilder: But the way it is here in Hollywood they’re killing the director.

Q: Do you assume a kind of role with an actor?

Wilder: It’s every kind of role. It depends what the actor or actress will respond to. I can become a masochist. I can become the Marquis de Sade or I can become a midwife. I can become Otto Preminger. I can do all sorts of things. It depends on what will work on actors. They’re all verydifferent.

Q: How do you decide what method to use?

Wilder: To begin with, I stay away as far as possible. It never gets too friendly because it’s just not good: Other actors sense there’s a little clique. I remember that I was once making a picture with Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur, A Foreign Affair. I had known Marlene from Germany before I ever came to this country, when I was a newspaperman in Berlin, and we were very friendly. In the middle of shooting, one midnight, the doorbell rang, and there was Jean Arthur, absolutely frenzied, with eyes bulging, and in back of her was her husband, Frank Ross. I said, ‘’What is it, Jean?”

She said, “What did you do with my close-up?’’

I said, ‘’What close-up?’’

She said, ‘’The close-up where I look so beautiful.’’

I said, ‘’What do you mean, what did I do with it?’’

She said, ‘’You burned it. Marlene told you to burn that close-up. She does not want me to look good.” This is typical. It’s a little insane asylum, and they are all inmates.

A special treat: An hour-long 1982 documentary special “Portrait of a ‘60% Perfect Man: Billy Wilder”:

Part 1 of the conversation with Wilder and Diamond here.

Tomorrow: More from the dynamic writing duo.