“Conversations With Wilder”: Part 16

Billy Wilder. Cameron Crowe. Conversation and creative insight.

Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite filmmaker. Consider just some of his movies: Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), an oeuvre that demonstrates an incredible range in a filmmaking career that went from 1929 to 1981.

One of the best books on filmmaking and storytelling is “Conversations With Wilder” in which Cameron Crowe, a fantastic filmmaker in his own right (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) sat down with Wilder for multiple hours and they talked movies.

Most Sunday for the next several months, I’m going to post excerpts from the book, add a few thoughts, and invite your comments. I trust this will be a good learning experience for each of us. And while we’re at it, why don’t we watch some Wilder movies to remind ourselves what a great writer and director he was.

Today’s excerpt comes from P. 113–115 in which Wilder discusses romantic comedies, leading men and small stories:

CC: What do you think of modern romantic comedies?

BW: I laugh consistently — when I’m able to add up two plus two. They don’t make as many comedies anymore because it’s too much dialogue. They like to have action. Certain comedies, they still make them quite good. For instance, your stuff is very good. But this is an exception, that one can make a picture like this. I enjoy Robin Williams…Sleepless in Seattle [1993] was first-rate. My favorite picture of the last few years is still Forrest Gump [1994].

CC: Here’s a popular theory about why modern romantic comedy has suffered. In today’s culture, with the reduction of class and racial distinctions, there are fewer dramatic barriers to keep couples apart. How do you create tension when there are less obstacles to romance?

BW: People are people. There are always going to be ways to keep people apart. That’s…that’s the beauty of living, which is not easy, as I am now reminded of daily. There will always be ways — it just takes a good sharp writer with a good sharp mind. You make pictures based on truth. You make pictures based on the way you feel. Of course romantic comedy is still alive, if you need to use that term.

Forty or fifty years ago, there was no such thing as a lusty comedy, a subtle comedy, a “black” film. We just did it. [Charles] Brackett and I, or [I.A.L.] Diamond and I — we just said, “How would this be for a picture?” We just did the pictures the way they came. The bigger problem is that there are so few leading men now. There’s no more Gable, no more Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper…there use to be a list of leading men. Now there are only three or four. Who are you going to write for, unless it’s Tom Cruise? Who are you going to write for?

CC: In my experience, it has often been difficult to talk a leading man into playing pure romantic comedies. It’s hard today to find actors who want to say “I love you” on film. They’re afraid of looking foolish. They’d rather have a gun. Was it similar in your day?

BW: It was not that way. (A) We had leading men and leading ladies; we had them by the dozens. (B) We didn’t think in terms of “That’s a comedy, that’s a light picture.” It was just a picture, and you made a lot of them. It’s very different now, to have something with three thousand car crashes, or actors always looking up at the dinosaur. They’re looking up all the time, these actors! [Laughs] Explain to me how can you have dialogue with a dinosaur as big as the fifth floor? You can’t even get them in the same shot!

CC: But getting back to the global economy, the global culture. Does this all bode poorly for comedy? I mean, there’s just not a lot of specific culture to poke fun at.

BW: Yeah yeah yeah. That’s a good question. The popular pictures are a little heavier, a little more masculine. Why do we make a lot of futuristic pictures? Nobody’s afraid of Batman anymore! [Laughs] Everybody watches television now. They crave a bigger kind of entertainment. It’s almost a sport, to have seen the big picture on the opening weekend: “I have seen it! I have seen it!” But it will all change, of course. The smaller story will come back.

A lot to ponder here. Let me focus on three things:

• “People are people. There are always going to be ways to keep people apart… You make pictures based on truth. You make pictures based on the way you feel.” Once again we see Wilder’s instinct for characters. Need conflict or a dramatic situation? Look to your characters. Look for the truth of who they are. Look for the emotional connection you can find with each of them. Use those character-based discoveries as the foundation for your writing.
• Wilder’s point about the dearth of “leading men” nowadays is becoming less significant, at least in terms of mainstream, big budget Hollywood movies. There increasingly the ‘star’ is the computer generated imagery, the five story tall dinosaur Wilder referred to. However it still is important for lower budget and indie films, even critical. While there may be few true movie stars akin to Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn, there are lots of talented actors with significant name recognition who bounce back and forth between big salaried roles and small indie films. And it’s almost impossible to get financing and distribution for an indie film without a name cast. Scripts featuring a compelling narrative and multidimensional characters are still the way to go on that front as those are the type of projects that attract talent.
• “But it will all change, of course. The smaller story will come back.” Here I think Wilder was prescient as to the so-called Second Golden Age of Television. Look at the successful cable series in the last decade: The Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, True Detective. Many of them feature ‘big’ characters — in terms of personalities, backstory, stakes — in a ‘small’ setting, often involving characters balancing crime and family, law enforcement and personal lives. In theory, no different than in previous generations, however the depth to which the writers are exploring the characters’ lives is expanding, reflecting a cinematic sensibility at work in these series.

A coda: When Wilder says, “But it will all change,” he has the wisdom of decades of working in the movie business upon which to base that assertion. It’s a fact. The combination of technology and culture mixed with talent and economics necessitate the landscape of the entertainment business will change. TV is hot right now. Therefore everyone rushes to write an original TV pilot. Five or ten years from now, we may be talking about the collapse of TV. The idea of a movie lasting anywhere from 90–120 minutes may fade away as in the future, we may have one form of audio-visual entertainment that spans across all digital platforms in wide variety of time lengths — from a 6-second Vine to a 10-hour limited series.

No matter the change, the need for story will always be there. That is one constant that never changes.

As to Wilder’s point about actors always having to “look up” in contemporary movies, check out the trailer for Jurassic World and count how many times that happens. It’s a lot!

Next: More “Conversations with Wilder. If you have any observations or thoughts, please head to comments.

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For the entire series, go here.