Go Into The Story Resource: Conversations With Billy Wilder

A 28-part journey through the wonderful book “Conversations with Billy Wilder” focusing on the master filmmaker’s take on screenwriting and story.

On May 16, 2023, Go Into The Story turns fifteen years old — you can read the very first blog post here. I led with this paragraph:

Welcome to Go Into The Story! Right now, it’s nothing but a humble, threadbare blog, but I hope it will evolve into an active resource for aspiring screenwriters, as well as a community for anyone interested in storytelling and the creative life.

And evolve it did! To the point where it has been named “Best of the Best” Scriptwriting Website in the 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list.

To celebrate 15 years of blogging about screenwriting, writing, Hollywood, movies, TV, and the creative life, each day in May, I’m going to feature a piece of Go Into The Story trivia, plus a writing resource you can find in the site’s archives. This is not an exercise in self-congratulations so much as I figured readers could use some tips about how to best use the site. With — to date — over 100 archive topics, there is a LOT of content here. Hopefully, these posts for the next 31 days will clue in more recent followers and remind long-time readers about resources you can use to facilitate deepening your understanding of the writing craft.

Today’s trivia: When I launched Go Into The Story, I used Blogger. Three years later when I became the Official Screenwriting Blog of the Black List, I switched over to Word Press. Then some years back, when Medium invited me to move here, I did — and I’m glad that happened. It’s a much easier interface. Plus to date, Go Into The Story has 48k+ followers on Medium. I’ve also been designated as a Top Writer in these categories: Movies, Writing, Television, Creativity, Fiction.

Today’s Go Into The Story resource: “Conversations With Wilder”.

It figures that a filmmaker whose writing-directing credits include Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment would be one worth studying and that’s precisely what we did in a multipart series based on the excellent book “Conversations with Wilder”. In it, writer-director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) has several in-depth conversations with his idol (The Apartment is Crowe’s favorite movie… as it is for me). What I’ve done with this series is focus on excerpts wherein Wilder talks about screenwriting and his approach to the story-crafting and filmmaking process.

Part 1: The Cockroach Anecdote

Part 2: George Cukor’s advice to Jack Lemmon

Part 3: The derivation of “Shut up and deal,” the last line of The Apartment

Part 4: The Lubitsch Touch

Part 5: “To entertain and not to repeat myself and to make as few mistakes as possible”

Part 6: Ninotchka and the hat subplot

Part 7: Great anecdote about the seduction scene in Some Like It Hot

Part 8: His working relationship with writing partner I.A.L. “Izzy” Diamond

Part 9: How the Dr. Dreyfuss character in The Apartment came into existence

Part 10: A broken mirror in The Apartment exemplifies visual storytelling

Part 11: Writing comedy

Part 12: Comedic timing

Part 13: Raymond Chandler, great lines and the importance of structure

Part 14: Story and character

Part 15: Voice-Over Narration

Part 16: Romantic comedies, leading men and small stories

Part 17: Getting it down in the script before directing it

Part 18: Visual poetry

Part 19: How he switched Protagonists in a story concept and came up with The Apartment

Part 20: How he took a good concept from a bad movie and made Some Like It Hot

Part 21: The intentionality behind the frantic pace of One, Two, Three

Part 22: Wilder’s advice on screenwriting

Part 23: The impact of crafting story structure with the audience in mind

Part 24: On the powerful final shot of Ace in the Hole

Part 25: On cross-dressing in Tootsie and Some Like It Hot

Part 26: The alternate ending for Double Indemnity

Part 27: The time Wilder told MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer to “Go fuck yourself”

Part 28: The key to writing exposition — “Make the medicine go down easy”

Billy Wilder is my favorite filmmaker and one of the reasons is I love the way he approaches directing: Set the camera and let the actors act. But that puts additional pressure on the story and as a storyteller, we can learn a LOT from Wilder’s wisdom. This series is a great way to dig into Wilder’s insights.

Here are Wilder’s ten tips on screenwriting:

1. The audience is fickle.
2. Grab ’em by the throat and never let ’em go.
3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
4. Know where you’re going.
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then — that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Each day this month, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for supporting Go Into The Story. I’d love to hear from you in RESPONSES. When did you start following the blog? What are your favorite features? And as always, if you have any suggestions, feel free to suggest away.