There are, for me, a handful of directors whose work I immediately associate with one visual motif or style or another: the eerily perfect tracking shots that help tell Kubrick's enigmatic/ironic stories; the free-form structures and well-deep humanism of Godard; Fellini's joyous parades; Hitchcock's beautifully edited chases; Welles' graceful mise-en-scène; Scorsese's prowling camera--those are just a few examples. But it's harder to pin an overall sense of cinematic rhythm to Billy Wilder. I'm not suggesting that I disdain his name--actually, I celebrate it. But in recalling Wilder's oeuvre, above all what I remember is the writing (he's probably responsible for the two greatest final lines in all of cinema: "Alright, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up" and "Nobody's perfect").

Therefore it shouldn't come as any surprise that he is a vivid conversationalist--as documented by Cameron Crowe's recently published Conversations With Wilder. When Crowe set out to talk to the hyphenate, what he probably had in mind was a book comparable to the famous Hitchcock/Truffaut interview tome. As fun as the latter is, Conversations With Wilder is better, for Hitchcock rarely said anything new about his work--which, in its consistent formal perfection, spoke for itself, anyway. Crowe captures the essence of a man whose name is responsible for such titles as Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Crowe's book is to say that, at its end, I wanted to sit down and talk with Wilder myself.

There tends to be an expectation of celebrities to behave a certain way (one of the themes tackled by Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, a film I've long felt owes a certain debt to Sunset Blvd.). (Scorsese pays tribute to Wilder on the book's jacket art.) What's astonishing is how fully Wilder lives up to these expectations--almost everything he says is incisive, smart, and thought provoking. That's part of the reason that most would, I imagine, get more pleasure out of reading Wilder's contemplations on his own films than some less relevant conversations (such as Wilder explaining why he wanted to make Schindler's List) that, while interesting, take up too much space.

Still, we never cease to have the impression of a successful man who no longer has anything to prove--his personality lacks some of the brashness you might expect from the creator of Double Indemnity, instead betraying the sheer love of intelligent discussion one can sense in a later masterpiece like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. (Midway through the volume, he justifies his dislike of MTV by proclaiming, "there's not enough wit in [rapping] for me"). None of which is to say that it's not interesting to hear what Wilder thinks of films not of his making, only that the book functions most fully and successfully as a companion piece to Wilder's body of work.

I realize that I haven't really pointed out any big faults the book may have to this point, and that's largely because I find it difficult to completely grasp its scope. At over 350 pages long, it's never less than compulsively readable; not that I didn't find myself growing impatient with the odd segment, but whenever I felt that way, I had no problem skipping a few pages ahead, often only to discover the history of a classic moment, or a surprising bit of trivia. (For example, wife Audrey Wilder played Gary Cooper's date at the opera in Love in the Afternoon. It's also fun to hear Wilder rag on Titanic--when Crowe mentions that he thought Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet occasionally transcended the script, Wilder asks, "What script?").

A true coffee table book, Conversations With Wilder is constantly splashing the reader in a sea of information: along with text, we get production stills, behind-the-scene photos, poster reproductions, etc. The appendices include a summary and brief criticism of every last Wilder film plus a section of miscellaneous quotes, anecdotes, and "tips." In his rundown of the filmography, Crowe proves that he may have been too reverent of Wilder's movies to be the ideal force behind the book--his analyses sometimes come across as overly generous. Still, you've got to love the footnotes that conclude each summary. (David Selznick said of Some Like It Hot, for which Wilder had considered Frank Sinatra to star, "It will be a disaster. You cannot combine comedy with murder!") And the miscellany is often wonderful. Wilder's tips for writers ends thusly:

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then--
11. --that's it. Don't hang around.

He never did.

Does Conversations With Wilder hold appeal for non-Wilder fans? Certainly a lot less than it would his devotees. This is a reference intended for those eager to learn how his films happened, and how much this great man's personal experiences affected his outlook on his life and his work. Even if you don't like it, Wilder has his ass covered; on the last page of the interview itself, Crowe asks Wilder if he wants to read the manuscript upon completion:

"No," he says pleasantly. "I do not want to read it." He pauses. "That way I can always say, 'Well--he fucked it up.'"-Max S. Scheinin

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.