Billy Wilder by Volker Schlöndorff

[Reza]

LA Times

FIRST PERSON


Playing by his rules

Billy Wilder told me which camera angles to avoid, what shoes to buy, what to eat, and to never be boring.

By Volker Schlöndorff, Special to The LA Times

"Are we boring you?" Billy Wilder turned to ask his rapt Sunday guests, before returning to the saucy conversation he was having with screen legend Marlene Dietrich.

"Your violin teacher, was he before or after the aging actor?" Wilder asked, trying to catch up with her catalog of lovers.

Before, of course, but there was a woman in between," she responded.

"Fritzi Massary?"

"Yes, I think it was her."

"I'll never get your affairs straight," Wilder said, before turning back to his guests and once again asking, "Are we boring you?"

It was Wilder's First Commandment: Never bore anyone! Neither in front of the camera nor behind it, neither in the screening nor drawing room, not on the phone nor in a restaurant. Wilder on the set ? a batteredd cap perched rakishly on his head, pacing restlessly back and forth, dispatching witty remarks right and left, single-handedly entertaining his entire team: This is how I remember him, from our first meeting in 1976, during the shooting of "Fedora," his second-to-last film.

He was already 70 at the time, vivacious and chipper ? and if not quite wise, at least no longer caaustic. He did not direct his leads, he performed with them, palavering in French with Marthe Keller, in Berlin dialect with Hildegard Knef, and in Brooklyn slang with William Holden. Rather than acting out a scene himself to indicate what he was looking for, he used ironic exaggeration. It is my hope to someday achieve his seemingly carefree levity. For as different as our personalities and films may be, he has always been my role model.

I still remember how proud I was the day I received a letter from him. He had seen "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" and he wrote, "... simply the best German picture since Fritz Lang's 'M.' " I drafted one reply after another ? but, in the end, II was too embarrassed to send anything. Then, one day, I got a chiding call from Wilder's agent: "He sent you a fan letter months ago, which you didn't even seem to feel the need to reply to. Mr. Wilder is in Munich, staying in the Four Seasons Hotel. Come and apologize!"

I did. Then, whenever I could, I went to watch him on the set of "Fedora." Scurrying between the camera and actors, he gave out small lessons in filmmaking. Comedies, he said, are like Swiss clockwork: Just as one gear wheel locks into another, each rejoinder drives the next; the straight line must be delivered clearly before the punch line, then a short pause for laughter, followed by another punch line to redouble the laughter and to keep it going. Nothing is worse than sporadic laughter ­ only roaring, continuous laughter brings down the house.

As long as he was making jokes, he did not have to talk to anyone on the set. He never wanted to be a confessor, shrink or father-figure. Deflecting every serious moment with a joke, Wilder gained a reputation as a cynic. But for him it was only a question of dignity: The really serious things we should keep to ourselves.

I wanted to learn from Billy Wilder the way he had been inspired by German director Ernst Lubitsch. (As the sign written in large calligraphic letters on the wall of Wilder's office asked, "How would Lubitsch do it?")

But what did I have in common with Billy Wilder? Next to nothing, if you consider our films, except maybe our predilection for journalists as movie characters. And yet, we were friends for 25 years, until his death in 2002. We often discussed films, and he was always full of stories, tricks, rules, answers. He had rules for every situation in life, in a script and on the set: how something should be done, and what should not be done under any circumstances. What shoes you should buy and where. What you should eat. What cut you should never make, and what camera angle you should never use (worm's-eye view or from a chandelier). What an actor cannot express without looking stupid (a sudden realization). What is indecent to show (a close-up of a person who has just learned of a friend's or relative's death).

I had always wanted to make a compilation of all these rules, to put together a little handbook of "Filmmaking According to Billy Wilder." But when I would suggest bringing along a camera, he would talk me out of it.

Until one morning in January 1988, at around 9:30 a.m., I met Mr. Wilder, then 81, on the way to his small office on Santa Monica Boulevard, which was really more of a writer's studio. At the time, Wilder was working on a book with German writer Hellmuth Karasek. I asked if I could join them with a little camera, and he finally agreed. Just as he had wished, my conversations with Wilder remained under lock and key during his lifetime. He gave me permission to show them in the United States only after his death: "Who cares what people think of me then?" he had said.

On the move

BORN in 1906 in Sucha, a section of Poland that was then in the Austro-Hungarian empire, Wilder's family moved to Vienna when he was a young boy. Wilder was 19 when he left there, dropping his law studies in the middle of his first semester to follow an American jazz band to Berlin as a self-proclaimed press attaché.

In Berlin, he proceeded to scrape by as a journalist before turning to screenwriting with "Emil and the Detectives," among others. In 1933, he fled first to Paris, where he even directed a film, "Mauvaise graine," but it was such a terrible experience that he rarely talked about it.

Then, at last, he got his chance to leave for America.

Unlike many of his fellow emigrants, Wilder never felt as if he was in exile in Hollywood. To the contrary: It was a dream come true. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the American popular culture, pulp, sports and radio above all. Within months, he was already collaborating on screenplays, the best known being Lubitsch's "Ninotchka" with Greta Garbo.

The action of Lubitsch's American films was always set in Europe, wheras Wilder felt like enough of an American citizen to make American movies right from the start. He had clear, often inconvenient political convictions, partook in community life, made generous donations ? and even opened a restaurant in Beverly Hills.

By contrast, Wilder hated hospitals, and cemeteries were his worst nightmare. Even so, he took me to Lubitsch's grave to show me that his secretary really had been buried at the master's feet ? "in case he needs to dictate something to her."
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Wilder had seen more than enough corpses in 1945, when he had worked with the Allies to document the liberation of the camps. It was extremely important to him, "so that later on no one can claim that those Jews in Hollywood made it up"; and no doubt also because his mother and his entire Austrian family were among those killed.

Wilder made an uncharacteristic film, "Death Mills," a documentary about the German concentration camps, to be shown in that country. Germans, however, did not want to see this unflinching film. Wilder suggested to authorities that they coax people to watch the film before receiving their food stamps. To get viewer feedback, he organized a preview and provided paper and pencils.

"At the end of the screening, there was nobody left in the theater," Wilder recounted, "and all the pencils had been stolen."

Soon, the director himself ironically made light of these attempts at reeducation in "A Foreign Affair" with Dietrich. He was fascinated by her: "She was sharp, deft and practical. Not a great actress, no ? it was all in her presence.." According to Wilder, the femme fatale with her feather boas, fake eyelashes, high cheekbones and long legs was always just a persona. At home, Dietrich scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees, fried eggs and potatoes, and doctored partners and stagehands with homemade remedies for hangovers and colds. He called her "Mother Teresa, with better legs." And because she was so down-to-earth, she, unlike Marilyn Monroe, became a close friend.What may have connected them most was that they both became Americans because of their democratic convictions. U.S. passport in hand, they became even more adamant in their demand for a better Germany ? she dressed up as a vamp, he as a clown.

"Nobody's perfect." The last line of "Some Like It Hot," originally just a provisional punch line, became a virtual motto, Wilder's Weltanschauung in a nutshell.

And while nobody may be perfect, his films are.

Monroe's character, who simply does not understand why everyone keeps ogling her bosom and curves, is a wonderful creature, lovingly and tenderly depicted by the pen of Wilder and his scriptwriter I.A.L. Diamond. It isn't the blond who's the fool ? it's the men coming on to her whho are. And this even though the director hardly had an easy time of it with her. Monroe had a nervous breakdown on the set, which her husband at the time, playwright Arthur Miller, blamed on Wilder. Wilder retorted that his job was to be a director, not a nurse. Then she miscarried. "I had no way of knowing that she was pregnant," Wilder apologized years later. "He simply should have told me that she was pregnant. I've never been as patient as I was while shooting 'Some Like It Hot,' but I'm not a doctor and a studio isn't a clinic."

"Many actresses were more reliable and had a better grasp of technique ? Shirley MacLainee, for example. But no one was as convincing or had better timing."

I was friends with both Wilder and Miller, so I heard both sides of the story. "He was a bastard," Miller told me tersely on the set of "Death of a Salesman," which I shot in New York in 1985. Wilder's response the next time I saw him in Los Angeles was, "How can you stand being with that moralizer?! And that salesman who does nothing but schlepping, complaining and whining, whining...."

"Arthur," I replied, "has a great sense of humor."

"But," Billy shot back, "he's not funny."

Quiet on the set

ACTORS who worked with Wilder loved him ? abovve all Audrey Hepburn, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Holden. "Never raise your voice on the set," cautioned Wilder. "Don't even let conflicts come up ? nip themm right in the bud. In every face-off there's always a loser, whether it's the director or the actor. That hurts the film and ultimately everyone involved in it, winner and loser alike."

The laconic Yankee ? embodied perfectly by Holden, Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart ? became Wilder's alter ego. In his earlyy Hollywood years, during the war, his enthusiasm for the United States was boundless, and he hid his sarcasm under a smooth façade. It was only after the war, when the smugness and bigotry of the McCarthy era gained the upper hand, that Wilder became caustic ("Sunset Blvd."), attacking the press ("The Big Carnival," a.k.a. "Ace in the Hole") and deriding both the bourgeoisie ("The Seven Year Itch," "Kiss Me Stupid") and all the Cold War posturing ("One, Two, Three").

His heroes then became Lemmon and Matthau. In the eyes of most Americans ­ especially moral and religious watchdogs, women's associations and the respectability-craving nouveau-riche California establishment ? thiss was going too far. Yet Wilder refused to give in.

In Wilder's world, there were the power-hungry and those who were left behind ? usually because they cchose the good at a critical moment: "In the third act, the hero should have a choice and, hopefully, make the right one."

In "The Apartment," Lemmon's character can either become his boss' accomplice and rise through the ranks or stop lending out his apartment for affairs and be fired. It's inevitable ­ decency goes unrewarded, no good deed remains unpunished.

To call Wilder a cynic for this would be absurd. He had decidedly moral expectations of himself and of us.

When "Stalag 17" was to be released in Germany, Paramount asked him to change the traitor from German to Polish, just for the German market. Wilder felt so insulted, after all the Germans had done to Poland, that he not only refused but asked for an apology. As none was offered, he packed his things and left Paramount after 18 years of great work. Today, a building there bears his name. But he was proud that he never sacrificed the truth nor spread lies in his films.

That said, he would advise me: "You can't tell the truth flat-out. Dip it in a bit of chocolate."

Art, alongside film and even more than sports and politics, was his passion. Even in his early years in Berlin, he invested money in art, starting with posters, ending up with Picassos. His apartment looked like a museum, and there were even paintings propped up in the halls.

When he auctioned off his collection in the late '80s, it brought in some $33 million. "I earned more in 35 minutes than with all my films over 50 years of work," he remarked and then invited me to join him for dinner on the Upper East Side.

He liked to talk about his films ? not to fllatter himself but to figure out what made them tick and where the clockwork got stuck. The most important thing is not to "keep making the same film, like Hitchcock," he said. "Make something different every time."

In the end, I managed to "wangle" 30 hours of conversation out of Wilder. He speaks candidly, interrupting himself to answer the phone, scratching his back, whirling around on his swivel chair like Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina."

In winter 1992, I showed him three hours' worth of edited material. He watched patiently. After a long silence, he asked, "What does this show us?"

"I think it's a wonderful manual for filmmaking and for life in general," I offered.

He retorted: "What this shows us is that you should never give an interview on a swivel chair. Also, you shouldn't talk so much with your hands if you have a mouth. And above all never use a back-scratcher during an interview! It just does not look dignified."

Schlöndorff lives in Germany and has directed such films as 1979's "The Tin Drum," which won the Academy Award for foreign film, and the upcoming "Strajk." This article was translated by Sophie Schlöndorff.