Conversations With Billy Wilder [Hardcover]

Cameron Crowe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

Billy Wilder is the world-famous director of Hollywood classics such as "Some Like It Hot" and "Sunset Boulevard". Here he has collaborated with Cameron Crowe - writer/director of "Jerry Maguire" - to produce a definitive study of his films, discussing his ideas, inspirations and methods.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571201628
• ISBN-13: 978-0571201624
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,518,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Crowe; Not Enough Wilder, September 12, 2004

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Interplanetary Funksmanship "Swift lippin', e... (Vanilla Suburbs, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conversations With Billy Wilder (Hardcover)

Cameron Crowe does a great job of getting Billy Wilder to "open up," for certain. There was many interesting anecdotes and facts I previously did not know, so this book is the page-turner everyone proclaims it to be. Crowe does a good job at kibbitzing an answer out of the somewhat stubborn Wilder. However -- since Crowe consciously based the format of this book on the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews of 1966 -- it is lacking in certain areas.

Firstly, many of the photographs are horribly transferred stills from the movies, which were taken from video, not film. The pixelization is sometimes so horrible as to wipe out almost half of the information. As there are many more photos done by this makeshift method (most of the others are publicity stills or of Wilder, Hollywood movie stars, etc, not from the actual movies), it would seem to me that the publisher (not some dinky independent, but Alfred A. Knopf, major player over here) could have gone the extra mile and made some high-quality stills from the studios' answer prints. Since they didn't, however, this volume appears "rushed to market."

Second, Crowe's organization is horrible: Unlike Hitch/Truffaut, it sort of meanders from movie to movie and then back again. It's organized chronologically (by interview session, not movie), and often goes back over movies already discussed, because Crowe forgot some question or another. Also, Crowe doesn't go much into the bit players and character actors at all. I mean, HOW COULD HE GO AN ENTIRE VOLUME ON BILLY WILDER WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING SIG RUMAN (who was to Wilder as Leo G. Carroll was to Hitch) or Cliff Osmond?

Perhaps, it's because Crowe spends more time dropping the name "Jerry Maguire" every other page or so (as long as he was shamelessly self-plugging, why not "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a much better movie?). Tom Cruise -- who's never been in a Wilder movie -- is listed in 10 different pages in the index. Also (unlike Truffaut) Crowe goes to great lengths in order to insert himself into the text, including going over a house call by Wilder's doctor, a lunch with Wilder and his wife, phone calls Wilder is taking , etc. (in Hollywood, these are called "gratuitous scenes").

Lastly, the end notes list (with big backdrops of those horrible pictures from VHS) the credits, but they are very incomplete, and don't list most of the technicians or supporting cast.

All-in-all this book is very good, but heavy editing is needed to give it a semblance of chronology, and Crowe's gratuitous and voluminous self-referencing really could do with a ruthless editor's red pen. That, and some quality stills, would have made a good read a classic.