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This is a bad week for people who loved comedy, first Dudley Moore, then Milton Berle...now Wilder. 
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Very sad.
For me, the most underrated Biily Wilder comedy (or least noticed considering how good it is): "One, Two, Three" with James Cagney. Just as funny as "Some Like It Hot"
Wilder was certainly a classic.
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I think Buddy Buddy is also underrated.
He shall certainly be missed. He left us, however, more films that are unqualified classics than anyone save Hitchcock and Kurosawa.
I owe many hours of entertainment to Billy Wilder. He was one of the best.
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15 years ago...
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By the way, the Decades channel is showing all of the old Dick Cavett talk shows, and I had recently seen two with Billy Wilder, which goes into some of the behind-the-scenes work on his films. Do a little research and you may want to view them.
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It still amazes me that I actually met Billy Wilder, very briefly, about twenty years ago at a producers function. He was with Shirley MacLaine. I shook his hand and thought "That's cool, it's Billy Wilder."
For two decades since, I've thought to myself "How did I not scream 'Holy f**cking s**t, you're Billy f**king Wilder!'?!" And why did I ever wash my hand again?
Oh, and Shirley MacLaine was kinda cool, too.[/endquote
Great story.
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Germany's loss was America's gain!
rip Mr. W
brm
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Posted: |
Mar 27, 2017 - 3:21 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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Germany's loss was America's gain!
rip Mr. W
brm
I miss his wit and his kind of films so much today.
I realize that I'm an old-timer rooted in the past, but it's also true that once-upon-a-time, in the Golden Age of Hollywood, there were many people behind-the-scenes like Wilder---directors, writers, cameramen, costume designers, art directors, composers.....who were extremely literate, witty, classy, dependable, imaginative, technically talented, artistic, and more, who did their creating within the financial confines of a business industry and did well in it.
I like to think that a lot of our home-grown people of that period learned from the many, particularly European, filmmakers and workers who came to our shores in the 20s and 30s and gave our own people a leg up on the finer things of culture and art.
Many of our own people were highly educated, too, but going not to college and universities for business training, but for degrees in English, History, Literature and other cultural fields. Thank god there were no film study degrees then..... :-)
About 50 years ago, when I was in my mid-20s and at the end of my college years, I was invited to a very ritzy, but small Beverly Hills cocktail party inhabited by some of the top writers, directors, producers in Hollywood. People like Philip Dunne, Nunnally Johnson, Charles Brackett, Jean Negulesco, Marvin Borowsky, George Seaton, and Leonard Spigelgass were there, among others. I chatted with many of them, but I can tell you that the level of discussion in that room was on an intellectual plane far above what I was used to at that point in my life. And they were not talking about movies. The talk was about cultural events, history, art, social developments, etc.
I can't imagine you'd find discussions like that at a Hollywood party in the film business we have today---I've certainly never been to one like it---and today's films reflect that. It's a vastly different world.
But at least we still have films available to us from those filmmakers and minds of the past.
Wasn't it Billy Wilder who was once reported to have said, when notified of the legendary Ernst Lubitsch's death, "That's sad. No more Lubitsch! But what's worse....no more Lubitsch films!"
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Posted: |
Mar 27, 2017 - 4:01 PM
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By: |
filmusicnow
(Member)
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Germany's loss was America's gain!
rip Mr. W
brm
I miss his wit and his kind of films so much today.
I realize that I'm an old-timer rooted in the past, but it's also true that once-upon-a-time, in the Golden Age of Hollywood, there were many people behind-the-scenes like Wilder---directors, writers, cameramen, costume designers, art directors, composers.....who were extremely literate, witty, classy, dependable, imaginative, technically talented, artistic, and more, who did their creating within the financial confines of a business industry and did well in it.
I like to think that a lot of our home-grown people of that period learned from the many, particularly European, filmmakers and workers who came to our shores in the 20s and 30s and gave our own people a leg up on the finer things of culture and art.
Many of our own people were highly educated, too, but going not to college and universities for business training, but for degrees in English, History, Literature and other cultural fields. Thank god there were no film study degrees then..... :-)
About 50 years ago, when I was in my mid-20s and at the end of my college years, I was invited to a very ritzy, but small Beverly Hills cocktail party inhabited by some of the top writers, directors, producers in Hollywood. People like Philip Dunne, Nunnally Johnson, Charles Brackett, Jean Negulesco, Marvin Borowsky, George Seaton, and Leonard Spigelgass were there, among others. I chatted with many of them, but I can tell you that the level of discussion in that room was on an intellectual plane far above what I was used to at that point in my life. And they were not talking about movies. The talk was about cultural events, history, art, social developments, etc.
I can't imagine you'd find discussions like that at a Hollywood party in the film business we have today---I've certainly never been to one like it---and today's films reflect that. It's a vastly different world.
But at least we still have films available to us from those filmmakers and minds of the past.
Wasn't it Billy Wilder who was once reported to have said, when notified of the legendary Ernst Lubitsch's death, "That's sad. No more Lubitsch! But what's worse....no more Lubitsch films!"
It was William Wyler.
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". ....Thank god there were no film study degrees then..."
I resemble that remark!!!!
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". ....Thank god there were no film study degrees then..."
I resemble that remark!!!!
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I think SHERLOCK HOLMES may be my fave of all his films!
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jpteacher -- I wish to hell my Spectrum cable company carried that there DECADES Network. I'd never heard of it before, but it would be worth it to have for the Cavett shows alone.
***
Manderley and Filmmusic, you're both right. It was a brief exchange between Wilder AND Wyler on their way back from Lubitsch's funeral. Reportedly Wilder sighed, "No more Lubitsch." Wyler said, "Even worse -- no more Lubitsch pictures."
Of course, before becoming a director, Wilder wrote for Lubitsch, (including co-writing NINOTCHKA). Writer/director Wilder's regard for his mentor was reflected in the sign he kept posted in his office:
"How would Lubtisch do it?"
Last weekend, I screened TO BE OR NOT TO BE for a few friends. I figured somehow it would fit the Zeitgeist of our present era, the whole concept of finding the unlikely healing power of comedy in the darkest of times. Not having seen it for many years, I was happy to see that it is just as brilliant -- and as funny -- as I'd always remembered it to be.
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