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Exclusive interviews with Billy Wilder, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and others
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Impressions of Billy
Jack Lemmon: I have found when I've tried to discuss different directors that I think are great that the one quality that all of them have is the ability to instill trust, so that when they give you something, even if you think it's insane, you'll do it, and if it doesn't work, okay. Then the good ones will say, 'It doesn't work, I agree with you, let's try this.' Billy certainly instills trust because you know that, as a great writer, he knows exactly what he wants, there is no area of misinterpretation, which is why he became a director, so he could get his work on the screen the way he saw it, and why most writers have become directors do it, it's for that reason and I understand it. The other thing is that he's terribly bright and perceptive. He's very sensitive, despite all of the feelings of him being so caustic, I think that when you are critical of human behavior you have to be very sensitive to it, more than the norm, in order to be that critical of it. He also is just plain immensely talented, in both drama and comedy. He knows the values, he knows how to cut through and get right to the point rather than, you know, write a novel about everything. A good example is in The Apartment, when I'm doing the scene with Shirley and she has left her compact in my apartment. I found a compact of somebody who had been there, and back in the office at one point I open up the compact and we see Shirley's face in the cracked mirror of the compact, and when I look at the crack I know it's hers. With that one single piece of business he saved about ten pages of dialog. He's just good. He's just plain good.
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Tony Curtis: Billy's gift is so enormous, from drama to comedy. Every piece of information-'type O blood'-everything has got a double joke.
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Jack Lemmon: When I walked on the set, Billy handed a pair of maracas to me and said, 'In between every line, start dancing wildly and give 'em the maracas. Don't move out of the shot, just turn around and give me a lot of that, because you're deliriously happy about the whole thing.' I said, 'right!' But I had rehearsed it and I thought I had it down perfectly in my vision of how to play it. But the more I rehearsed it by myself, the more I realized how right Billy was, because it allowed time to pass for the audience to laugh and not lose the next straight line from Tony, otherwise you'd never hear a damn thing. It's really interesting, you can't time a laugh in film like you can in theater.
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Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Impressions of Billy
Jack Lemmon: I have found when I've tried to discuss different directors that I think are great that the one quality that all of them have is the ability to instill trust, so that when they give you something, even if you think it's insane, you'll do it, and if it doesn't work, okay. Then the good ones will say, 'It doesn't work, I agree with you, let's try this.' Billy certainly instills trust because you know that, as a great writer, he knows exactly what he wants, there is no area of misinterpretation, which is why he became a director, so he could get his work on the screen the way he saw it, and why most writers have become directors do it, it's for that reason and I understand it. The other thing is that he's terribly bright and perceptive. He's very sensitive, despite all of the feelings of him being so caustic, I think that when you are critical of human behavior you have to be very sensitive to it, more than the norm, in order to be that critical of it. He also is just plain immensely talented, in both drama and comedy. He knows the values, he knows how to cut through and get right to the point rather than, you know, write a novel about everything. A good example is in The Apartment, when I'm doing the scene with Shirley and she has left her compact in my apartment. I found a compact of somebody who had been there, and back in the office at one point I open up the compact and we see Shirley's face in the cracked mirror of the compact, and when I look at the crack I know it's hers. With that one single piece of business he saved about ten pages of dialog. He's just good. He's just plain good.
***
Tony Curtis: Billy's gift is so enormous, from drama to comedy. Every piece of information-'type O blood'-everything has got a double joke.
***
Jack Lemmon: When I walked on the set, Billy handed a pair of maracas to me and said, 'In between every line, start dancing wildly and give 'em the maracas. Don't move out of the shot, just turn around and give me a lot of that, because you're deliriously happy about the whole thing.' I said, 'right!' But I had rehearsed it and I thought I had it down perfectly in my vision of how to play it. But the more I rehearsed it by myself, the more I realized how right Billy was, because it allowed time to pass for the audience to laugh and not lose the next straight line from Tony, otherwise you'd never hear a damn thing. It's really interesting, you can't time a laugh in film like you can in theater.
***
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