Billy Wilder’s twenty-seventh movie, Buddy Buddy, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, was released in 1981. Billy was 75 years old.
With Buddy Buddy, Billy Wilder’s directorial career ended not with a whimper, but with a wretch.
Buddy Buddy is the story of a hitman (Matthau) trying to do one last job before retiring. A distraught man (Lemmon) — whose wife (Prentiss) is fooling around with the head (Kinski) of a sex clinic — continues to inadvertently cross paths with the hit man, disrupting his schedule, confounding his concentration, and making a mess of his life.
It’s hard to make a movie about a hit man and have it be a comedy. Grosse Pointe Blank pulled it off, but that’s because of John Cusack and Dan Akroyd. Plus, there’s an actual story (and quite a few laughs) in Grosse Pointe Blank. But there are neither in Buddy Buddy.
Principle Cast:
Victor Clooney…………………………………………….Jack Lemmon (1925–2001)
Trabucco……………………………………………………Walter Matthau (1920–2000)
Celia Clooney………………………………………………Paula Prentiss (1938- )
Dr. Hugo Zuckerbrot……………………………………Klaus Kinski (1926-1991)
Buddy Buddy was written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and based on the story and play by Francis Veber.
My wife said this after watching Buddy Buddy: “My opinion of [Read more →]