27 Days With Billy Wilder And Me

Billy Wilder’s ninth movie, Sunset Boulevard, arguably one of the greatest films ever made, was released in 1950. Billy was 44 years old.

If all Billy Wilder had ever directed was Sunset Boulevard it would have been enough to secure him a place on the Mount next to Zeus. This is the stuff of legend. It is flawlessly scripted, perfectly cast, and brilliantly directed.

I’m not worthy to watch this.

It’s the kind of movie that both sickens and beckons me. I am drawn to its luminescence like a moth to a flame, yet I am afraid of it. Do I have a snowball’s chance in hell to rise to this level?

Principle Cast:
Joe Gillis…………………………………………William Holden (1918–1981)
Norma Desmond………………………………Gloria Swanson (1899–1983)
Max Von Mayerling…………………………..Erich von Stroheim (1885–1957)
Betty Schaefer………………………………….Nancy Olson (1928- )
Sheldrake……………………………………….Fred Clark (1914–1968)
Morino………………………………………….Lloyd Gough (1907–1984)
Artie Green……………………………………..Jack Webb (1920–1982)

Sunset Boulevard is similar in construction to Double Indemnity. It begins at the end. It relies heavily on narration (very clever, compelling narration). It’s in black and white. It involves deception. And it involves murder.

The narration reminds me of Rod Serling’s from The Twilight Zone. It’s wry. And ironic. And poignant.

Check it out:

“I am big,” says Norma Desmond. “It’s the pictures that got small.”

See what I mean?

According to the book On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov, Montgomery Clift was originally slated to play the role of Joe Gillis. Screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wanted Clift because,

Magnificently handsome and charismatic, Montgomery Clift had appeared in only two films — Howard Hawks’s Red River and Fred Zimmermann’s The Search — when Wilder approached him for the lad in Sunset Boulevard. His third picture, Paramount’s The Heiress (costarring Olivia de Havilland) hadn’t finished filming yet, but the buzz surrounding him was extraordinary. He was a studied, upper-crust twenty-eight-year-old who assiduously played the role of a relaxed bohemian in his public life. The combination was dazzling. Billy gave him the first section of the screenplay, Clift loved what he read, and he agreed to play the role. (p. 288)

Unfortunately (or, fortunately, because I think he would have sucked), Montgomery Clift decided not to take the role. So Wilder and Brackett chose William Holden, an actor who had not yet become a star.

Sunset Boulevard was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and a name I’d never heard before — D.M. Marshman. According to Sikov’s book, Wilder and Brackett had “gotten to know [Marshman] as an affable card-playing partner.” Marshman was a former Time-Life reporter who had critiqued The Emperor Waltz “so extensively and so intelligently that Brackett and Wilder told him they’d ask him to collaborate on something in the future.” (p. 288) Sunset Boulevard was that picture.

And what a stunning picture it is.

Joe Gillis eventually gets the pool he always wanted. Norma Desmond gets her time in front of the camera. And we get to watch one of Hollywood’s greatest films.

Over and over again.