Wilder Times

This is the best of times and the worst of times for Billy Wilder. That’s not an entirely new experience for the 93-year-old film writer and director; his creative juices have always been spiced with pungent realities. But the conflicts of his current situation seem particularly poignant as he faces the frustrations of inhabiting a body that can no longer keep pace with his quick mind and devastating wit.

The best part of surviving long enough to become a national treasure and film industry icon would seem to be receiving public recognition for his extraordinary body of work. That’s about to happen, though certainly not for the first time. Wilder--who has already received 21 Academy Award nominations, six Oscars, the American Film Institute’s award for life achievement and the Irving G. Thalberg Award for creative producers whose motion picture work reflects a consistently high quality--will be feted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a glittering party tonight.

Don’t even think about trying to wangle a ticket; the event has been sold out for ages. But the academy’s tribute is only the prelude to a three-week retrospective of Wilder’s films, to be presented by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and American Cinematheque starting Friday through Feb. 2. UCLA’s series, at the James Bridges Theater, will focus on his screenwriting career; American Cinematheque’s Lloyd Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian Theatre will screen films directed by Wilder.

“They are showing all of my pictures,” Wilder said, with obvious pleasure, downing a couple of glasses of sake before settling into lunch at Matsuhisa, one of his favorite restaurants.

Well not quite all. Since his earliest days as a screenwriter in Berlin, before he fled Nazi Germany, Wilder has put his stamp on more than 50 films. But the upcoming retrospective of 27 films will survey his long, productive career in Hollywood and encompass all of his major work. The lineup runs from “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” “Midnight” and “Ninotchka” of the late 1930s (for which he co-wrote the screenplays) to “Avanti!” of 1972 and--of course--includes some of his greatest directing efforts, “The Lost Weekend,” “Some Like It Hot,” “The Apartment” and other hits from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

“It’s very nice to get these honors,” he says, graciously acknowledging the efforts of those who have organized the ceremony. And he will surely be touched by the presence of actors Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine, who starred in some of his best-known films many years ago and are still identified as Wilder-esque characters.

But Billy Wilder wouldn’t be Billy Wilder if he simply made nice and lapped up praise. He looks quite dapper in gray wool slacks, a navy-blue plush corduroy jacket and black loafers with silver buckles, but he isn’t feeling great and the prospect of the tribute doesn’t seem to cheer him. “These things are so boring,” he grumbles, then declares that his own appearance at the event will be very brief: “I’m just going to say, ‘Thank you very much. God bless you.’ And disappear.”

Whether the evening plays out that way remains to be seen, but Wilder has never been inclined to live in the past. Unfortunately, just as the film community is gearing up to honor him, he is more painfully aware that he cannot keep up with the new work of his successors. And that’s one of the worst parts of being a living legend.

“I haven’t seen a movie for a year and a half because of my malady,” he says, rolling various physical problems and the inevitable frailties of old age into a single affliction. One major nuisance is that although he had cataract surgery more than a year ago, poor eyesight still plagues him.

As for watching movies, video is no help, he says. “The prints are so lousy, I can’t focus on them. They don’t pay proper respect to pictures.” He has a list of films he’d love to see, including “American Beauty,” “The Green Mile” and “The Insider,” but he isn’t up to going out to theaters where he could enjoy them.

Creativity Now Stifled by Studio Control

So what does he do these days? Think about his pictures and how he could make them better? Absolutely not, he says. “I don’t like the idea of redoing. I did the best I could at the time. I want to leave it that way.”

He isn’t even interested in watching his films. A couple of years ago--before Wilder’s “malady” made his life so difficult--a longtime friend, art dealer Louis Stern, invited him to a program presented by the Los Angeles Conservancy at the Million Dollar Theater, a vintage movie palace in downtown Los Angeles. Stern didn’t tell Wilder what was playing because he wanted to surprise him, but Wilder insisted. When Stern gave in and told him the film was Wilder’s 1944 creation, “Double Indemnity”--for which he earned the first of seven Academy Award nominations for best direction and another nomination for his and Raymond Chandler’s screenplay--Wilder flatly refused. His reason: “I don’t want to see all those dead people.”

Wilder doesn’t envy today’s film directors because he believes most of them have far less creative control than he had. “It’s much harder to direct now,” he says. “Everything’s in the hands of the money people; they dictate what has to be done. When I was making pictures, we went to the front office, told them what we wanted to do and then we did it. They checked up on us once or twice [during production] and visited us on location, but that was it. Now the director doesn’t matter--except for a very few, like Spielberg, who are powerful enough to get an agreement with the money people.”

These days, people go to the movies to see stars, not the work of a specific director, he says. “The glamour of being a director is over. So is the fun.”

Nonetheless, if he were starting out today, would he still go into the film business?

“Sure,” he says, without a split second’s hesitation. No matter how much has changed, what it takes to succeed in the film business remains the same. “You need two things,” he says. “Luck and talent.”