Conversations with Wilder, by Cameron Crowe
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy Conversations with Wilder, by Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe, a writer and director himself (Jerry Maguire and Almost
Famous) took a cue from Francois Truffaut's groundbreaking interview
book with Alfred Hitchcock and sat down with the persnickety 90 year-old
Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot) for a series of
probing interviews. All 372 pages of Crowe's
"Conversations with Wilder" (Knopf, $22.50) are devoted to
nothing but Wilder's own words.
Like John Ford, Wilder himself is the source of many of the Billy Wilder
legends, and this book does nothing to dispel them. But it's a most
entertaining read nonetheless. If nothing else, Wilder is a brilliant
and witty storyteller, and it's hard to put the book down. (According to
Wilder, Cary Grant was the stingiest man alive.)
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