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Conversations with Wilder, an invaluable, photo-intensive volume, is a kind of remake of Truffaut's must-read interview book Hitchcock, with Cameron Crowe in the inquisitive Truffaut role and wily 93-year-old Billy Wilder as the crafty master director. Drawing on his experience interviewing the monsters of rock and his deep, shot-by-shot knowledge of Wilder's work, Crowe gently and cunningly coaxes answers from Wilder--arguably today's most influential living director--on what made his hits tick and his flops suck, along with glimpses of what might have been. Did you know Mae West and Mary Pickford spurned Sunset Boulevard and Wilder spurned Marilyn Monroe for Irma la Douce? That The Apartment was inspired by Brief Encounter and the look of Double Indemnity was based on M? The gossipy insights are great too. Bogart spat when he talked, so Wilder couldn't back-light him in Sabrina, and Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe woman had to towel her off after each take--discreetly! Wilder loathed Raymond Chandler (partly because Chandler disdained James M. Cain when adapting Double Indemnity) but gives him his due as a screenwriter: Chandler could do dialogue and descriptions, but he couldn't construct a scene. "He was a mess, but he could write a beautiful sentence," says Wilder. Agatha Christie was the opposite: "She had structure, but she lacked poetry."
Some critics scoff at Crowe (who cried while directing emotional scenes in Jerry Maguire) for taking on the cynic Wilder. But they're brothers under the skin. Both leaped from popular music journalism to directing. Both incorporate actual events in their films. Wilder keenly regrets not filming this scene in The Spirit of St. Louis, which he claims really happened: the night before his historic flight, Lindbergh's handlers talked a pretty waitress into having sex with him. They claimed he was a virgin, and likely to die on his voyage. In the hero's parade upon his return, she waves at him through the ticker-tape, but he doesn't see her. "Would have been a good scene," mourns Wilder. Without this book, we'd never have known about it. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
In
Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood's legendary and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for the first time to talk extensively about his life and work.
Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650 black-and-white photographs -- including film posters, stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from Wilder's own collection -- the ninety-three-year-old icon talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today's best-known writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work, set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we hear Wilder's inside view on his collaborations with such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo (he was a writer at MGM during the making of Ninotchka. Here are Wilder's sharp and funny behind-the-scenes stories about the making of A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and Ace in the Hole, among many others. Wilder is ever mysterious, but Crowe gets him to speak candidly on Stanwyck: "She knew the script, everybody's lines, never a fault, never a mistake"; on Cary Grant: "I had Cary Grant in mind for four of my pictures . . . slipped through my net every time"; on the "Lubitsch Touch": "It was the elegant use of the super-joke." Wilder also remembers his early years in Vienna, working as a journalist in Berlin, rooming with Peter Lorre at the Chateau Marmont -- always with the same dry wit, tough-minded romanticism, and elegance that are the hallmarks of Wilder's films. This book is a classic of Hollywood history and lore.
Customer Reviews:
Fun Book.......2007-01-09
Though less clear than Truffaut's book on Hitchcock (mainly because of Wilder's lack of interest in explaining himself) 'Conversations with Wilder' does echo that landmark book. Not as tightly structured as Truffaut/Hitchcock, but also a book about a Directing God, written by an admiring younger director, who wants to go through the whole career of the maestro, hoping to understand some of the magic. A must read for every Wilder fan, something every film maker (and film lover) should be. Wilder (who at first is uninterested to cooperate) seems a bit more humble than the Master of Suspence, so he tells less tricks and other details. He is far more eager to talk about his most succesful films and prefers to leave the films he regards as failures alone. Crowe however tries to come back to them, every now and then, but Wilder is a smart converser. This leads to a fun book, which perhaps shows more of the psyche of Wilder than the film technical (in the broadest sence) side of him. As a film maker you can perhaps learn more directly from Hitchcock's approach, as a film lover this is just as much fun to read. Wilder's honousty is charming and in no way a danger to the grand status of the film maker. Knowing how wonderful his masterpieces are, it is perhaps even more impressive to read how easy it seemed for Wilder to make them. Wilder is never showing off, never full of himself and always entertaining. A true genius who made some of the best films ever.
Outstanding .......2006-11-19
Enthusiastically recommended by Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies, the Hollywood Reporter, et.al.
If you want to get on track to one day being a happy, laughing, feisty old man, buy this book. The amazing director Billy Wilder speaks freely and delightfully with Mr. Crowe about all the things that went right, and the many, many other things that went wrong with films from "Some Like It Hot" to "Sabrina" to "The Seven Year Itch," and much more. Hundreds of photos evoke the points of discussion (or is it, thousands of photos?). Close-up discussions of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and much more.
You may come to see Mr. Wilder as a blind date who showed up on your doorstep: a funny little German man, and not the suave genius your mother had promised at all. He spends the entire book giving you reasons why he is most certainly not the movies' knight in shining armor, but in the end (despite all his excited, hilarious minor outrages) he only proves that he is that knight, after all.
An outstanding companion to Truffaut's indespensible book on Hitchcock, but very different. Both are "interview" books, and each paints a very lively picture of its subject. But where Hitchcock comes off as a man left at the bus stop, like his cameo in "North By Northwest," with his career somehow fallen from his fingertips too soon, Wilder seems like a grandfather surrounded by delighted children in the twilight of his years. He shows us how to laugh, and roll our eyes at both success and failure, through the international language of film.
great for any future film-maker.......2005-08-12
This book really allows the reader to visualize the type of person Wilder is. His character shines through in his words. Cameron Crowe succeeds in getting that more personal story behind the director by asking tougher questions. It is also very entertaining to read because of the endless stories that Billy Wilder tells about "behind the scenes" of the making of his movies.
Hilarious, touching, thoughtful, well-written.......2005-07-08
With this book, you see what a huge difference great writing makes when it comes to films. Crowe and Wilder are both articulate, thoughtful, and in love with film and words. The care in this book shows. You don't just get a thorough knowledge of Wilder straight from the man himself, but you get a glimpse into Crowe and Wilder's developing relationship. It's an amazing, moving book, and it made me want to go out and rent every Wilder film I could get my hands on.
Part of the bible.......2002-07-26
In the tradition of Hitchcock/Truffaut, a young master of the craft interviews an old one. One difference from the earlier book, Wilder's productive career was over, so covered entirely if not exhaustively by this book. After a slow start, a little too much of how Crow got to do this, the book jumps into an anecdotal, charming and literate discussion of Wilder's movies, Wilder's career and Hollywood movie-making. If you have any interest at all in these areas, this is a must read book.
If you are interested in screenwriting this isn't a must read book, this is part of the bible.
Book Description
[Teasley and Wilder] have given the profession an invaluable, much-needed guide.
- NCETA Notes
From its beginnings, cinema has forged a distinct medium, a literature in its own right, as worthy of study as print literature. A good film, like a good book or poem, can delight, provoke the imagination, inspire serious though, discussion, and writing. Perhaps especially today, film can and should be an essential component in the language arts curriculum, given students' increasing reliance on visual imagery in defining their world.
In Reel Conversations, Alan Teasley and Ann Wilder discuss and demonstrate the powerful role film can play in the language arts classroom, both as a subject in itself and as a key dimension of language study. Reel Conversations provides middle and high school teachers with proven methods for teaching with and about films in conjunction with literature and composition classes. It describes techniques for instruction, details over two hundred films appropriate for classroom use, and offers a corresponding list of young adult novels. Samples of student writing in response to selected films are also provided.
Teasley and Wilder make clear the connections between the study of film and print literature. The units have been classroom tested over years and are designed for teachers who regularly use film, as well as those who are new to its uses.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent resource for secondary teachers.......2007-05-17
I received this book from Amazon yesterday afternoon and just finished reading it. It's not long, but I did skip through a number of sections where films were listed and described.
Having just completed a dissertation about the use of film in the classroom--although I found what was said in this book to be consistent with the literature and my own study findings--I subtracted a star for three missing pieces: lack of an index, more information about the logistics of showing a film (invaluable for teachers for whom this is a new activity), and more of a research base to address "why do this and not that." A further review of their references indicates that a basis for Teasley and Wilder's approach exists, but isn't used sufficiently for justification of their recommended methods.
For example, there are a lot of explanations made about appropriateness of a film to the audience which translates to development. Just a few references to pertinent developmental psych (or even cognitive, educational psych, or human development) would have been useful to explain not just "what" but "why." Although they do mention "deep structure" in their explanation of genre, they do not link it to the characteristics they ask learners to look for in genre films.
There are a number of good references included, but many more are missing. For teachers disinterested in this type of information, it might be included in one chapter that could be skipped. That would add significantly to the book's sparse theoretical foundation and make it equally useful for academics and researchers as well as practitioners.
Other research areas germane to learner response to film, for example, are the function of "mirror neurons" in terms of character identification and empathy, and a study by Israeli neuroscientists indicating that there is no consistency between participant brain scans while viewing a feature film, EXCEPT when they're watching faces, places, and hands--all external stimuli. (This research--the only of its kind--discusses what's actually going on in people's brains when they are watching film.) Nor did the authors directly address learners' worldviews and how they affect expectations, reactions, and the impact of films--which is huge.
I suppose I'm talking myself into writing a book to fill these gaps, aren't I? After having searched far and wide, there's very little available to help teachers both select and use film effectively. In our media-saturated society, it's a very good skill for teachers to develop, but one not as obvious or simple as might be assumed.
These criticisms aside, this book takes a leap forward in helping teachers who want joy and excitement--not to mention learning--to return to their classrooms. For anyone unconvinced how involved kids get with movies, just visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) forums. Kids are watching and discussing movies with or without responsible adult guidance. As educators, we're missing a huge opportunity here. This book--via highly practical and well-thought-out methods that are, in fact, based on theory--is an excellent start of a return to relevance in the classroom.
Wonderful!.......2006-08-12
As a teacher of film studies in high school, I have found this book to be an invaluable source. It is full of intelligent, comprehensive and workable plans for teaching all kinds of films. I recommend it highly.
A Fantastic Resource for Teachers!.......2001-04-01
This book is full of excellent suggestions on how to teach film to young adults and help students analyze what they're viewing. It provides a very workable strategy for using film in the classroom, as well as gives great suggestions on unique film titles to use with students. Any teacher wanting to use films in class should check out this book!
Excellent Teaching Tool!.......2001-02-03
This book is great for creating plans to teach film and media literacy to secondary school students.
Average customer rating:
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Conversations With Thornton Wilder (Literary Conversations Series)
Manufacturer: University Press of Mississippi
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- Too Much Crowe; Not Enough Wilder
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Conversations with Billy Wilder
Cameron Crowe
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
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Customer Reviews:
Too Much Crowe; Not Enough Wilder.......2004-09-12
Cameron Crowe does a great job of getting Billy Wilder to "open up," for certain. There was many interesting anecdotes and facts I previously did not know, so this book is the page-turner everyone proclaims it to be. Crowe does a good job at kibbitzing an answer out of the somewhat stubborn Wilder. However -- since Crowe consciously based the format of this book on the Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews of 1966 -- it is lacking in certain areas.
Firstly, many of the photographs are horribly transferred stills from the movies, which were taken from video, not film. The pixelization is sometimes so horrible as to wipe out almost half of the information. As there are many more photos done by this makeshift method (most of the others are publicity stills or of Wilder, Hollywood movie stars, etc, not from the actual movies), it would seem to me that the publisher (not some dinky independent, but Alfred A. Knopf, major player over here) could have gone the extra mile and made some high-quality stills from the studios' answer prints. Since they didn't, however, this volume appears "rushed to market."
Second, Crowe's organization is horrible: Unlike Hitch/Truffaut, it sort of meanders from movie to movie and then back again. It's organized chronologically (by interview session, not movie), and often goes back over movies already discussed, because Crowe forgot some question or another. Also, Crowe doesn't go much into the bit players and character actors at all. I mean, HOW COULD HE GO AN ENTIRE VOLUME ON BILLY WILDER WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING SIG RUMAN (who was to Wilder as Leo G. Carroll was to Hitch) or Cliff Osmond?
Perhaps, it's because Crowe spends more time dropping the name "Jerry Maguire" every other page or so (as long as he was shamelessly self-plugging, why not "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a much better movie?). Tom Cruise -- who's never been in a Wilder movie -- is listed in 10 different pages in the index. Also (unlike Truffaut) Crowe goes to great lengths in order to insert himself into the text, including going over a house call by Wilder's doctor, a lunch with Wilder and his wife, phone calls Wilder is taking , etc. (in Hollywood, these are called "gratuitous scenes").
Lastly, the end notes list (with big backdrops of those horrible pictures from VHS) the credits, but they are very incomplete, and don't list most of the technicians or supporting cast.
All-in-all this book is very good, but heavy editing is needed to give it a semblance of chronology, and Crowe's gratuitous and voluminous self-referencing really could do with a ruthless editor's red pen. That, and some quality stills, would have made a good read a classic.
Average customer rating:
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Dictionary of Music Terms and Chords
Manufacturer: G. Schirmer, Inc.
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Book Description
This book is must for any student of music. The book contains many common musical terms and phrases and their definitions. It also has a listing of all chord types and their spellings-useful information for all musicians. Also includes many hi-tech terms common in today's music.
Book Description
Poker is hotter than ever and Aces and Kings takes readers behind the phenomenon, providing the first and only comprehensive look at the game's top players, how they win, and what you can learn from them oker has emerged from America's backrooms to evolve into one of the country's most popular mainstream games. On-line poker sites are exploding with new players, casinos across the country are adding floor space to accommodate tournaments, celebrities like Tobey Maguire and Ben Affleck jockey to be seen at the big tables, and World Poker Tour ranks as the Travel Channel's top-rated show.
Customer Reviews:
This book is straight ACES all the way through!.......2006-12-15
If you're a poker player looking for another purely instructional manual --- save your money here. If on the other hand you'd like entertaining stories of today's & yesterday's most successful pros and what made them that way then you will thoroughly enjoy this book. It gives profiles on some of poker's all-time best players past and present while managing to deliver the "nuts" using specific examples from their successes at the table. The main message of this book is that there are as many ways and strategies to win at poker --- particularly Texas Hold 'Em as there are players, REALLY! The best lesson it gave me was to figure out which of these many players' "style" of play best fit my own and go to school learning. Additionally, at the end it gives brief summaries of pokers most popular games along with a poker dictionary of terms. I really think the beginner as well as the expert can take something valuable away from these pages.... The profiles of the players are every bit as informative as they are entertaining and insightful. So pick up this book and get a "read" on some of the games greats to improve your game!
million dollar strategies...not.......2005-10-18
It was an entertaining read but it just did not deliver on its titles promise of providing any "million-dollar strategies". It also has a very dis-jointed feel to it-start, stop, start again. Well, after reading it through, that minor annoyance makes sense. This is a collection of articles written by the two authors put into book form so the flow is uneven and a little distracting. I enjoyed reading about the great gamblers and poker players, but it just left me a little disappointed having bought it with different expectations.
Great Bios ..........2005-08-23
This is a great poker book. But be warned, it is not a book on poker strategies. It is, however, a wonderful book with each chapter detailing a bio on a different poker player(s). The read does provide a glimpse into the style of the different players. But it does not go into great depths on specific strategies and so on. This suits me just fine considering that there is now a mountain of poker books covering strategies.
So if you're interested in getting a broad feel for how some of the elite poker players slugged their way to the top, this is an excellent book. If you enjoy literature and poker, this will make an excellent read when you need to pass the time (e.g., airplane ride, can't sleep at night, etc.) ...
Lords of the Felt. .......2005-08-06
One of the consequences of the big poker craze is that books are coming out a million on the subject. Aces and Kings is a perfect example of the fad, but it bares none of the hallmarks of quick production. The prose reads very much like what one would expect to find in a mainstream magazine; which is not surprising as several of these chapters appeared first in places like Cigar Aficionado. The book, on the whole, is quality and chocked full of details. It's main focus concerns those who try to make an easy living in the hardest way possible, i.e. the professional players. With ESPN and The Travel Channel, they have ever-increasingly become the focus of the public's attention. Aces and Kings attempts to inform readers about the poker life by analyzing its biggest names and figures. Many of these cardsharps have become celebrities overnight. Their mini-biographies are extremely interesting and are told over the course of 15 chapters. Three of them, "Web Kids," "The Women of Poker," and "The New Superstars" concern, groupings of players rather than individuals. In this, I think that they made one major error because Daniel Negreanu deserves a chapter of his own. That guy's personality is big enough to fill a warehouse.
Nearly all of the pros have lives that make for good reading, but, in my opinion, the most fascinating entry was the one concerning Chris Ferguson. In case you might not recognize his name, he was The World Series of Poker 2000 champion and is one of the most recognizable players in the game due to his Black Bart cowboy hat and huge Oakley shades. We discover that his appearance, just like every aspect of his persona, was carefully calculated in the hopes of discouraging his opponents from perceiving just how mathematically oriented he actually is. Ferguson has a PhD in mathematics/artificial intelligence from UCLA, and has spent years forging his probability based approach to the game. His huge black binders are brimming with statistics and determine how he will play hands and scenarios. The results, as we know, have been fantastic. What impressed me most about him was that he went on a severe cold streak in 2002, but did not get discouraged as he "recognized a statistical deviation" when he saw one. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and, even if you are not a huge poker fan, the plots within are about as interesting as something written by Nicholas Pileggi.
Skill Is The Name of the Game........2005-07-20
Michael writes exclusively about gambling for four magazines and Brad writes about poker for the Wall Street Journal. Both live in Brooklyn, and enjoy card playing. Poker is a game of suble deceptions. and the most skilled players come out the winners.
I know that in the game of poker it is the high stakes the gambler aims for. Me, I settle for computer Solitaire. But Black Jack takes the cake!
Customer Reviews:
Great Book. A Valuable resource........1995-10-06
I found this book to be very helpful and informative
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Hitchcock (Revised Edition)
Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder: A Personal Biography
Sunset Boulevard
On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
