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| Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe on Billy Wilder’s Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes after speaking with Paul Diamond (IAL Diamond’s son): “They shot all the footage but a lot of it was never scored, never dubbed, never graded. So the three-hour-version, which so many of us yearn for, never did exist in fact.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
In the second instalment, Mr. Wilder And Me author Jonathan Coe and I discuss how key scenes happen while characters are eating and why a dumpling was changed for the German edition of the novel. Also: Marthe Keller with her Bobby Deerfield (directed by Sydney Pollack) co-star Al Pacino and the infamous cheeseburger ordered at Bayerischer Hof in Munich; Billy Wilder’s Fedora, Greece, and brie; Bewitched, overdressing and underdressing; yearning for unattainable movies, Orson Welles and The Other Side Of The Wind (documented in Morgan Neville's They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead), Wilder’s Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, and what is lost forever.
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| Jonathan Coe on Al Pacino in Mr. Wilder And Me: “I thought this detail about Pacino ordering cheeseburgers, whether it’s true or not, fitted too beautifully with the book not to use it.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
During my afternoon with Volker Schlöndorff in April of this year, we spoke about Billy Wilder, Jonathan Coe and Mr. Wilder And Me. He said: “We shared our enthusiasm. I told him everything I knew about Fedora and the shooting of Fedora in Munich. Then a year later he sent me his novel and he found out a lot more about Fedora that I didn’t know. So when the book was published in Germany, we did a presentation together in Berlin for the publishers.”
When I sent Volker the first instalment of my conversation with Jonathan he wrote back: “Brava!!! The BBC will show the 3x60 minutes version of my Billy again in the fall.” Billy Wilder, wie haben Sie's gemacht? (Billy, How Did You Do It?) is the series he is referring to. Billy Wilder speaking on his films, interviewed by critic Hellmut Karasek and Volker Schlöndorff, was originally broadcast on German TV in 1991/92. The episodes are: 1. Ninotchka; 2. The Lost Weekend; 3. Sunset Blvd.; 4. Love In The Afternoon; 5. Some Like It Hot; 6. The Apartment.
From London, Jonathan Coe joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Mr. Wilder and Me and Billy Wilder.
Anne-Katrin Titze: The Al Pacino, Marthe Keller relationship I wasn’t aware of before reading your novel. I remember them acting opposite each other in Bobby Deerfield and staying at the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni [on Lake Como], one of my all-time favourite hotels. How much did you make up around them? What about the cheeseburger scene?
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| Marthe Keller in Billy Wilder's Fedora |
Jonathan Coe: Well, Marthe Keller, who’s read my book and has said very nice things to me about it, also has a problem with that detail, I think. Because she maintains that Pacino would never have ordered cheeseburgers in a Bavarian restaurant. In my defence, I didn’t make it up. I read it in two places.
It’s in Ed Sikov’s biography of Billy Wilder [On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder] and it’s in a biography of Al Pacino as well. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I didn’t invent it myself. In the novel a lot of the cultural differences between countries are signalled by food. First of all you have Wilder’s own fake French restaurant in Beverly Hills.
AKT: With [production designer] Alexandre Trauner’s set from Irma La Douce!
JC: Absolutely! The scene of eating brie towards the end. You have a lot of meals in Greece. Most of the key scenes happen while characters are eating, mostly eating together. I thought this detail about Pacino ordering cheeseburgers, whether it’s true or not, fitted too beautifully with the book not to use it. And of course it’s a good opportunity for my Wilder, my fictional Wilder, to have a riff on American cultural ignorance.
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| Kiki (Grace Lee Whitney) with Moustache (Lou Jacobi) and Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine) in Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce |
AKT: Exactly! Who would order that at The Bayerischer Hof in Munich? Although I have to say when your Wilder is eating Schweinshaxe and Leberknödel, nobody would eat those together.
JC: I was told that by my German translator and in fact in the German edition of the book the meal is changed.
AKT: Because people may have Leberknödel as a soup before, but never ever with Schweinshaxe. Do you know what it is changed to in the German version?
JC: I don’t actually. I can find out for you! [Jonathan did, and sent me an email that it was now Semmelknödel, a much better choice of dumpling to go with Schweinshaxe].
AKT: Another very interesting part of your novel is that of Calista memorizing what she read about movies she had never seen. This is something that younger generations don’t know about anymore - the longing to see certain films that were not available. I remember vividly retrospectives in Paris, for instance, that finally allowed you to see certain movies. Did you have any films growing up that you were waiting for, longing for to see?
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| Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) and Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page) with Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) in The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes |
JC: Oh absolutely! Or, if not to see for the first time, to see again. Sometimes you glimpsed a film on TV in the Sixties or Seventies. Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes was one example. Fedora itself would be another. Once they were gone they were gone and you couldn’t see them again. Yes, that yearning for the unattainable was an important part of being a cinephile, I think.
Now even The Other Side of the Wind, the Orson Welles film which was the kind of ultimate film you would never be able to see, now you can see it in one form or another. So many of the films which we considered lost are now found or reconstructed. I mean, the only one that isn’t is Wilder’s Private Life of Sherlock Holmes because that lost footage really is lost.
Apart from those little bits they found as sound-only or video-only. Talking to Paul Diamond, Iz’s son, about that film I realized now, which I didn’t really appreciate for many years, was that there was never a complete version. They shot all the footage but a lot of it was never scored, never dubbed, never graded. So the three-hour-version, which so many of us yearn for, never did exist in fact.
AKT: Which is so perfect, because it’s Sherlock Holmes! That this is what we long for and put little clues together. Then there’s of course Hitchcock’s The Mountain Eagle and things like that.
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| Lilian (Marthe Keller) with Sydney Pollack's Bobby Deerfield (Al Pacino) |
JC: Is that another one lost completely?
AKT: As far as I know. Another point you make, which was great in your film - excuse me, in your book - but it feels so much like a film … by the way, do you have any update on Stephen Frears’ movie?
JC: No, not really.
AKT: The moments of Calista overdressed and underdressed at several occasions reminded me of a TV series I loved as a child, Bewitched. I vividly remember one episode in which Samantha was always either overdressed or underdressed. Where did this idea come from for your novel?
JC: It didn’t come from that episode of Bewitched. I guess it’s an obvious gag in a way. Just thinking about it now, because you jogged my memory, it probably comes from when my wife and I went on honeymoon in the late Eighties. We went to Budapest when it was still part of the Eastern Bloc. I remember we went to the opera and the tickets were like two pounds, two dollars each, so we thought we must be in cheap seats.
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| Written and Directed By Billy Wilder at Film Forum in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
So we put on our scruffiest clothes and found we were actually sitting in the most expensive seats surrounded by ambassadors in white tie and women in tiaras. And then we took the train to Vienna and went to the opera again and the tickets were like 40 pounds, so we thought these must be the most expensive seats. So we put on our finery and our suit and everything and we got there and found out we were in the cheapest seats and we were surrounded by students. So maybe that’s where it came from.
Read what Jonathan Coe had to say on Christoph Waltz as Billy Wilder in Stephen Frears’ yet-to-be-filmed adaptation of Jonathan’s novel; meeting Volker Schlöndorff just before the Covid lockdown; the images of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now staying with him; a connection between Georges Franju’s Eyes Without A Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage), Wilder’s Fedora, and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito); Kevin MacDonald and Emeric Pressburger, and more.
Written and Directed By Billy Wilder at Film Forum in New York runs through Thursday, August 3.
