Master Teacher: Reading Cameron Crowe’s Conversations With Wilder

Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe
Hardcover: Knopf, 1999 – Out of print, no eBook Available

Over one year went by in between this book arriving in my mailbox and the moment I finished its every last addendum and footnote in an east Toronto coffee shop. This isn’t a complicated book, and I’m not a slow reader. So why the lag? Perhaps because I wanted to savour every moment of it to its fullest. Perhaps because I had to pay more than its cover price to get my hands on it, and I wanted to get my money’s worth. Or perhaps, I was enjoying everything about it so much that I just never wanted it to end.

In 1995, with his script for JERRY MAGUIRE almost complete, director Cameron Crowe approached his personal and professional idol, Billy Wilder in the hopes that he’d make a cameo in the film. The movie included the part of a mentor, and Crowe dearly wanted Wilder to play the part. Wilder turned him down cold. Crowe brought along Tom Cruse to help him convince Wilder. Wilder turned them both down. The film went on to be a hit, of course, and its success might have delivered Crowe something even better. A mutual acquaintance suggested Crowe do a series of interviews with Billy Wilder looking back on his career.

Crowe couldn’t be more excited. Wilder reluctantly agreed.

My love for Wilder is pretty much legend around these parts. As for Cameron Crowe, I count myself a big fan of his too…even in light of his recent cinematic misfires (which, I also enjoy). It’s fair to say then that my appreciation for this book comes as something of a biased opinion, but I must stress that talent alone is not a guarantee. Ever gone to see a film because you count yourself a fan of an actor involved, or even the director who made it? If so, you’ve likely come across one or two misfires along the way.

While one of my favorite writers interviewing another one of my favorite writers held promise, it was no guarantee. Crowe could get too “inside baseball”; Wilder could blather on. Happily though, Crowe’s skills as a journalist served him well, Wilder’s skills as a storyteller serve him well, and the reader reaps the rewards. Crowe gets Wilder to open up about his personal history, his relationship with his wife (who is often within earshot), his fellowship under his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, and every hit and flop he made through his remarkable career.

That Crowe gets this sort of depth isn’t what makes the book so special – give any person to talk about them-self and you’re likely to extract this level of candour eventually. What makes the book special is the way Crowe frames the conversations with a certain self-deprecation and humility. For instance, he often brings up Wilder’s attention to punctuality and how he struggles to work within it. Where you or I might not think twice about showing up two minutes late to an appointment, if one walks into Wilder’s office with such tardiness, two minutes might as well be twenty. The discussions went on for months, and through it all, Crowe struggled to get one step ahead of his mentor’s watch. He failed at almost every turn.

In discussing his work, Wilder is wonderfully thorough. He details, for instance, his working relationship with every iconic actor he directed (and he directed some capital-I-iconic actors), and the methodology involved with being part of a writing team. Crowe gets him to open up about what caused his films to flop, what allowed them to succeed – though there’s little time for what caused his films to flop only later to succeed (read: ACE IN THE HOLE).

The technical discussion tends to lean hard on the writing, and less on the directing. To hear Wilder discuss writing is akin to saving a few thousand dollars in tuition fees, and likewise to hear a virtuoso perform a moving sonata. One sees that Wilder not only understands tone and structure like few screenwriters in history, but that such understanding is truly timeless.

There’s the funny anecdote about Fernando Trueba, who when accepting his Oscar for BELLE EPOQUE said “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him, but I believe in Billy Wilder, so thank-you Mr. Wilder”. If Wilder is God to screenwriters (argue amongst yourselves in the comment section), then  the book even goes so far as to include his ten commandments. Some of them seem elementary (“The audience is fickle”), and one – of course – is borrowed from Lubitsch. All of them though, provide great guidance, and do seem like they should be carved into stone tablets and handed over to Charlton Heston.

In reading these conversations, it’s clear that Wilder has a grasp on his medium like few others in film history. He’s even keenly aware of his place within it, famously stating “I don’t do cinema – I make movies.”. Cinema, he says, it something better left to Eisenstein or David Lean.

As I return the book to the shelf,  and a place of honour on my shelf at that, I wondered about Wilder’s influence on Crowe. His influence up until that point is undeniable. Considering Crowe followed these discussions by writing ALMOST FAMOUS (arguably his best film, and my personal favorite), one has to believe that every piece of advice Wilder offered Crowe was followed to the letter. While Crowe held a certain advantage in telling the story of his own life, the wit and warmth he was able to infuse into the film shows he was an apt pupil to the teachings of the master.

But what then? What of the one remake he made before Wilder passed away, and the two subsequent features after Wilder’s passing. Is it possible that he lost his teacher right when he needed him most? Or is it possible that he had already forgotten what he’d been taught.

Where Wilder is concerned, he mentions himself how many previous books on him had “got it wrong”, and while he jokes that Crowe is about to suffer the same fate, it’s clear that he is proud to have been a part of this document of his life. Where Crowe is concerned, one remains hopeful that these lessons won’t ever be forgotten…and that perhaps a few more moments asking himself “How Would Wilder Do It?” allows his voice to come through a little clearer.