Summary
Mr Wilder & Me is the title of the new novel from Jonathan Coe, who won the Costa Prize for his book Middle England. He is one of Matthew Sweet's guests in a programme exploring the life and work of the Austrian born director behind Hollywood hits including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot. They are joined by film critics Phuong Le and Melanie Williams and Paul Diamond, the son of Billy Wilder's long time writing partner I.A.L. Diamond who worked on scripts for Some Like It Hot; The Apartment (which won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay); Irma la Douce; and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
Jonathan Coe's Mr Wilder & Me is out now.
In the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts you can find Matthew Sweet discussing films including Tarkovksy's Stalker https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 the career of Cary Grant https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hn1z Silent Film Star Betty Balfour https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04007l1 Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001xwd
You can also find him discussing the stage adaptation of Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club in an event recorded at the Birmingham Rep Theatre https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076b15h
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.1 | Are you ready for your close-up? |
| 0:38.9 | My name's Matthew Sweet, and on this edition of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:42.5 | we're in the company of a great movie director, Billy Wilder, |
| 0:46.0 | and a great British novelist, Jonathan Coe, who's just written a novel about him. |
| 0:51.2 | The first reel starts after this message. |
| 0:53.7 | Before your chosen podcast, my name's Ian McMillan, keeper of the box of delights that is the verb. |
| 1:00.3 | If you like poetry and stories and spoken word and performance and language that falls between the cracks, |
| 1:07.7 | then the verb is for you. Downloaders wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:11.9 | Let us praise the late Billy Wilder. Don't worry. I know you know he's dead. He was born in |
| 1:17.7 | 2006 and he was lucky, but he wasn't that lucky. He was a filmmaker. That required look. |
| 1:23.6 | It always does. But in Wilder's case, the opposite too. It was the rise of Hitler that brought him west via Paris to Hollywood. And some of the films he made there still haunt the dreams of the culture. Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwick in double indemnity, having a conversation about minor traffic offences that translates into, |
| 1:44.7 | let's go to bed and as quickly as we may. |
| 1:47.9 | Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon as those jazz men transforming themselves into jazz women |
| 1:53.1 | in some like it hot, a modern Rosalind and Celia taking refuge in the Arden of a Florida hotel |
| 2:00.0 | with Sweet Sue and her society syncopators. Gloria Swanson, in the Arden of a Florida hotel with Sweet Sue and her society syncopators. |
| 2:03.6 | Gloria Swanson, imperious on the staircase in Sunset Boulevard. |
| 2:09.6 | All right, Mr. D'Neill, I'm ready for my close-up. |
... |
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