Read | 16. Nov 2020

What You Might Learn From One Of Hollywood´s Finest

As devoted subscriber of airmail.news every now and then there is an article that tells a story well ahead of the one person that it is about: "When The Sun Set On Billy Wilder" by Jonathan Coe is one of those.

Describing how one of the most brilliant careers of one of Holly wood´s finest directors (and writers!) comes to a sudden end, Wilder biographer Coe purposely uses "Sunset Boulevard" as a word play; the famous film about an actress of the silent-movie-aera who accepts neither her own age nor the change of the whole business ("We had faces back then, we did not have to talk") was called after the famous street, where moviestars used to live in those days.

It would also become the synonym for a dramatic ending. A place where people cannot stand that one day might end, as long as there is a light more beautiful and intense than at any other time of the day.

Wilder, who walked away with three Oscars for "The Apartment" ( for writing, for directing and for the whole movie), stopped making movies when he realized that his way of story telling became unbankable in a world that got "Taxi Driver", "The Deer Hunter" or even "Easy Rider".

So he started to live happily ever after, without any bitterness and as the legend he already had become.

Read Jonathan Coe´s Book "Mr Wilder And Me" if you won´t believe it.