Sundays with "Conversations with Wilder"

Scott Myers

11 Oct 2026 • 3 min read

Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite filmmaker. Consider just some of his movies: Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), an oeuvre that demonstrates an incredible range in a filmmaking career that went from 1929 to 1981.

One of the best books on filmmaking and storytelling is Conversations With Wilder in which Cameron Crowe, a fantastic filmmaker in his own right (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) sat down with Wilder for multiple hours and they talked movies.

Wilder is probably best known as a director, but at the core of his creative being, he was a screenwriter. Check out these Wilder quotes.

"Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot — the telephone book?"

"Eighty percent of a motion picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution."

"I think writers are vastly underrated and underpaid. It’s totally impossible to make a great picture out of a lousy script.”

Spoken like a true screenwriter!

Wilder with writing partner Charles Bracket who wrote Ninotchka, The Major and the Minor, Ball of Fire, The Lost Weekend, The Bishop's Wife, Sunset Blvd.

Wilder with Raymond Chandler. Despite a tempestuous relationship, they co-wrote the script for the classic noir movie Double Indemnity

Wilder with writing partner I.A.L "Izzy" Diamond whose movie credits include Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, One, Two, Three, Irma la Douce, Cactus Flower, The Fortune Cookie

Here is a weekly series I did some years back going through the book and spotlighting key observations and reflections from the great writer-director.

Part 1: The Cockroach Anecdote

Part 2: George Cukor’s advice to Jack Lemmon

Part 3: The derivation of “Shut up and deal,” the last line of The Apartment

Part 4: The Lubitsch Touch

Part 5: “To entertain and not to repeat myself and to make as few mistakes as possible”

Part 6: Ninotchka and the hat subplot

Part 7: Great anecdote about the seduction scene in Some Like It Hot

Part 8: His working relationship with writing partner I.A.L. “Izzy” Diamond

Part 9: How the Dr. Dreyfuss character in The Apartment came into existence

Part 10: A broken mirror in The Apartment exemplifies visual storytelling

Part 11: Writing comedy

Part 12: Comedic timing