Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder by Kevin Lally

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been savoring this book since this past January. It’s a very fine book that primarily examines the films of Wilder. His personal life is presented at first and then takes a distant back seat through the rest of the book. The bulk of the book carefully looks at all that goes into a Wilder film.

That is what makes this book excellent to me. What stands out more than anything else from this book is the importance of the English language. Wilder fell in love playing with our language. His fun was batting about the words into a one liners and heart-felt dialogue assembled into terrific screenplay.

As I read I kept thinking of the insanity as efforts continue to water down, or dumb down, our language. That and the heavy handed effort to make us learn Spanish. Texting adds to the mess. It’s no wonder we hear the inanity we do in movies, television, music and books today. We should be heralding our ability to communicate, instead of launching backwards to days when men couldn’t communicate each other and used a giant club or fists to make a point. Alas, that seems our fate judging by the blood we see continuing to spill on our streets.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this book to any film buff and to those who wish to better understand the methods of producing humor and outstanding storytelling.

View all my reviews