Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

pure chance and without seeing it. Behind them, a poster shouts out: Weekend Magic. And that is the remoteness we want to show, between the weekend film inside and the Sunday that our five people have actually experienced.

Well, let’s cross our fingers. For the sake of a good thing.

Tempo, July 23, 1929

FIGURE 12. Ticket to the world premiere of Menschen am Sonntag on February 4, 1930.

How We Shot Our Studio Film

Billie Wilder wrote the screenplay for a film, People on Sunday, which is being shown at the Ufa Theater on Kurfürstendamm. Here he reports how this film was created—without money, without a studio, without “experts,” without any real organization. And how this film became a success anyway.

We’re sitting here and pinching ourselves. Eight times seven is fifty-six. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark. No, we’re not sleeping. So it’s true. People are telling us: success. People are even telling us: great success. We are very happy.

We worked on our film for nine months. It was a rotten time. It was a lovely time.

“It’s just going to work!”

A short fellow jumps up like a man possessed and pounds on the marble top. His glasses and the soda glasses quiver. Moriz Seeler.

We are five.

A Mr. Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of some sort of world-famous film trick that I fail to understand to this day, stares at him agape: “Without money?”

“Without money!”

The third man, Robert Siodmak, from Dresden (first newspaper, then theater, then film distribution) finds it hard not to burst out laughing: “Without a studio?”

“Without a studio!”

“Just like that?” Posing this question is Edgar Ulmer, twenty-three years old, emigrated from Hollywood half a year ago. Served as a set designer for Murnau’s Sunrise.

“Just like that!”

I, Billie Wilder, am the fifth. “Then we’re good to go?”

“Yes, indeed! Good to go. Just like that. Without a studio. Without money.”

And that’s how the film studio begins. At a coffeehouse table. In June 1929.

We do have a camera. That’s all for now.

What do we want to shoot with it? A hundred ideas, a hundred suggestions. We get to the first slapstick scenes. We feel that we understand one another. And all of a sudden, the thing is right there: it has to be a very simple documentary film. A film about Berlin, about its people, about the everyday things we know so well. Our thoughts first turn to young actors. But the people have to be authentic. We look around. In front of a bar on Kurfürstendamm, Seeler comes across a chauffeur, taxi IA 10 068, Erwin Splettstösser. He signs on instantly. But Fräulein Borchert thinks we have something totally different in mind. She sells gramophone records. It takes a lot of effort to persuade her. Her family figures we’re sex traffickers. In the end, though, she does agree to a screen test, at Thielplatz. Christl Ehlers comes, too; she already has experience, she once worked as an extra with E. A. Dupont and gives us her word of honor that she is on friendly footing with the recording manager of Lapa Pick. We bump into a von Waltershausen; he is exactly what we need.

Meanwhile, the screenplay is sketched out. Seven typed pages. We discover the trick: to concentrate Berlin into one Sunday.

But money, money! We have no film stock.

After a few weeks we get hold of a moneyman on Friedrichstrasse. We trick him with numbers. Three percent of his motivation was his belief in our abilities; 97 percent came from his interest in getting his hands on an incredibly cheap film. We draw up an insanely low cost estimate. Tell him about waltzes and a driver who is dying to get out. Eventually we land the deal; the contract is signed. The first thousand yards of film are issued to us. Things start up.

And boy, do they ever start up!

The five people we’ve chosen take vacation time. They get a flat rate from us, ten marks a day, and we compensate them for their loss of wages. Months, months. In the water, in the city. Every day someone else gives up, doesn’t hold out. Insults turn to enthusiasm when we see the shots in the screening.

We are in the studio for a single day.

The weather gives us a hard time. We spend weeks waiting for a nice day. We’re depressed. Will anything ever come of this? The “actors” grow impatient. The moneyman grows impatient and thinks his dough is down the drain.

Somehow or other we manage to finish.

No one still believes in it. On Friedrichstrasse they’ve heard something about it, now they’re laughing at us. We sit there quietly and cut. We’ve used up ten thousand yards of film. God only knows where the money came from.

On December 11 the film is complete. We screen it for the men at one of the major film companies. We are not taken seriously. The head of the company tells us that after thirty years in the business he’d be willing to give up his job if this film ever somehow makes it as far as a showing, not to mention a success. The “press officer” finds there is a lack of “psychological depth.” We get this exact same reaction from three other companies.

FIGURE 13. Poster for Menschen am Sonntag.

A new financial backer has turned up. He may want to finance the nighttime performance for us. We screen the film at Ufa. Brodnitz, the director of the theater division, gets to see it. And takes it—for the regular evening program at U. T. Kurfürstendamm.

We are flabbergasted. The premiere is here.

When we take a bow at 9:00, we don’t know what is going on. Are we being taken seriously, or are we being laughed at? In any case, between 9:00 and 9:13, with heart palpitations at their peak, we’ve thought of a topic for a new film.

Der Montag Morgen, February 10, 1930

Getting Books to Readers

A close acquaintance recently shot himself to death. He was a traveling book salesman. His collection, which he