Billy Wilder

One of the perks, I suppose, of being a writer, is that you may get to write your own epitaph. Billy Wilder is buried at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park under a big, dark marble stone that has the inscription: Billy Wilder    I’m A Writer      But Then Nobody’s Perfect

…a paraphrase of the closing line delivered by Joe E. Brown to Jack Lemmon in Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, when Brown discovers his intended, Geraldine, played by Lemmon, is really a man. But that’s the way Wilder wanted to be remembered, not as a director of numerous classic films of the 40s, 50s and 60s, but as a writer. To him, the story you were telling was everything. He had a unique view of humankind that was cynical, insightful, often humorous, sometimes dangerous, but overall, loving and understanding. Those were the stories he wrote and loved to tell.

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