“I would have said to Billy Wilder – and I thank God I knew him and I loved him – about The Apartment: ‘I’ll tell you what, there’s no way a guy in an ad agency who rents his apartment out to his boss to take hookers and other people is ever going to be a sympathetic character,’ but you love Jack Lemmon because Billy knew how to write it. But as a then-studio head, I would say to him, ‘There’s no way this is going to work. And the elevator operator winds up in his bed and tries to commit suicide and you think people are going to enjoy this movie? Make me laugh.’ But what a wonderful film – because it came out of him. And it’s not Billy Wilder the director, it’s Billy Wilder the writer that said, ‘No, no, no, this is going to work. People are going to want to see this, they’re going to get involved in this, they’re going to get involved in the characters.’”
Writer/director Tom Mankiewicz (Ladyhawke)
Script magazine interview with Ray Morton
Here’s the trailer for The Apartment (which by the way, won the Best Picture Oscar in 1961)
