I call these folks my "Trump Cards" because that's exactly what they are. No matter the hand on the table, you play one of these and the rest means nothing. They take the cake. They set the standard. They are my absolute favorites, to which no others could compare. It's hard for me to explain why I love them so, but I hope in giving you an overview of who they were in their careers, you might understand where I'm coming from. Below are my favorite filmmaker, actor, actress, and composer. Ladies and gents, I give you, my "Trump Cards."
Billy Wilder - director, writer, producer, FILMMAKER
"In certain pictures I do hope they will leave the cinema a little enriched, but I don't make them pay a buck and a half and then ram a lecture down their throats."
"In certain pictures I do hope they will leave the cinema a little enriched, but I don't make them pay a buck and a half and then ram a lecture down their throats."
I don't like to label Wilder as my favorite director, because I believe that he is so much more than that. He is a filmmaker in the finest sense of the word. He wrote, produced, and directed many beloved films by cinephiles everywhere. His most notable works would be, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Witness for the Prosecution, Sunset Blvd., Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, Stalag 17, The Seven Year Itch, The Lost Weekend, and The Apartment, for which he won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing in 1960. He is one of six directors to win those three awards in the same year, the others being Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Pt. II), James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment), Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), and Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men).
Billy Wilder hailed from Austria-Hungary, now Poland. When Hitler came to power, he moved to Paris, but his grandmother, mother, and step-father perished in Auschwitz. He arrived in Hollywood in the early 30s, starting as a screenwriter and morphing into a director and producer over the coming decade.
His work with Jack Lemmon is comedic gold. Wilder is also known for his collaborations with Marilyn Monroe. Stories about the bombshell on the set of Wilder films are legendary. Wilder made pictures as diverse as courtroom dramas (Witness for the Prosecution), thrillers (Sunset Blvd.), romance (Sabrina), drama (The Lost Weekend) and comedy (Some Like It Hot). You would be hard pressed to find a director with a resume as varied, vast, and respectable as Billy Wilder's. He may not have been the innovator that other directors have been, but his focus on story and character is unparalleled, in my opinion.
Wilder claims he didn't want the camera to call attention to itself because it got in the way of the story. My favorite quote of Billy Wilder's is, "An actor enters through a door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through a window, you've got a situation." Billy Wilder set out to make movies to entertain an audience. And I do say so myself, he succeeded. He succeeded better than any other director I've ever come across.
Billy Wilder hailed from Austria-Hungary, now Poland. When Hitler came to power, he moved to Paris, but his grandmother, mother, and step-father perished in Auschwitz. He arrived in Hollywood in the early 30s, starting as a screenwriter and morphing into a director and producer over the coming decade.
His work with Jack Lemmon is comedic gold. Wilder is also known for his collaborations with Marilyn Monroe. Stories about the bombshell on the set of Wilder films are legendary. Wilder made pictures as diverse as courtroom dramas (Witness for the Prosecution), thrillers (Sunset Blvd.), romance (Sabrina), drama (The Lost Weekend) and comedy (Some Like It Hot). You would be hard pressed to find a director with a resume as varied, vast, and respectable as Billy Wilder's. He may not have been the innovator that other directors have been, but his focus on story and character is unparalleled, in my opinion.
Wilder claims he didn't want the camera to call attention to itself because it got in the way of the story. My favorite quote of Billy Wilder's is, "An actor enters through a door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through a window, you've got a situation." Billy Wilder set out to make movies to entertain an audience. And I do say so myself, he succeeded. He succeeded better than any other director I've ever come across.
Paul Newman - actor and philanthropist
"Every time I get a script, it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why."
"Every time I get a script, it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why."
When I really think about what I love in film, I'm actually rather surprised that I consider Paul Newman my favorite. I've never really understood how "method acting" is considered a higher form of acting that just acting. Paul Newman was one of the first of the "method acting" breed, along with Marlon Brando and James Dean. His career started in the mid-to-late fifties and continued for fifty years. After I had my first true introduction to Paul Newman, I began to watch as many of his films as I could. Quite the opposite of how I fell in love with Billy Wilder. With Wilder, I began to recognize his name after viewing several of his films, not knowing who he was.
But Paul Newman got me as soon as I saw him in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I followed that up with Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler, Hud, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Verdict, and many others. I actually grew to love him more as his career went on. I think he really grew into his acting. He didn't become a household name until he was in his thirties, rather unlike many actors nowadays. But he was a constant fixture in the movie industry through his final film, the Pixar animated film Cars in 2006. He was nominated for an Academy Award nine times, winning once in 1986 for The Color of Money, a sequel to The Hustler and directed by Martin Scorsese.
Paul Newman is the only person in Academy Award history to win an award in acting, a Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Humanitarian Award. His philanthropy may well outlive his film career. And as much as I hope his work in film is never forgotten, his work in raising money for charities is what he would want to be remembered for. He started a summer camp for sick children, hosting fundraisers attended by the who's who of Hollywood. As great as he was off screen, Paul Newman was even greater off screen. It just adds to the reasons why I respect and admire him so much.
Katharine Hepburn - actress and feminine icon
"I'm a personality as well as an actress. Show me an actress who isn't a personality, and you'll show me a woman who isn't a star."
"I'm a personality as well as an actress. Show me an actress who isn't a personality, and you'll show me a woman who isn't a star."
Katharine Hepburn come onto the screen in the early 1930s and kept going into the 1990s. My first run in with her happened when I rented Bringing Up Baby, a classic screwball comedy from 1938 costarring Cary Grant. I loved it and immediately rented The Philadelphia Story, a romantic comedy also starring Cary Grant, with Jimmy Stewart as well. I was enthralled. She was unlike anyone I had seen on the screen before or since. Her career would continue with dynamite performances alongside her real life companion, Spencer Tracy.
She holds the record for most Academy Awards for Acting with four: Morning Glory, The Lion in Winter, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, and On Golden Pond. All four wins for Kate the Great are in the Best Actress in a Leading Role category. And that doesn't surprise me. Hepburn, for better or worse, wasn't the supporting role type. And she never appeared to collect any of her awards. Though later in life, she confessed how much the awards did mean to her.
I am enamored with Katharine Hepburn for almost the complete opposite reason that I love Paul Newman. She, to me, almost isn't even a person. Even though I love who she is off screen, it seemed to go hand-in-hand with who she was on screen. Her personal life and professional life seemed to morph into one grand, iconic legend. Her voice. Her carriage. Her pants. Her bone structure. Her affair with Spencer Tracy. You pour it all into one mixing bowl, blend it together, and get the greatest actress that ever lived. But she is more than just an actress. She's Katharine Hepburn.
Ennio Morricone - composer and musical mastermind
"He doesn’t have a piano in his studio. I always thought that with composers, you sit at the piano, and you try to find the melody. There’s no such thing with him. He hears a melody, and he writes it down. He hears the orchestration completely done." - Barry Levinson
"He doesn’t have a piano in his studio. I always thought that with composers, you sit at the piano, and you try to find the melody. There’s no such thing with him. He hears a melody, and he writes it down. He hears the orchestration completely done." - Barry Levinson
I didn't find Ennio Morricone until much later in life than the previous three, but he is just as important to me. Without getting too personal, his music was there for me in a really difficult time. When people couldn't say or do anything to make things better, his music was there, comforting me when I needed comfort the most. I was familiar with his name but not his films. I immediately sought out the film of my favorite piece of his work, an Italian film from 1989 called Cinema Paradiso. An incredible film about a boy who falls in love with the local movie theater and befriends the projectionist.
I then watched some of the films set to his fantastic score. In one exhausting weekend, I watched the epic films of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone: Once Upon A Time in America, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Each of these films are over three hours long. It was an exhausting undertaking, but worth it. I was completely surrounded by Morricone's music all weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Other than the films listed above, Morricone is known for his music for many Italian films and other American films such as The Untouchables, A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, Bugsy, and The Mission. He never won an Academy Award for his work though he was nominated five times. In 2007, he was given an Honorary Award for "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music." Magnificent and multifaceted indeed. Truly one of a kind, and one of the most important discoveries of my life. Even if I don't particularly enjoy the film to which he has lent his hand, I relish the experience in spending time with his music.
