Mr. Wilder and Me

Mr. Wilder and Me PDF Author: Jonathan Coe
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE "Outstanding."--Alex Harvey, Los Angeles Review of Books "Captivating...A delight."--Malcolm Forbes, Washington Examiner "A really warm and wonderful and fun and happy book."--NPR's All Sides with Ann Fischer "Beautifully written and filled with compassion, humor and an abundance of knowledge about old Hollywood, Mr. Wilder and Me sheds light on lives that aren't perfect but still well lived."--Bookpage A naive young woman called Calista finds herself working for the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost nothing. While Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself is living with the realization that his star may be on the wane. In a novel that is at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema's most intriguing figures, Jonathan Coe turns his gaze on the nature of time and fame, of family and the treacherous lure of nostalgia. "In its own quiet way, the novel is as odd as the movie it describes: part Hollywood biopic, part Holocaust memoir, part middle-class domestic drama."--Benjamin Markovits, The New York Times Book Review "Life-affirming, genuinely affecting, sublime, Mr. Wilder and Me is a joy to read."--Now Toronto

Mr. Wilder and Me

Mr. Wilder and Me PDF Author: Jonathan Coe
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE "Outstanding."--Alex Harvey, Los Angeles Review of Books "Captivating...A delight."--Malcolm Forbes, Washington Examiner "A really warm and wonderful and fun and happy book."--NPR's All Sides with Ann Fischer "Beautifully written and filled with compassion, humor and an abundance of knowledge about old Hollywood, Mr. Wilder and Me sheds light on lives that aren't perfect but still well lived."--Bookpage A naive young woman called Calista finds herself working for the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost nothing. While Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself is living with the realization that his star may be on the wane. In a novel that is at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema's most intriguing figures, Jonathan Coe turns his gaze on the nature of time and fame, of family and the treacherous lure of nostalgia. "In its own quiet way, the novel is as odd as the movie it describes: part Hollywood biopic, part Holocaust memoir, part middle-class domestic drama."--Benjamin Markovits, The New York Times Book Review "Life-affirming, genuinely affecting, sublime, Mr. Wilder and Me is a joy to read."--Now Toronto

Conversations with Wilder

Conversations with Wilder PDF Author: Cameron Crowe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571203864
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
The renowned director talks to Cameron Crowe about 30 years at the very heart of Hollywood. Wilder's distinct voice provides a fascinating insider's view of the film industry past and present.

Kiss Me Like A Stranger

Kiss Me Like A Stranger PDF Author: Gene Wilder
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429909951
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
In this personal book from the star of many beloved and classic film comedies -- from The Producers to Young Frankenstein, Blazing saddles to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory -- Gene Wilder writes about a side of his life the public hasn't seen on the screen. Kiss Me Like a Stranger is not an autobiography in the usual sense of the word, and it's certainly not another celebrity "tell-all." Instead, Wilder has chosen to write about resonant moments in his life, events that led him to an understanding of the art of acting, and -- more important -- to an understanding of how to give love to and receive love from a woman. Wilder writes compellingly about the creative process on stage and screen, and divulges moments from life on the sets of some of the most iconic movies of our time. In this book, he talks about everything from his experiences in psychoanalysis to why he got into acting and later comedy (his first goal was to be a Shakespearean actor), and how a Midwestern childhood with a sick mother changed him. Wilder explains why he became an actor and writer, and about the funny, wonderful movies he made with Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, and Harrison Ford, among many others. He candidly reveals his failures in love, and writes about the overwhelming experience of marrying comedienne Gilda Radner, as well as what finally had to happen for him to make a true and lasting commitment to another woman. A thoughtful, revealing, and winsome book about life, love, and the creative process, the New York Times bestseller Kiss Me Like A Stranger is one actor's life in his own words.

Something to Remember You By

Something to Remember You By PDF Author: Gene Wilder
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250029600
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Get Book

Book Description
From the author of Kiss Me Like a Stranger and My French Whore, comes this romantic, dramatic fiction set during World War II. Beloved actor and author Gene Wilder's newest novella, SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY, begins on Christmas, 1944. In a foxhole in Bastogne, Belgium, the innocent yet charmingly clever protagonist, Corporal Tom Cole, is injured. Wilder moves the action to a romantic wartime London with dimly lit blackout-compliant restaurants and mad dashes to the Tube station at the sound of the air raid sirens where Cole convalesces and falls in love for the first time. But is the mysterious Danish girl he meets at the Shepherdess Café on the up and up? Cole is a cellist back home in the States, and Anna says she's a monitor at the War Office, scanning radio waves for incoming German planes. But is she? When Cole goes to the War Office one day to surprise his new lover, she's nowhere to be found. Wilder's story takes Cole on a quest for the woman he loves but no longer trusts, and ultimately parachutes him, a newly minted intelligence officer, behind enemy lines into a concentration camp to save her life and discover the truth.

The Rotters' Club

The Rotters' Club PDF Author: Jonathan Coe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742927X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book

Book Description
Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, corrosive class warfare, adolescent angst, IRA bombings. Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by guitar rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school. As the world appears to self-destruct around them, they hold together to navigate the choppy waters of a decidedly ambiguous decade.

What Is This Thing Called Love?

What Is This Thing Called Love? PDF Author: Gene Wilder
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429934301
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Get Book

Book Description
The actor and novelist answers this eternal question twelve ways, in stories that explore our most complicated emotion This is a winning collection from an author writing on his favorite topic: love. Each emotionally involving story illuminates a different kind of love: star-crossed, intense, needy, eternal, unrequited, even comical. Gene Wilder's protagonists will be instantly recognizable to his fans: men and women who stumble into relationships that can fulfill them or knock them out cold. Which one it will be depends, often, on the smallest of gestures or reactions. What Is This Thing Called Love includes the stories: • "In Love for the First Time," about a lover so shy and studious that he's a "funny duck" who has to be led by the hand by his equally inexperienced girlfriend • "About Being in Love," featuring coarse but charming Buddy Silverman, who yearns for connection but looks for it in exactly the wrong kind of woman • "The Woman in the Red Hat," who shows a writer who has only explored love in his books what the real thing feels like.

Number 11

Number 11 PDF Author: Jonathan Coe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493370
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Beginning in the early years of this century, Number 11 follows two friends, Alison and Rachel, as they come of age. As the narrative progresses from the aftermath of the Iraq War to the present day, its scope broadens to include others who are variously connected to these two girls: Alison’s mother, a has-been singer, competes on a grisly reality TV show; Rachel’s university mentor finally confronts her late husband’s obsessive search for a German film he saw as a child; a young police constable investigates the seemingly unrelated deaths of two stand-up comedians; and a giant spider lurks in the darkness beneath one of London’s most staggeringly expensive neighborhoods. Combining his signature humor, psychological insight and social commentary, Jonathan Coe holds up a disquieting, unforgiving mirror in which to reflect a world where the systems are broken and everyone can—and perhaps must—name his or her own price.

Billy Wilder on Assignment

Billy Wilder on Assignment PDF Author: Billy Wilder
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069124183X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, chosen by Tom Stoppard "A revelation."—Marc Weingarten, Washington Post Acclaimed film director Billy Wilder’s early writings—brilliantly translated into English for the first time Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then in Weimar Berlin. Billy Wilder on Assignment brings together more than fifty articles, translated into English for the first time, that Wilder (then known as "Billie") published in magazines and newspapers between September 1925 and November 1930. From a humorous account of Wilder's stint as a hired dancing companion in a posh Berlin hotel and his dispatches from the international film scene, to his astute profiles of writers, performers, and political figures, the collection offers fresh insights into the creative mind of one of Hollywood’s most revered writer-directors. Wilder’s early writings—a heady mix of cultural essays, interviews, and reviews—contain the same sparkling wit and intelligence as his later Hollywood screenplays, while also casting light into the dark corners of Vienna and Berlin between the wars. Wilder covered everything: big-city sensations, jazz performances, film and theater openings, dance, photography, and all manner of mass entertainment. And he wrote about the most colorful figures of the day, including Charlie Chaplin, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Prince of Wales, actor Adolphe Menjou, director Erich von Stroheim, and the Tiller Girls dance troupe. Film historian Noah Isenberg's introduction and commentary place Wilder’s pieces—brilliantly translated by Shelley Frisch—in historical and biographical context, and rare photos capture Wilder and his circle during these formative years. Filled with rich reportage and personal musings, Billy Wilder on Assignment showcases the burgeoning voice of a young journalist who would go on to become a great auteur.

Theophilus North

Theophilus North PDF Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062943367
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
“An extremely entertaining array of American life in a bygone era.” — New Yorker The last of Thornton Wilder’s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventures of Wilder’s twin brother who died at birth. This edition features an updated afterword from Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the novelist, story and setting. Setting out to see the world in the summer of 1926, Theophilus North gets as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before his car breaks down. To support himself, Theophilus takes jobs in the elegant mansions along Ocean Drive, just as Wilder himself did in the same decade. Soon the young man finds himself playing the roles of tutor, tennis coach, spy, confidant, lover, friend and enemy as he becomes entangled in adventure and intrigue in Newport’s fabulous addresses, as well as in its local boarding houses, restaurants, dives and military barracks. Narrated by the elderly North from a distance of fifty years, Theophilus North is a fascinating commentary on youth and education from the vantage point of age, and deftly displays Wilder’s trademark wit juxtaposed with his lively and timeless ruminations on what really matters, at the end of the day, about life, love, and work.

Farther and Wilder

Farther and Wilder PDF Author: Blake Bailey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307475522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book

Book Description
Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend—the story of five disastrous days in the life of an alcoholic—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Although he tried to escape its legacy, Jackson is often remembered only as the author of this thinly veiled autobiography. In Farther & Wilder, the award-winning biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever goes deeper, exploring Jackson’s life—from growing up in the scandal-plagued village of Newark, New York, to a career in Hollywood and friendships with everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. This is the fascinating biography of a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted homosexual in mid-century America, and who was far ahead of his time in bringing these forbidden subjects into the popular discourse.