title: Conversations with Wilder
author:  Cameron Crowe 
description: <i>Conversations with Wilder</i>, an invaluable, photo-intensive volume, is a kind of remake of Truffaut's must-read interview book <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671604295/${0}">Hitchcock</a></i>, with Cameron Crowe in the inquisitive Truffaut role and wily 93-year-old Billy Wilder as the crafty master director. Drawing on his experience interviewing the monsters of rock and his deep, shot-by-shot knowledge of Wilder's work, Crowe gently and cunningly coaxes answers from Wilder--arguably today's most influential living director--on what made his hits tick and his flops suck, along with glimpses of what might have been. Did you know Mae West and Mary Pickford spurned <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520218558/${0}">Sunset Boulevard</a></i> and Wilder spurned Marilyn Monroe for <i>Irma la Douce</i>? That <i>The Apartment</i> was inspired by <i>Brief Encounter</i> and the look of <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0851702988/${0}">Double Indemnity</a></i> was based on <i>M</i>? The gossipy insights are great too. Bogart spat when he talked, so Wilder couldn't back-light him in <i>Sabrina</i>, and Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe woman had to towel her off after each take--discreetly! Wilder loathed Raymond Chandler (partly because Chandler disdained James M. Cain when adapting <i>Double Indemnity</i>) but gives him his due as a screenwriter: Chandler could do dialogue and descriptions, but he couldn't construct a scene. "He was a mess, but he could write a beautiful sentence," says Wilder. Agatha Christie was the opposite: "She had structure, but she lacked poetry."
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  _**Her Unexpected Hero**_
  
  Widow Summer Spencer is eager for a quiet life—without the worry of loving a
  man who lives life in the fast lane. But when fire chief Cameron Jackson
  starts to woo her, it’s tough to resist his charms. Chief Cam can’t ignore the
  sparks between him and the stately beauty. But when he learns she’s from the
  richest family in town, he’s not sure he can ever measure up to her
  expectations. Can he set aside his fears and give true love another chance?
  
   _ **She wasn’t at all surprised to find Cameron at her side.**_
  
  They’d worked as a team today at the soup kitchen. It gave her a new insight
  into the fire chief. Most men would have bolted after a woman’s rejection of a
  date.
  
  She studied him for a moment. Cameron wasn’t just trying to get to know her.
  She’d seen him talking, then praying with a couple of people after the meal
  began. Many of them knew him and called him Chief Cam.
  
  Just who was Cameron Jackson?
  
  “I’m going to let Pastor