Boulevard tells the tale of struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis who turns gigolo to Swanson’s Desmond in order to get a crust of bread on his plate and a few bucks in his pocket. But maybe the truth of their insights and the genius of their black comedy was enough to forgive the unforgivable sin of telling the truth in this town. ever got away with this is totally beyond me. How Wilder and co-writers Charles Brackett and D.M. Her butler who was once her director, here played by Eric Von Stroheim, was once actually Swanson’s director and lover. Gloria Swanson who hear plays fading silent movie legend Norma Desmond was herself, in real life, a fading silent movie legend. Sunset Boulevard, to this day, is painful to watch if you know the real life back stories of all the actors in the movie. First of course, before Lynch’s classic Mulholland Drive, fifty years earlier in fact, came Billy Wilder’s great roaring black tidal wave of painful revenge and insight into the Hollywood film industry we know as Sunset Boulevard. Almost alone among all his peers, Lynch has been able to take the raw material of his inspirations and spin it into a fabric almost completely unrecognizable yet filamented with the same material. Saturday, Aug 10:30a, The Vista: SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950, Paramount, dir by Billy Wilder, 35mm) David Lynch has been open about the profound influence movies like Sunset Boulevard (here with Mulholland Drive) and Rear Window (with Blue Velvet) have had on his career. Part of our THE INSPIRATION & THE INSPIRED series.
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