AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Just a few weeks ago, I rewatched the 1950 classic film "Sunset Boulevard" for the first time in years. And I was struck by how well the film had aged. I mean, sure, some of the dialogue seemed straight out of a time capsule, like this repartee between Norma Desmond, the aging film star, played by Gloria Swanson, and her much younger lover, Joe Gillis, played by William Holden.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUNSET BOULEVARD")
WILLIAM HOLDEN: (As Joe Gillis) You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
GLORIA SWANSON: (As Norma Desmond) I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
CHANG: (Laughter) I love that line. Even if some parts of the film sound dated, so many of the themes feel current today - the way we worship and ridicule Hollywood, the quest for fame and the struggle to hang on to it, the cruelty of aging. As "Sunset Boulevard" celebrates its 75th anniversary, David Lubin is out with a new book about how the stories of the fictional characters and the real-life people behind those characters converged during this film's making. It's called "Ready For My Close-Up: The Making Of 'Sunset Boulevard' And The Dark Side Of The Hollywood Dream." David Lubin joins us now. Welcome.
DAVID LUBIN: Well, I'm glad to be here.
CHANG: So great to have you. So you're a film professor, an art historian, and I can think of all kinds of academic reasons why you would want to write a book about "Sunset Boulevard." But tell me what it was like when you first saw this film, just as a regular human being. What were you immediately captured by?
LUBIN: Well, I think the first time I saw the movie in - probably my 20s - it seemed so bizarre, and that was part of what attracted me to it. And it seemed so genre jumping, and that really attracted me, that it was a mystery and a horror film and a comedy...
CHANG: Yeah.
LUBIN: ...And a romance and a psychological thriller all wrapped up into one. It has a kind of contemporary feeling to it that most movies that are 75 years old don't have.
CHANG: Right. So much of this story that you tell about this movie is focused on comebacks - right? - like, not just for the on-screen characters but especially for the off-screen characters. Like, these were real-life people who themselves feared becoming irrelevant. And I want to start with writer and director Billy Wilder. What did he need this film to be at that particular time in his career?
LUBIN: Well, he had made a couple of highly acclaimed films - "Double Indemnity," what some people consider the first film noir, and a searing drama about alcoholism called "The Lost Weekend," from which he won Academy Awards. Then the next two films he made were duds.
CHANG: Right.
LUBIN: I mean, they weren't utter flops, but they just didn't have any of the pizzazz of his earlier two films. And so he felt that he needed to make a comeback, he needed to make a strong statement.
CHANG: And when it comes to film comebacks, this film was a comeback for actress Gloria Swanson as well, who played Norma Desmond. I mean, she had been the queen of silent film, peaking in the 1920s, and then she faded from filmmaking. I was curious, when Swanson accepts this role after both Mae West and Mary Pickford - two legends - turn it down, how much do you think Swanson saw herself in Norma Desmond?
LUBIN: Well, Swanson was a very pragmatic person, and she was nothing like Norma Desmond. But she understood the pains and agonies of being an overlooked star from her own experience and also having friends in the business who had been put on the back shelf.
CHANG: Right.
LUBIN: So the whole thought of obsolescence or being irrelevant was a very powerful draw to her. And she thought she was just having a small part in the movie. She didn't really know what the movie was about. And Billy Wilder insisted that she do a screen test. And she was going, what? I'm Gloria Swanson...
CHANG: (Laughter) I don't do...
LUBIN: ...You know?
CHANG: ...Screen tests. I don't audition.
LUBIN: I don't do screens tests. But Swanson's good friend George Cukor, the film director, said to her, if you don't take this role, I'm going to shoot you. This is the best role you're ever going to find. So she said, OK, I'll do the screen test, and she went out to Hollywood to do the screen test.
CHANG: And from that very moment - that first screen test - she added layers and textures to the role that even Wilder and Brackett had not imagined on the page, right?
LUBIN: Yeah, so the clip you played - I am big, it's the pictures that got small - she just seemed so radiant, so powerful and also like a gorgon. She was monstrous.
CHANG: I also want to play a cut of this outstanding speech that Swanson gives in this film, talking to William Holden's Joe Gillis. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUNSET BOULEVARD")
SWANSON: (As Norma Desmond) Still wonderful, isn't it? And no dialogue. We didn't need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren't any faces like that anymore. Maybe one, Garbo. Oh, those idiot producers, those imbeciles. Haven't they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I'll show them. I'll be up there again, so help me.
CHANG: David, you write that this is one of the top speeches ever delivered on film. Tell us why.
LUBIN: Oh, I got chills listening to it just now. Swanson is anachronism within the film. She acts in silent film rhetoric, nothing like the style of Hollywood at that time, which was to be more quiet and introspective and more self-contained. She just explodes that.
CHANG: Right.
LUBIN: And that's part of what the movie is about, is this clash between the silent period and the sound period and the transformation or degradation - as she would see it - from the silence to the talkies.
CHANG: Yeah. There's also in this film the larger comeback question for the film industry itself during the mid-20th century, right? The studio system was disintegrating. TV was rising. Anti-communists were targeting Hollywood. How do you think that larger context further shaped the story in "Sunset Boulevard"?
LUBIN: The context of the blacklisting and the competition, the rivalry with television and the financial problems the film industry was having are all reflected in the film. In fact, in 1946, Hollywood sold more tickets per capita than at any time in its history. But by 1949, when "Sunset Boulevard" was shot, people wanted to stay home and watch TV. They didn't have to pay for babysitters when they went out.
CHANG: Yeah.
LUBIN: So the film is, on the precipice, they know something is going to happen. Something's got to change, but they don't really know which direction it's going to fall in.
CHANG: It makes me think that this story about Hollywood upheaval, it just keeps on repeating, right? Like, today, the destabilizing forces are streaming and AI, yeah?
LUBIN: That's another reason why the movie has jumped into our attention again, because it is about those transformations in personal lives and technological lives that is occurring right now and leaving us sort of afraid because we don't know where we're going. We don't know what's going to happen next. So there's a suspense that we all as a society are feeling right now that is mirrored in the film.
CHANG: Absolutely. David Lubin's new book is called "Ready For My Close-Up: The Making Of 'Sunset Boulevard' And The Dark Side Of The Hollywood Dream." Thank you so much, David.
LUBIN: Oh, it's been a pleasure, Ailsa. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF FRANZ WAXMAN'S "CHARMAINE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
