I understand he wanted to direct it real bad but they got Gene Saks instead. If Wilder had directed it does anyone think it would have been substantially different or would it still have been basically the same? Any thoughts on that?
shareI love this film the way it is, however Billy Wilder is my favourite film maker. So who knows.
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Interesting point! Gene Saks did a very good job and The Odd Couple is more or less a perfect film (Lemmon and Matthau's best, in my opinion) but I think with Billy Wilder, it would have been a truly excellent choice for director. I'm sure he may have added his own ideas here and there (including the screenplay) that may have changed it but I'm thinking maybe he would have been a slightly better choice. The writers would probably have been Wilder, Izzy Diamond and of course Neil Simon. What a script that would have been!
But as I say, Gene Saks directed this very well and the script was brilliant anyway.
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The OP has one thing incorrect. Wilder was never dying to make this movie. The studio was dying to get Wilder to do the film. Wilder turned them down because he refused to direct anything that he and I.A.L. Diamond had not written themselves. He felt they would have changed so much of Simon's original script that everything that made the play so good would have disappeared. Plus, with Simon then a very hot prospect and Wilder getting up in age, Wilder did not want to rock the boat and have a rocky relationship with Simon. It was important to Wilder to keep working as long as he could but he had not had a hit in almost 8 years (since The Apartment) and he was concerned he had lost his footing in Hollywood.
shareits a shame as i'm sure he could of used his experience of writing the double indemnity screenplay with Raymond Chandler to great effect (they both drove each other mad)
shareYeah, a good murder in the middle of everything would have given it that special Wilder insouciance, like Double Indemnity, Stalag 17,... He did ok -- better than ok -- with a Sherlock Holmes movie in 1970 to extend a great legacy.
shareIt would have been awful & idiotically unfunny just as all other Wilder "comedies" The Fortune Cookie, One Two Three and Seven Year Itch. Only Some Like It Hot is largely tolerable due to its more adventurous nature. The guy made great dramas and even OK semi-comedies like The Apartment, but had no talent for comedy whatsoever.
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I don't know that I agree with that. He directed "The Front Page" which also starred Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and that was really good! In fact, of all the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movies I thought that was the best--it's certainly my personal favorite!
shareIsnΒ΄t The Front Page a remake of that Howard Hawks movie, His Girl Friday? Anyway, IΒ΄ve actually seen it, but so long ago - and only in parts - that I forgot. Maybe IΒ΄ll watch it again sometime (didnΒ΄t it get a rather lousy critical reception, though?.
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You're right--it was a remake of "His Girl Friday" but all the write-ups I've seen on "The Front Page" have been really good--can't recall a single bad one. I also have that movie in video and I still enjoy watching it from time to time.
shareIt wasn't a remake of 'His Girl Friday', it was a different version of the play 'The Front Page' from which 'His Girl Friday' was also adapted; actually, Wilder's version was closer to the original play (the character Lemmon played in Wilder's version was a man in the original play, but switched to a woman in the Hawks version).
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I respectfully disagree. The Fortune Cookie and The Seven Year Itch are both hysterically funny, in my humble opinion. I think Matthau even won an Academy Award for The Fortune Cookie, and Tom Ewell is comedy gold in the Seven Year Itch. But to each his own, that's what these message boards are for, to discuss and sometimes disagree over movies.
As for The Odd Couple, Gene Saks did a fine job with the movie. I watched it again recently and especially the early scene at the poker table, where the guys are convinced Felix is suicidal, is brilliantly acted and directed. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Billy Wilder would have made a great version of the movie too.
What if Billy Wilder had directed this?
I understand he wanted to direct it real bad but they got Gene Saks instead. - nelson95
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I would agree with you on that except in one case: "The Front Page." I thought that was the best Lemmon/Matthau movie of them all.
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The problem I have with "The Odd Couple" is that Lemmon's realistic performance makes the character melancholy instead of funny.
shareSo did I If Wilder had directed this it would have been even better.
shareIt would have been very different under Billy Wilder, perhaps not as crappy as this one. What a terrible disappointment this was for me. _The Fortune Cookie_ is a masterpiece, but _The Odd Couple_ was excruciating to watch β that's how badly directed it was, although the play itself may be weak, I don't know. In any case, horribly directed movie here.
sharemuch snazzier.
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No point in going there. What we got was perfect.
shareI realize that there are always various stories about why things happen in Hollywood, but I've read that Paramount didn't want Wilder on this, rather than Wilder turning it down.
But I'm sure everybody -- including Wilder -- realized he couldn't make the film because his specialty was writing (with IAL Diamond) his own films, and The Odd Couple was from the newly minted "Broadway genius" Neil Simon.
Put another way, Simon was the "auteur" of The Odd Couple from when it was a hit play; there was no room for Wilder to make any changes.
Now, Wilder DID make a (failed) Lemmon-Matthau film from a known play(1974's The Front Page) but his script additions to that one were old-fashioned Borscht belt stuff and The Front Page helped secure Wilder's phase-out from Hollywood.
Also, though Billy Wilder seemed "the natural fit" for The Odd Couple (he had paired with Jack Lemmon many times, and with Matthau and Lemmon on The Fortune Cookie), in 1968, he was already viewed by tough Hollywood insiders as "losing it." Some Like It Hot in 1959 and The Apartment in 1960 had been a one-two punch of classic, hits, but each film after them showed off a writer-director(particularly on the WRIITING side), who was getting "old hat and out of date." Paramount didn't WANT Wilder on The Odd Couple.
Note in passing: none of Billy Wilder's movies after The Apartment were classics, but one was his biggest hit of all: Irma La Douce, reuniting "Apartment" stars Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in movie that wasn't very funny but that was PLENTY sexual for early 60's America: it was about a romance between a French hooker and a French policeman and adult audiences craving Playboy-based sexual content flocked to it, even though it wasn't very good and showed nothing sexual at all.