Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe 

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Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe: Episode 3

Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe, Episode 3

Calista is abandoned by her friend whilst at dinner with famous film director Billy Wilder

Gill abandons Calista during their dinner with Billy Wilder. Calista talks about her passion for film composing.  Wilder lends her a book, "Fedora" which will be his next film.

In 1945, Billy Wilder made a film called "Death Mills" about the Holocaust. In it he showed “an entire field, a whole landscape of corpses”. He went on to make "Sunset Boulevard", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment". "Mr Wilder & Me" is ostensibly a fiction about a young woman discovering her love of film, music and young men but it is also about the way that a generation of film-makers responded to the great cataclysm of the second world war and the seriousness with which they viewed entertainment, particularly comedy, as an escape from nightmarish reality.

The protagonist, Calista is a film score composer and she tells the story of how she came to work for the legendary film director, Billy Wilder whilst he was preparing to work on one of his last films, "Fedora".

Written by Jonathan Coe
Abridged by Florence Bedell


The reader is Jasmine Hyde

Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill Production for BBC Radio 4.

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Calista, a film score composer, tells the story of how she came to work for Billy Wilder.

Calista, a film score composer, tells the story of how she came to work for legendary film director Billy Wilder while he was preparing to work on his 1978 film, Fedora.

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