KISS ME, STUPID

KISS ME, STUPID

Chale Nafus

Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

 

After the enormous financial success of IRMA LA DOUCE, Billy Wilder signed a new 3-film contract with producers, the Mirisch Brothers: $400,000 for writing/directing each film vs. 10% of the gross up to the break-even point. Once the film had recouped all costs, then Wilder would begin receiving an unheard-of 75% of profits.

 

Billy Wilder was at the top of his game and felt fearless as he determined to lead America out of sexual repression and hypocrisy. He wasn’t alone, but he was certainly in the vanguard of the personal freedom movement, which would soon hold up banners proclaiming, “If It Feels Good, Do It.” Once the sexual barricades were toppled, there seemed to be no end to how far that revolution might go. And Billy Wilder was happy to ride that wave.

 

He and co-screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond once more turned to pre-existing material as their foundation for the next film: Anna Bonacci’s L’Ora della Fantasia, an Italian bedroom farce written in 1944. Wilder had seen an American adaptation of that play – The Dazzling Hour – at La Jolla Playhouse in 1953. In this American version by Ketti Frings and actor Jose Ferrer, the setting was an English village circa 1838. According to Wilder’s most extensive biographer, Ed Sikov, “the comedy concerned the villaqe composer, his prim wife, a worldly London nobleman who can further the composer’s career, and the well-handled town prostitute. Wife and whore change places for the night, and everything works out in the end….”

 

So, as we can see from the completed film, now titled KISS ME, STUPID, the basic foundation remained the same. It would be Wilder and Diamond’s Americanization of the characters, situations, and language that would update the comedy and make it more relevant to contemporary audiences. Wilder and Diamond pulled out all the stops in their trampling and mangling of heretofore sacred cows in American films. The double entendres were doubled and quadrupled to a point that leaves you either exhausted from laughing or totally outraged at such suggestiveness, which, after all, is taking place in your own mind because you “get it” but dislike the discomfort it makes you feel. Wilder and Diamond were setting up their audience as co-conspirators in naughty thought. Every line seems to be accompanied by an invisible wink. America was truly an uptight nation in 1964 and Wilder merely wanted it to loosen up a bit and have a good laugh.

 

Yet, as bed-breaking as Wilder and Diamond’s dialogue and situations would be, the camerawork stayed rooted firmly in the 50s. At a time of Godard and other proponents of cinema verite employing lighter cameras, jump cuts, asynchronous sound, and non-traditional film techniques, Wilder remained traditional in all but his attacks on sexual hypocrisy. He was quite happy to rip off the puritanical veil as long as the camera was firmly attached to a tripod or dolly.

 

Although a few actual locations were used – the Elks Club in Twenty-Nine Palms, California was redressed as the “Belly Button” roadhouse – most of the film was shot on soundstages at the Goldwyn Studios and on sets constructed on the Universal back lot.

 

To play Dino, Wilder had always intended to have the “real Dino” play the party. Convincing Dean Martin to play a character who is really Dean Martin was not difficult. It certainly wasn’t an artistic stretch for him to be an alcohol-fueled (world-famous) lounge lizard who couldn’t sleep if he “hadn’t been laid.” Wilder said of Martin: “He’s a delicious and adorable man who does what you ask him. He’s one of the most relaxed and talented men I know. With him, no intellectual discussions.”

 

Dino brought other assets to the production. It would be the basic humor of the Las Vegas Rat Pack that would permeate the script and the tone of the film. But what worked for drunken middle-class audiences in Las Vegas mob-run nightclubs and casinos would prove not to work (yet) for Middle America. Las Vegas was still pretty much the enclave of the relatively well-off; it hadn’t yet become a working-class-on-vacation town, so much of American had never heard such salacious humor from a stage or a screen (and certainly not on the radio or TV).
That was another element that Wilder hadn’t counted on.

 

Alcoholic womanizing was still considered funny, at least by men. And suave Dean Martin had embraced that reputation and embodied the role of the playboy. 

We laugh, chortle, or snicker while grimacing and groaning at the low-level totally predictable direction Martin’s humor goes. It’s all winking, elbow in the ribs male-bonding, macho bullshit that purposely treats women as one-night objects, enjoyable, interchangeable, forgettable, and discardable. Martin and the rest of the Rat Pack basically used women like shots of whiskey, one after the other. And yet they epitomized a certain kind of mid-century modern cool that was about to be completely outmoded by the cultural revolution of the 60s. Sadly, by the 70s suburbia was trying to become one huge rat pack party with wife-swapping, serial infidelity, alcohol and drugs, orgies, etc. In a tiny way KISS ME, STUPID prefigured what was about to happen to America in the bedroom. It was definitely liberating but the invoice would arrive in the 1980s.  

 

Certainly no saint of wedded bliss, Billy Wilder understood the wandering libido all too well. As much fun as he must have had skewering Dino (and by implication, the rest of the Las Vegas Rat Pack), he certainly was much more similar to them up through the 1940s at least. So, KISS ME STUPID can also be seen as Billy Wilder making fun of himself as a younger man.

 

 

For the role of the piano-playing tunesmith, Orville J. Spooner, Wilder was ecstatic to get Peter Sellers, who had just become wildly famous because of his multi-role appearance in Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE and as Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards’ THE PINK PANTHER. Wilder was certain that Sellers could play the part of the insanely jealous piano teacher/frustrated songwriter stuck in the desert with a lovely wife. What was perhaps not so well known yet was Sellers’ maniacal jealousy regarding his own new, young actress wife, Britt Ekland. The character Orville J. Spooner and the person Peter Sellers overlapped in an eerie, dangerous way.

 

That aside, Sellers had already developed a reputation for being difficult on the sets of Stanley Kubrick and Blake Edwards. Wilder insisted on fidelity of only one sort – to the lines of dialogue he and Diamond had written – whereas Sellers preferred improvising before the cameras. Clashes were inevitable. For Wilder working with Sellers on KISS ME, STUPID was to be a fun prelude to the film he wanted to make next: SHERLOCK HOLMES, with Sellers as Watson to Peter O’Toole’s Holmes. Unfortunate circumstances would prevent that potentially magnificent duet conducted by Wilder.

 

For the part of Polly Pistol, Billy Wilder chose another reportedly difficult star: Kim Novak. After filming ended, Wilder had a very different opinion of her: “… working with her has been a most pleasant surprise. She has the quality of Monroe and Dietrich, and that’s remarkable because she was a studio-created star… something created [by Harry Cohn at Columbia] as a threat to Rita Hayworth.”

With her performances in PICNIC, VERTIGO, and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET, Novak had already proven to be a big box-office draw, unfairly dismissed by many critics as “wooden.” In KISS ME, STUPID she exudes a warmth and shyly blossoming hope that life might be better if she can just get out of the desert and out of prostitution. Even if just for one night, she sees the sweetness of home-life, even with a neurotic piano player. That was certainly one of Wilder’s themes, that hope and newly formed determination can  be found in unexpected places. Of course, the $500 tip left by Dino (for Spooner’s wife) gives her the capital to follow her dream westward to a new life.

 

Cliff Osmond, who had a small role in IRMA LA DOUCE, continued working with Wilder and had a substantial role as Barney, the lyrical gas-station mechanic. For the role of Spooner’s wife, Wilder chose the new wife of Jack Lemmon: Felicia Farr, who had married Lemmon in Paris during the location shoots for IRMA LA DOUCE. To all appearances, it seemed that Wilder had amassed another dream cast that would deliver another hit.

 

As filming was to get underway in March 1964, Peter Sellers was still effusive: “I think Wilder is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, comedy directors in the world.” Sellers apparently made an effort to stick to the script, but what he couldn’t accept were the visitors to the set. He was accustomed to Kubrick’s sealed sets. Wilder was so at ease with the process of making films that he allowed visitors to come and go at will. Sellers didn’t want so many people, besides director and crew, watching him perform. With so much tension during filming, Sellers only exacerbated his poor mental state by trying to keep up with his wife’s every move while she was elsewhere making a movie. At home at night Sellers would smoke grass to relax and inhale poppers (amyl nitrate) as his own self-medicated pre-Viagra in order to “keep up” with his young wife. In truth, he was spiraling out of control. On the evening of 5 April 1964 he suffered a mild heart attack while making love to Britt, who had just returned from Disneyland. He was rushed to the hospital and kept for observation. A few nights later a nurse found him with no blood pressure or pulse. He was miraculously revived in the ICU. According to Sikov’s biography of Wilder, Peter Sellers suffered eight separate heart attacks in six days, “died” several times, and obviously was revived each time.

 

Even though Sellers was taken of the critical list on Friday morning, 10 April, Wilder had already recast the part of Orville. The director wisely decided to cut his losses after hearing that Sellers might need months to recuperate. That following Monday 13 April, the cast and crew began redoing all the scenes involving Orville. All the Peter Sellers footage had to be discarded (how I’d love to see some of it). Later that summer Sellers spoke out against Billy Wilder – not so much against the film but against the director’s high level of control of actors but not of set visitors. Wilder, Martin, Novak, and Farr sent Sellers an uncomplimentary telegram. In a later statement regarding Sellers’ health, Wilder said cruelly, “Heart attack? You have to have a heart before you can have an attack.” Sellers responded with a full-page ad in Variety, basically telling Hollywood goodbye and f*** off! That was surely a mistake on his part because other than an occasional good film (and a lot of bad ones) made during the next sixteen years, he wouldn’t be in top form again until BEING THERE, made a year before his death in 1980.

 

Coming onto a set to replace an actor already known by the cast and crew, Ray Walston felt out of his league initially. He was certainly well known (on TV) as an extra-terrestrial (My Favorite Martian). Walston claims that he had some misgivings about the script, but friends and family reminded him: “This is a Billy Wilder movie. You don’t need to worry.” Wilder responded to Walston’s uncertainties about the suggestive language, as if preparing for battles with the censors: “I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen in pictures. You are going to see nudity. Profanity. Things that you are never going to believe in your life that you would see in movies.” But Wilder was a few years ahead of those social changes and KISS ME, STUPID would suffer at the box office for being a brave pioneer in the new world of cinematic liberty. Still, from the point-of-view of 2009 Walston needn’t have worried. He is perfect as Orville Spooner.

 

Novak was not without her own problems on the set, but not of her own making. After a bad fall, she contradicted the unfair rumors about being difficult and continued working despite the pain. However, ten days later she was rushed to a hospital. Nonetheless, she didn’t pull “an Elizabeth Taylor” but instead ignored the doctor’s recommendation of two weeks in a traction, pumped herself full of pain pills and novacaine and returned to work. She is even reputed to have baked cookies for the cast and crew late one night.

 

It was certainly a surprise to me to learn that the seemingly awful music of Barney and Orville was composed by George and Ira Gershwin. Enlisting the aid of Ira Gershwin, who had retired from the music industry, Wilder was happy to see that not only would Ira work with him but would also use some unpublished tunes written by his brother George. Ira’s lyrics for those early songs would be updated into the painfully stretched rhymes of Barney Milsap, mechanic.

 

After his successful steering of IRMA LA DOUCE through the increasingly gentler waters of the once formidable Production Code Administration, Wilder wasn’t overly concerned about censorship of KISS ME, STUPID. Regarding the still formidable Legion of Decency (the Catholic Church’s censoring body), which had power over the movie-going habits of a lot of Catholics worldwide, Wilder had only to remind himself that the Legion had not condemned any major Hollywood film since BABY DOLL in 1956. His own films that contained sexual allusions and suggestions, THE APARTMENT, IRMA LA DOUCE, and ONE, TWO, THREE, had passed the Legion, so Wilder had no fears that KISS ME, STUPID would fail the test.

 

Just to be sure, Wilder met with Monsignor Little of the Legion of Decency when he was nearly through editing. The writer/director actually agreed to tone down or even re-shoot a few scenes – the sound of exuberant bedsprings, for one, but more importantly, the trailer scene of Dino and Zelda, Spooner’s wife. Thus came into existence two endings to that scene – an ambiguous one in which Dino passes out before the clench and a suggestive one in which Dino and Zelda obviously had sex (why else the $500 tip?). It would be the former that would be in the finished print released in American theaters in 1964-1965. It would be the latter that would be restored by MGM archivist John Kirk for a re-release and DVD master in the 1990s. Ignored were such of the Monsignor’s suggestions as airbrushing Kim Novak’s cleavage or deleting the use of the word “parsley,” which sounded dangerously close to “arse” [perhaps?].

 

The Monsignor actually made one very important suggestion to United Artists. He requested that the film not be released at Christmastime, since Catholics would be signing their Legion of Decency pledge on 13 December. Almost as if he were trying to help the marketing/publicity arm of United Artists, he knew that release date would be inappropriate. But Wilder and United Artists seemed hell-bent on a release during the generally lucrative holiday period. Theaters were booked and ready. But as the release date got nearer, word-of-mouth from preview audiences and eager columnists, who felt they could write about films without seeing them, began to make UA nervous. They quickly shifted distribution and publicity to their art-house subsidiary, Lopert Films, which had successfully released a “condemned” foreign film in 1960 – NEVER ON SUNDAY. 

 

With such effrontery from the studio, Legion of Decency issued a “condemned” rating to KISS ME, STUPID before its release. Any Catholic going to see the film would be on the road to Hell. The Legion description of the film made clear what was upsetting: “a thoroughly sordid piece of realism [!] which is esthetically as well as morally repulsive. Crude and suggestive dialogue, a leering treatment of marital and extramarital sex, and prurient preoccupation with lechery….” It was the death knell for KISS ME, STUPID.

 

After attending a retrospective of his body of work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Billy and his wife Audrey left for Europe. They returned to America in January to discover the worst reviews of any film he had ever made. The level of discourse was almost ludicrous: “basically vulgar,” “creatively delinquent,” “blue-black humor…scraped off the floor of a honky-tonk,” “painful, loud-mouthed.” One critic even began to “worry” that Wilder had become senile.

 

Still, the film did fairly good box office in the largest American cities…for a few weeks. It died instantly in the smaller towns. Europeans predictably embraced the film. They saw through the hypocrisy of America’s loudly professed sexual habits and beliefs. The London Times wrote: “In a world all too obsessively infected with the cult of ghastly good taste, thank heavens for Mr. Billy Wilder.”

 

The negative response to KISS ME, STUPID left Billy Wilder stupefied and uncertain of himself and his ability to capture the pulse of American audiences. He saw himself as a pioneer and ended up a martyr, according to Sikov. Wilder would later tell another biographer, Charlotte Chandler: “It happens like it does to the best of cooks with the best of recipes, tremendous experience, and the soufflé falls flat. If it happens to a play and you’re trying it out in Pittsburgh, you can rewrite it, and if that does not work you just don’t bring it into New York. If you lay an egg with a picture, they’re going to open it, anyway. KISS ME, STUPID is a soufflé that dropped.”

 

Fortunately the Mirisch Brothers still had faith in Wilder and weren’t about to lose him because of one film. They extended his lucrative contract. On the basis of secure income, he did what many depressed people do. He went shopping and bought more original art by Braque, Miro, Klee, and Picasso to add to his already tasteful collection.

 

• Sources
  Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, the Life and Times of Billy Wilder (1998)
• Kevin Lally, Wilder Times, the Life of Billy Wilder (Henry Holt and Co., 1996)
• Charlotte Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography (Applause Theatre and Cinema books, 2002)
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