Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard is a book length study of the production of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. The book starts with the inception of the idea, traces it through release and ends with the legacy it has left on film history.  Through an insider’s perspective and first hand interviews with the cast and crew, Sam Staggs does an amazing job fully describing every problem and detail that arose during the making of the film.

Chapter six in particular, “The Cameras Have Arrived” discusses how Wilder directed on the set. Wilder, most well know for his comedic talent, would often play jokes on the set such as during a kissing scene between Joe Gillis (William Holden) and Betty Schaeffer (Nancy Olson). He had the two locked in an extremely long kiss and then invited Holden’s wife at the time to come and yell at them for making it seem to “real.”

Furthermore Staggs states that Wilder “rarely directed actors in the usual sense of the word.” He would never read lines for them, instead discussing a character and allowing the actor to play it in their own terms. He expected his actors to understand the motivation of their characters. Olson recalls that Wilder never said anything specific about a scene but rather created a relaxed atmosphere that allowed the actors to discover their characters. Staggs states that he was an interesting director; Wilder always considered himself a writer but also directed so that he could maintain control over his work.

Staggs also claims that Wilder tried to film Sunset Boulevard with as much realism and continuity as possible. He filmed night scenes, even interiors, at night and tried to shoot the film in sequence as much as possible. Staggs’s explanation for Wilder’s use of sequence is not only for the ease of production but also that Wilder hadn’t finished writing the script when the film went into production. In fact, as with most of Wilder’s films, scenes that were to be shot the next day were written the night before. Through interesting anecdotes such as these, Staggs keeps the reader focused throughout the book.