Free My Lunches with Orson by Peter Biskind

as a man and as an artist. Literally destroyed him. And von Stroheim at that moment was, I think, demonstrably the most gifted director in Hollywood. Von Stroheim was the greatest argument against the producer. He was so clearly a genius, and so clearly should have been left alone—no matter what crazy thing he did—
    HJ: But he was so extravagant that he reached the point where economically, it was impossible. If the stories about him are true. Or was he just so original he threatened everyone?
    OW: They had to make him into a monster. I had a very interesting experience when I was making Touch of Evil . I had a scene in a police archive, and they let me shoot it in the real archive of Universal. And while they were setting the lights, I looked up von Stroheim, the budgets of his movies. They weren’t that high. The idea that he was so extravagant was nonsense. Anita Loos wrote a brilliant book about Hollywood— Kiss Hollywood Goodbye . And she thinks [Josef] von Sternberg is a marvelous man. Sorry, not von Sternberg. Von Stroheim. Von Sternberg was a real louse. But nevertheless, the portrait of von Stroheim was a hatchet job. She said, “We all loved Von,” and then she presents a picture of this terrible Prussian. Once she said to me, “The nicest Jewish actor you ever met in your life.” You know?
    HJ: Did you know von Stroheim?
    OW: Yes, very well. But later, when he had become an actor and was living in France, Charlie Lederer and I wrote a movie for him in Paris, with Pierre Brasseur, and Arletty. It was called Portrait of an Assassin . It was about those guys that ride around on motorcycles inside a cage, going faster and faster. Kind of carny shit. They didn’t use one word we wrote. But we wrote the story, which they did use. And we got paid by a black-market producer who came to the Lancaster Hotel with the money wrapped in newspapers—soaking wet; it was always raining in Paris. That’s how we got to live it up in Paris, writing this story.
    HJ: And you liked von Stroheim?
    OW: Loved him. He was a terribly nice fellow. A French script girl who worked on Grand Illusion told me that he was the greatest prop actor she’d ever known. Because he’d have a newspaper, a swagger stick, a monocle, a cigarette—all of these things. And he would do a scene where he would put them down and pick them up on certain lines. You can’t have that number of props and get it all right. But every time [Jean] Renoir would shoot a take, he’d do it right. On the syllable.
    HJ: Did von Stroheim direct any movies in his later life?
    OW: No, he didn’t. He became purely an actor. He became a star in France in the thirties, but in bad pictures. A terrible loss. ’Cause there was a gigantic gift, really. No question.
    HJ: Was he very frustrated? Was he very angry or sad?
    OW: He didn’t seem to be. By the time I knew him, he’d come to terms with it, so he didn’t treat people badly out of his frustration. He was not a jolly fellow, but he was not brooding. He was very fond of being a star. And even after the war, he was still a star. That compensated a lot for him.
    HJ: And he did that wonderful turn in Sunset Boulevard . That brought him back.
    OW: Only in terms of Hollywood. In America it seemed as though he’d been reclaimed from obscurity, when the reality was he was coming from continuous stardom in France. But the success of Sunset Boulevard meant nothing to him, because it was Swanson’s picture, and Billy Wilder’s—compared to what he was getting in France. VON STROHEIM on top of every marquee.
    HJ: So all the stories about von Stroheim were made up?
    OW: He did some crazy things, but he didn’t do anything as crazy as the young directors of the fifty-million-dollar pictures do today.
    HJ: But his pictures were without precedent—eight hours long.
    OW: Yes, they were, but Thalberg was the one without precedent. Without him,