'Some Like It Hot': Let's see how Billy Wilder ends it in 4 minutes

"Could there be a sequel to this film?" I wondered as I moved my cursor on my computer to the time progress bar on the media player which showed the timestamp of 1:55:08. There were just over four minutes left before the end of "Some Like It Hot", and the two jazz musicians had only just been recognized by the Chicago mob. Resultantly, they had to quickly switch from their service staff uniforms back into women's clothing and flee the grand hotel in Miami. "Ugh, now I'll have to search for its sequel," I thought with regret.

But after all, it was the representative masterpiece of Billy Wilder—a classic Hollywood master known for crafting and directing unforgettable endings. Four minutes later, I couldn't help but marvel at how perfectly he executed the classic last-minute rescue in cinematic storytelling! After Tony Curtis reveals his true identity as a man to the goddess Marilyn Monroe on stage, he scurries around the hotel lobby to evade capture, and hides under a dining cart to slip out of the hotel's main entrance. He then sprints to the pier and dashes onto the millionaire's yacht, taking Monroe with him. There's even enough time for one last apology and confession, and they escape unscathed. It's a happy ending for everyone.

At the very end of the film, its co-lead Jack Lemmon removes the wig, earrings, and false eyelashes he'd donned to work in the band and confesses to the lovestruck millionaire captain (Joe E. Brown), "I'm a man!" Immersed in the sea breeze and the sweet romance on the horizon, the captain calmly delivers that classic line, "Well, nobody's perfect."

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Scene in "Some Like It Hot" where Joe E. Brown says the famous line "Nobody's perfect" to Jack Lemmon

After watching this classic film from 1959, I couldn't help but wonder: if a satisfying conclusion can be achieved in just four or five minutes, why do feature films need to stretch to 90 minutes, two hours, or even longer? Of course, a great feature film isn't just a five-minute short video; it needs to have a proper beginning and end, be filled with plot twists, and follow the three-act structure of setup, confrontation, and resolution. "Some Like It Hot" wouldn't have been able to deliver such a gratifying conclusion without the nearly two hours of buildup involving the men losing their jobs, a young woman chasing her dream, and the mobsters holding meetings.

Today, people often complain that movies aren't as good as they used to be, citing reasons like short videos capturing the attention of the younger generation, movies no longer being a necessary form of entertainment, and all narrative techniques having been exhausted by earlier filmmakers. Indeed, if we look at just those four minutes of "Some Like It Hot", the plot twists that contemporary screenwriters rack their brains to come up with were already masterfully executed by filmmakers nearly 70 years ago. But if we take such a pessimistic view, then we could go even further back in time and pull out "relics" like Georges Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon" or Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" to revere and praise them with admiration. If we do that, couldn't we also say that cinema had been fully explored by its pioneers from the very beginning?

Leo Tolstoy's famous opening line in his novel "Anna Karenina", "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," applies equally to all film stories. What filmmakers and audiences are continuously seeking are those unique forms of unhappiness.

Wilder crafted many classic romantic comedies, yet within them, he also explored the darker, unfortunate aspects of human nature found in film noir. At the time, the gender confusion in "Some Like It Hot", the adultery in "The Apartment", and the pedophilia in "The Major and the Minor" were all highly provocative to audiences' moral values. But Wilder was an exceptionally clever storyteller who could always wrap up his films with an almost perfect "happy ending", allowing audiences to laugh about and praise all the "dirty fairy tales" he has left behind.

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Portrait of Billy Wilder

This February, I had the good fortune of visiting the final resting place of this master storyteller.

On my morning layover in Los Angeles, a friend of mine, who works as an editor in the audiovisual industry, picked me up from the airport and took me to the south of downtown, where a cemetery called Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park was located. After parking the car, we entered through a medium-sized iron gate from the northwest side, and were greeted by a vast lawn without maps or signages. In the center stands a giant cypress tree, like a silent watchman, with its branches pointing in all directions. We could see the walls that extend to the other end of the park, directly reflecting the small scale of this cemetery. Compared to other public cemeteries I'd visited during my travels, such as Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, Paris' Père Lachaise Cemetery, Buenos Aires' La Recoleta Cemetery, and France's Normandy American Cemetery, all of which also houses numerous renowned celebrities, this cemetery is indeed small, almost like a community green space. However, Pierce Brothers Westwood is likely home to the greatest number of deceased stars in the world. After all, the "residents" here only occupy a very small rectangular plaque with their name on it.

Following the guidance from an online post, we walked along Cemetery North Road and went straight to the northeast side, where a whole granite wall stood. Easily enough, a light brown plaque slightly to the left of the middle caught our eyes. Written in bold letters in gold, the dark brown nameplate reads "Marilyn Monroe" and "1926-1962" in a smaller font below. Fresh flowers in a conical vase at the edge of the plaque looked as if they'd been placed there just two or three days ago. This incomparable beauty passed away on August 5, 1962, at an early age of 36. Flowers at Monroe's grave were rumored to have been regularly replaced by her second husband, the legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio. They'd planned to remarry on August 8, 1966. DiMaggio arrived on time that day but instead of the groom, he was the host for Monroe's funeral. Today, the devoted flower deliverer has also long departed, but didn't find his rest by her side.

This sensational gossip prevailed from the earthly realm to the afterlife. The founder of the Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, had put dibs on the vacant spot next to Monroe's for US$75,000. "Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up," the old playboy told the media. He passed away in 2017 and, true to his wish, found his final resting place next to the goddess, even though the two, who were of the same age, never truly met each other during their lifetimes.

Towards the end of this "neighborhood," there's a rectangular black tombstone adorned with flowers and an American flag. It belongs to Wilder. The gold letters in bold below his name read, "I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect." It seems that the master himself was quite satisfied and proud of the ending he created in "Some Like It Hot"—so much so that he chose to incorporate the iconic line in his epitaph.

Lemmon was also laid to rest here, along with Wilder's beloved wife, Audrey. I jokingly referred to the cemetery as the "'Some Like It Hot' crew neighborhood." Recalling the movie's opening scene, isn't it set in a funeral parlor? The infamous South Side gang in Chicago led by Al Capone used a funeral parlor as a cover for their underground dealings during the Prohibition era. And the movie's ending? It turns out that "nobody's perfect".

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Billy Wilder's tombstone

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