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On March 16th Kevin Spacey left the stage of the Old Vic to come to Grand Classics and introduce the Billy Wilder classic The Apartment.
The event celebrated the 90th Anniversary of United Artists with MGM DVD and was sponsored by Superior Ink Townhouses & The Century Luxury Condominiums.
"...I first saw this film when I was very young. It was at a time in my life when I was just beginning to be an actor and I first started to see the extraordinary range and just brilliant work from Jack Lemmon. Then when I was in drama class I got a chance to go to a workshop that was being run by Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau for a production they were doing. So, at the age of thirteen years old I got to act in front of Jack Lemmon in one of these scenes from the play. I’ll never forget as a thirteen year old, him walking up to me and saying, "That was terrific, who the hell are you? You should join the profession, kid." And I did and subsequently, years later, I had the great pleasure of working with him, first on Broadway and then in a series of films ending with Glengarry Glen Ross.
So, for me this film has a lot of connections and finally when I got a role in a movie called American Beauty the director Sam Mendes and I sat down and started to map out how we were going to make this character come to life. Sam consistently said that the kind of performance that Jack Lemmon did in The Apartment is the kind of trajectory that he wanted to see happen with Lester Burnham. So I based my performance in American Beauty on this performance tonight and I’m delighted that I’m going to have the chance to share it will all of you."
The Apartment (1960) directed by Billy Wilder, is a romantic film at its most anti-romantic. Wilder seduces the audience into an unusually frank sex comedy, but turns the tables when displaying the consequences of the executive's cold indifference. Winning five major Academy Awards out of ten nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, The Apartment is a timeless treasure.
C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon), a compliant, go-getting office clerk seeks favor with the philandering executives in his office by giving them the key to his small apartment for romantic trysts. Among them is his malicious boss, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). The story turns even uglier, when Baxter's love from afar, the building's melancholy elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), tries to commit suicide after Sheldrake coldly dumps the vulnerable young woman. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl...or his job.
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