Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment - Billy Wilder's cinematic legacy - is unparalleled in Hollywood history. Not only did he direct these landmark films and twenty-one others over the course of forty years in Tinseltown, he wrote all of his own screenplays.

Volatile, cynical, hilarious, and supremely driven to create, Wilder arrived in Hollywood an all-but-penniless refugee who spoke no English; ten years later he was calling his own shots and directing his own scripts, and he stayed on top of the game for the next three decades. On Sunset Boulevard is the story of his rich, funny, inexhaustible, and exhilarating life.