José Ferrer

José Ferrer won the 1950 Best Actor Oscar for this film. What did you think of his performance? Would this performance win today, or does the Academy look for different things now than they did then?

Ferrer beat Spencer Tracy (Father of the Bride), Jimmy Stewart (Harvey), Louis Calhern (The Magnificent Yankee), and William Holden (Sunset Blvd.) for the award. Did he deserve to win over those performances? (I've only seen one of the others, but I'm guessing some of you have seen others.)

Barton or Boulevard?

Joe from "Sunset Boulevard" and Barton are both blocked writers. Both are trapped in a creepy house/hotel. Both are fairly unsympathetic male leads. Both fall victim to their own ego in a sense. Both get chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. Max and Audrey are both trying to prop up someone's vanity by making him or her feel like they still have a career. Nora, past her prime, is lost in a world of paranoid delusion; and Mayhew, past his, is lost in a world of alcoholic delusion. In both films there's a murder because someone felt their needs were being ignored. Both films touch on the notion that Hollywood studios can make or break you, that Hollywood loves nothing more than a scandal. Both films have an "unnatural" twist: Joe telling a story after he is dead, Barton walking out of the flaming hotel and finding his fantasy girl on the beach.

Which do you think was a more compelling indictment of the movie-making culture?

Art?

One of my reasons for choosing this film was that it is so different than the other films we’ve discussed. Can a film like The Incredibles even be compared with a “serious” film like Sunset Boulevard or The Last Picture Show? It’s a totally different type of art, if it can be called art, but I think it is just as good at what it does as those films are at what they do.

Black and white

In a special feature on the DVD of "Last Picture Show," director Peter Bogdanovich says he made the movie in black and white at the suggestion of Orson Welles — mainly to get greater depth of field. As I was watching the movie, I found it almost impossible to imagine it in color, because of the time period and the setting, which Lois herself described to her daughter as being "so flat and empty."

And yet I've seen other movies involving bleak landscapes and content that were successful in color.

What did you think? Could color have worked? Would it really have changed the film in an important way?

("Sunset Boulevard" could have been shot in color, couldn't it have?)

"Sunset" narration

I only watched the first 20 minutes of "Sunset Boulevard" before I was getting ready to go to Kim's, then finished it later. But in that first 20 minutes I was taken with the clever narration, from the great lines (the one about copy editors won me over, of course) to how effectively the storyline was set up to how it could keep the movie at a brisk pace.

There was a major break in that style during the extended time when Norma, Joe and Max visit the studio, and we're allowed to perceive exactly what the studio bigwigs thought and said about Norma without Joe's omnipresent perspective. It was an abrupt change to me, and I thought there could have been a couple of reasons for it -- that the audience, who may have found Norma pathetic, would see how well-respected she'd been back in the day as opposed to being exposed for a nobody. Or that she wasn't so pathetic -- that Joe's perception of her influenced what the viewer saw. Or maybe Joe's voice worked most effectively in that claustrophobic coccoon of a house.

Remember this?

The whippersnappers probably have never seen the "Sunset Boulevard" spoofs on "The Carol Burnett Show." It was a regular skit — and not one that I really understood or found amusing as a kid, except for her great physical comedy, although I'd find it hilarious now. We should try to dig up some of those shows.

Joe mama!

It's one thing for Joe to resent being a kept man and to start quietly looking for a way out, but it's quite another for him to boldly insult his sugar mama, to, like a merciless predator, zero in on her weakness — her vanity — and rip her to shreds. It seems like a smarter, more compassionate man might contrive a plausible excuse to get out of the house and simply not return, instead of making a big production out of his "honor" and "the truth" by telling her — unstable as she is!— that she's a has-been, that Max is responsible for the fan letters, that no one will care if she commits suicide ("Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.")

He's smart enough to realize this:

Joe Gillis (as narrator): You don't yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.

Or he may shoot you dead with the gun he just showed you, you Goddamn idiot!

So my question to you, notwithstanding my feelings on the matter, is this: Is Joe a Goddamn idiot? For undersestimating Nora's capacity to do something truly dire, to think she would take his hubris sitting down? Of course, the film could not have had its justly famous ending if Joe hadn't provoked her in some way. Did he ultimately do her a favor by shattering her way of life, even if she's not really aware that it's been shattered?

Joe's deadline

Joe decides at the end to go back to Dayton, Ohio, to return to the copy desk, a decision that leads to his untimely death. Proof that all of us former copy editors should never stray back? And what does this mean for our lone member still working on the night desk?

Max, darling

I think a case could be made that Max is the real hero of this film. He is fully devoted to Nora's illusion — some might say he's an enabler — but he seems to truly love her and care for her, without appearing to get much in return besides room and board. He helps the woman he loves snare another man. He can't enjoy that, but he does it because she wants it, and her happiness is more important to him than his own. Nora's looking after No. 1, for the most part, and so is Joe, but Max isn't. Or is he?

Timeless classic, or ready for an update?

Every now and then there is talk of remaking "Sunset Boulevard." Heck, even Gloria Swanson wanted to do a musical theater version, but with Norma becoming a mother figure, blessing Joe and Betty's relationship in a happy ending (the studio blocked this, wanting to preserve the story). Do you think "Sunset Boulevard is due for an update because it would be better told with stars who are more recognizable, or do you think the story stands as is?

Sympathy for the Devil

Gloria Swanson had an illustrious career as a silent film star, but it's her portrayal of Norma Desmond that she's been remembered. Did you have sympathy for Norma, or did you just think she was a loon?

Inside Hollywood

"Sunset Boulevard" gave a pretty good depiction of the state of Hollywood at the beginning of the '50s. The studio system was in decline, so the big studios weren't producing B movies anymore, which is why Joe couldn't find work. The casting of the film also involved bringing on stars from the silent era who were very similar to the characters they played. To me it really adds to the experience of watching the film, but I knew all of the inside information because I studied the movie in school. I know a lot of you read up on the film after watching it, do you think you have to know all that information beforehand to really appreciate "Sunset Boulevard"? I know I liked "The Player" when I first saw it when it came out, but I didn't realize just how good it was until I was a film student. What to all of you think?

Joe Schmoe

One of the arguements about "Sunset Boulevard" is whether it is a true "noir" film. The defining element of film noir, according to scholars, is how the main character has been chosen by fate for no particular reason to have bad things happen to them. What do you all think? Was Joe Gillis a victim of fate, or was he done in by his own choices? And did he make a good hero, or did he deserve his fate?

Kim's pick

I considered choosing this film before George chose "Sunset Boulevard," which I had never seen. Now that I've watched "Boulevard" — a film about the end of a way of life — this movie seems especially topical:

George's pick: Sunset Boulevard

Sorry I've been so absent, everybody. But we went through our Pharmacology unit in less than half the time we were supposed to, and the good news is I have yet to kill anyone I've given meds or injections to.

So instead I will present you with the ultimate in what my old film instructor called the "Dead Man's Story." You may have seen "American Beauty," but this is the one that really set that style of narrative -- the main character and narrator is already dead, and he's gonna tell you why.

Maybe Billy Wilder is best known for his comedies -- "Some Like It Hot," "The Seven-Year Itch," "The Fortune Cookie" or "Sabrina" -- but he started out with dramas, some of them very dark. "Sunset Boulevard" is his masterpiece, with Hollywood during the end of the Golden Age of the studio system as a backdrop.