i READ Wilder's biolgraphy. He wanted to start the film with Holden's corpses having a conversation at the morgue with a group of other corpses. This actually made it to the first cut. He relased the film before a test audience and they were appalled. He did it two other times; same reaction. Finally he decided to compromise and have Holden narrate the story from a detached perspective. "Poor dope, he always wanted a pool." He didn't reveal it until the end of the movie that Gillis was dead, at which point he figured the audience wouldn't have the energy to complain. It worked. But in his next film Ace in the Hole with Kirk Douglas, the first draft had the same thing.

I don't know if Sunset Blvd is may favorite Wilder film - Some Like It Hot resonates more and I have a place in my heart for his adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution. But it's telling how much of the madness that's going on is Norma's idea of movies. We all remember her famous line: "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." We forget Gillis' follow-up: "I knew there was something wrong with them." The problem is that Norma is fifty and still trying play the ingenue: as Roger Ebert pointed out, at that same age Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve played nude scenes. The comparison between Norma Desmond and Miss Havisham is one of the most accurate Wilder's ever done and he's one of the best screenwriters in history. For Norma, the clock has stopped in 1927 and it hasn't moved forward since.

And I notice you left out how Norma is enabled by Max the whole way. Max who is such love for Norma he has written her fan letters that she still received, who has sacrificed his film career to serve as her butler, who is so consumed by his love for her that he's as delusional as she is. Max has such an all-consuming love that Norma has no memory that she was even married to him once and he doesnt seem to object to it.

Norma could have lived a happy life outside of her reality. But because her wealth has so isolated her from the world and the people who are devoted to her have put up her final act, she was lost long before Joe ended up on her doorstep. In that way, you can that wonderful last scene as something of a happy ending: Norma has finally gotten all the cameras back on her for the last time. "This is for all you people, out there in the dark." she says before she says one of the most famous last lines in history. And there's Max helping his leading lady one last time.