F R O M T H E A R C H I V E S
A Letter
From Ezra Pound
to Billy Wilder, 1963.
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Dear Animal,
Your sect'y makes some faint excuse for your continued incivility and your
putrid meanness in not returning my original mss.; i.e., of the screen
adaptation I have made of The Aeneid, to be played, as per my suggestion, by
Charlton Heston. As everything concerning this project has, in my mind,
completely fallen apart, I can ask for nothing but that the screenplay be
returned to me posthaste, and in its original form.
I suppose it is possible that, in the depth of your alcoholic stupidity, you
may have glossed over, or worse, forgotten, the reservations I am having
about this project. I elaborate them here again, as I am always doing for
the benefit of children such as yourself. They are as follows:
To begin with, your hold on Latin is deplorable. I suppose you've found it
necessary to peddle this film to an American audience, and to therefore
impurify it by rendering it into English. But to have translated it
yourself! Wilder, the refrain goes "mirable dictu!," not "miserabile dictu!"
Though, in your hands, I'm beginning to suspect that Virgil's tale will
indeed be more wretched than wonderful to tell. You have also mangled the
first line, obviously confusing "virumque" with "virorum." The poet is
clearly not singing "about the man's arms." You are an idiot.
Secondly, I have suggested CHARLTON HESTON for this role, not Jack Lemmon,
as you have suggested. To cast Jack Lemmon in the role is patently absurd.
Perhaps he may find a place in the screen adaptation of Juvenal's Satires I
am currently rendering for John Ford (who, I might add, is a superior
director to you). Now, you see, the Satires—that's comedy. There is a bit
of broad slapstick in the work, at the like of which this Lemmon character
seems reductively adept, as when Juvenal is walking down the paved streets
of Nero's Rome and finds nothing there but litter and human excrement piled
up in the alleyways. That, as you might say, is "blue-chip stuff," or
whatever it is that you people call it when you're jabbering away about
nothing at all. Really, you are like a monkey or an ape to me. Monkeys and
apes should not be allowed access to works as great as The Aeneid.
Thirdly, I will not, I repeat, WILL NOT introduce the movie dressed in a
tweed suit coat, sitting in an oak-lined drawing room, with an impossibly
large book in my lap. I also dislike the introduction of the "helmeted
skeleton army" on page 53.
Elia Kazan says you are supposed to be ill. I hope you are. And what is
more I hope you die of it. In the meantime return my mss., crawl out of
the thief category, and make peace with whatever diseased deity is provided
for such bacilli as yourself.
Damn you again, and may three new lice hatch eggs on your already infected
scalp. May you also vomit on cave-treacle.
Yrs candidly,
EZRA
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
- - - -
A Letter From Ezra Pound to Billy Wilder, 1963 By Greg Purcell
Preview of Summer Camps: Camp Previews One and Two By Jeff Johnson
Who's on First? By Chris Gavaler
An Open Letter to the Gentleman at the Bar Who Asked If I Would Like a Piece of Him By Kyle Sundby
If Only They Kept Diaries: Roadrunner By Jeff Steinbrink
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