Filmmakers appear to be at their best when being interviewed by Europeans. Yesterday I offered up Orson Welles on Michael Parkinson’s show. Today, dig this one-hour doc made for French television titled ‘Billy Wilder; Portrait Of A 60% Perfect Man’. Ciment, a noted French cineaste, shot this material in Los Angeles with Wilder in the late 1970s. We see Wilder at his office in Beverly Hills, in his art-jammed apartment in Westwood and at his beach house in Malibu. As Welles was with Parkinson, Wilder seems at ease and loose with Ciment. There’s a sweet shot of Billy and his wife Audrey having breakfast on their terrace, a nice bit of Billy driving his Mercedes around Beverly Hills with an unlit panetella cigar in his mouth and an odd moment of him attempting to fly a kite on the beach. You get to see quite a bit of the famed art collection and hear lots of the trademark Wilder stories/anecdotes/witticisms. Enjoy…