You may think that a monotone is being apparent since I am talking about radio so much. But this is the Raymond Chandler season on BBC Radio 4 and we have not yet discussed the brand new radio dramas of his novels yet. Today however, I would rather stick to the biographical program. Fear not, this is in fact a dramatization- not a dry documentary. This is the Friday afternoon play based on real life events and the protagonist is the great author himself.
The play Double Jeopardy derives its name from the movie Double Indemnity, whose screenplay was a joint collaboration between Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. The story of the play is the story of these two illustrious writers working together. We get a whiff of what to expect when we hear Billy Wilder say that the title is the clue as to why he would not want to work with a particular writer twice.
Written by Stephen Wyatt it does a stellar cast, with Patrick Stewart playing Chandler and Adrian Scarborough as Wilder. Scarborough’s delicious Viennese accent would make you wiggle your toes in delight, as would the Englishness of Stewart’s Chandler. The story is told in parallel narratives: Wilder narrates part of the story and then Chandler takes over.
Wilder had come across a novel by James M Cain called Double Indemnity, a story about a wife conspiring with an insurance salesman about murdering her husband. He wanted to make a film out of it but needed a collaborator on the screenplay. Unable to get Cain because of the latter’s prior commitments, he comes across a novel called The Big Sleep written by Raymond Chandler. Smitten by the writing style, he decides that Chandler is the guy for him to collaborate with.
Chandler takes over the narrative with a little bit of history of his life. The call from Wilder came to him at a rather low point of his career. He was invited to come in for a consult with Wilder. What was interesting was the mutual description of each other- adversarial from the beginning. It was a taste of what was to come.
At first, to Wilder’s astonishment Chandler offers to do the screenplay in six days, for a thousand dollars. Having no experience with writing a script, he bungles it. However the story is not the problem but the novelist. Chandler has a very low opinion of the writing talent of James Cain. His description of Cain’s capacity for dialogue was, “Unspeakable! And I use the term advisedly.” Wilder suggests that they begin a long period of working together. Chandler somewhat reluctantly accepts.
Their mutual idiosyncrasies begin to drive each other crazy. Wilder is a serial womanizer who does not hesitate to make his assignations over the phone, not at all caring who was within earshot; he would wear a hat indoors and swing a riding crop. Chandler smoked his pipe, the smell of which drove Wilder crazy. He also took regular swigs of bourbon as soon as Wilder stepped out.
Since they got on each other’s nerves, they had to suspend their working for a while. After an apology (an apparently unheard of thing in Hollywood) from wilder, Chandler begins to work again, this time both of them trying to make amends for their behavior. However this was not enough. The ups and downs of the screenwriting process have their own sets of craziness and it drove the two men round the bend. By the time it was finished and one of the finest examples of film noir came into existence, the two men had come close to blows.
Resoundingly entertaining, Double Jeopardy is firstly the story of making of a screenplay. We find out the genesis of the many aspects of the movie and how they came about because of the writers’ ideas about what would work and what would not. The adversarial relationship between the two created an organic feel to the edginess of the script: it was as if they were piling on the bile just to get back at each other.
If you are interested in the writing process and what it involves, this may be something you want to listen to. If you like a good yarn, you may like the biographical aspect of it since it is a dramatization of real events. And if like me you are a fan of Raymond Chandler and the Hollywood film noir tradition, then you would definitely relish the story about how Chandler came to learn the art of writing screenplays. This was his beginning which led to him working with Alfred Hitchcock.
So go ahead, turn on the BBC Radio 4 podcast and enjoy yourself for forty five minutes of radio drama involving the creator of Phillip Marlowe. You know you want to!
Double Jeopardy is available in podcast form in BBC iPlayer and BBC Radio 4.
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