There’s no way for us to know who would have handled “Schindler’s List” more effectively. Clearly Spielberg did a good job, but Wilder’s lived experience may have somehow imbued the film with even more truth. However, since studio executives had lost faith in Wilder, it could have suffered from a smaller budget and/or poor casting. Audiences, too, had lost faith in the aging director, which could have resulted in a film of far less cultural significance.
Certain filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino, feel that filmmaking is a “young man’s game,” as he explained in a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The director specifically named Wilder’s final film, “Buddy, Buddy,” as an example of his worst fear as a filmmaker.
“To me, it’s all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific filmography,” he explained. He believes that every film a director makes factors into their overall “grade-point average,” and that every “one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-d*** movies costs you three good movies as far as your rating is concerned.”
Tarantino recalled seeing incredible films by Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder as a kid and picking out another film from their oeuvre at random. His goal, he said, was for a child to be able to blindly select any of his films and get something up to par with his best work.
“I have to keep them wanting to go back for more,” the “Pulp Fiction” director continued. “They can’t grab ‘Buddy, Buddy!’ They can’t grab ‘Buddy, Buddy!’ It can’t — that can’t happen!”
In the end, it might be a good thing that “Schindler’s List” wasn’t in Wilder’s hands past his prime. Then again, it could have saved “Buddy, Buddy” from being his farewell to filmmaking, or even bumped up his filmography’s grade-point average, so to speak.