Unemployed screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) accepts a job ghostwriting for an eccentric silent-movie star (Gloria Swanson) who plans a comeback. Billy Wilder co-wrote (with Charles Brackett) and directed this cynical vision of Hollywood which combines fact with fiction: Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper, and Cecil B. DeMille play themselves, and the great silent-film director Erich von Stroheim plays Max, chauffeur and manservant to his former protégé Norma Desmond.