Gene Wilder & Richard Pryor- Unedited Interview 1989 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]

Oh like I have robots to it I didn't want to show off three-two-one we have speed so you know we both hear no evil Gene Wilder Richard Pryor Richard I have a question for them because I remember vividly you winning the Writers Guild Award and the American Academy of Comedy Award for your contribution to the screenplay of Blazing Saddles were you and gene friendly then No did you did you meet did you see me met no we didn't meet until the hotel lobby in Calgary for Silver Streak interesting but you were aware of each other to daughter she was working on that script No oh I know that Richard was working on it oh yeah because I knew Mel mm-hmm you certain but I didn't know that I was gonna be playing the part he had given me the script to to look at a different harvey korman sparked I can say it now does Harvey wouldn't mind I wouldn't have said it 10 years ago but I said no I death side doesn't I said but the other day Waco kid maybe that is no no no no no I want an older guy I want our damn dailies gonna play that damn daily but I ended up playing that part too a series of accidents but I knew that Richard had been working on the script but we didn't work work together until Silver Streak 1976 yes and from Calgary to Toronto to Union Station yeah that's right it's interesting being with both of you again and remembering I'm looking at Richard now and remembering the Canadian content in your life because you've told some wonderful stories about some of the hotels and clubs you played in in Toronto before you were winning awards for writing for Blazing Saddles and Lily Tomlin's Lily which was another Prize winner Windsor that was when you were doing the bridge cities yes mm-hmm but you worked in Toronto you told me about locales that are no longer there no no the Warwick or something like that I don't remember was it the Warwick yeah something like that although the wrestlers convention there I used to stay there all the time roughly the wrestlers okay wrestlers a wrestlers yeah I say rustlers I thought you banned well it was Canada and could have been either no then that was interesting well why was it interesting Richard because they're big kids you know the wrestlers you see you think this guy off big kids people are you mongers kids yes yes and this was before steroids yes mm-hmm they were doing it for real yes just Wheaties yes there were tough guys but they had a lot of fun they weren't like kids no you know they had their little feelings hurt there was so big but you could hurt their feelings so easy I met Andre the Giant oh I never met Andre I'd like to meet Andre we have to point out that we're talking about Silver Streak because Arthur Hiller who directed you you and see no evil hear no evil was of course the director of Silver Streak but that's 1976 and as we sit here in the summer of 89 and remember it's not as if both of you haven't done a lot of work in the interim but why did it take so long for you to get together was it not the right script did you read anything in the interim that you considered doing together I never did there's anything that where I felt you know it's called Jing mouth this would be good for us I never there but you have you have you and Richard stayed in touch in the interim have you seen each other socially you know but not have been no event we ne'er in 89 really since then but not in between no improbable its as it sounds we didn't well you know because there's a misconception out there the world wants to believe that you go you both live in California you have worked together there's a history with both of you and that you might have seen each other but then actors say all the time you know making a movie is like going on a pleasure cruise you get on the boat you do the job the boat docks people say goodbye and in some cases don't see each other again for years that's that's often true probably most often true I think in Richards in my case there's also another ingredient which is I'm speaking for myself now I don't know if this is true of Richard you have to ask him assume it is it's so sensitive I don't want to make it sound highfalutin but it's so special what we do when we're together it's it's so intimate that I sometimes feel I don't want to take a chance of having anything damaged in private life I want it to stay the way it is so that when we work that magic will continue as you know sometimes you get off on a tangent in the private life you say that son of a B and why did he and then oh I don't want to work with that guy anymore and it's all it's over and I don't want that to happen I'm very proud when I work with you on something like we just finished because I know I'm I belong in this business you know then Jean brought this about where he's enrolled a script that was go okay but he made it good then Arthur Hiller he's a cake I love that I'm in there Richard you you said that you were particularly pleased with Arthur Hiller because Arthur helped you yes with your character in playing him not only realistically and comically but without offending the handicapped right what was the line how did he help you well they level gene and I went both went to different and gene might I went to Moscow braylon's you are the Braille yes and to learn a blind person or a deaf person that's what they are that's all this blind and deafness if you don't avoid that you have a better chance of not offending but if you try to be tiptoe around that subject you could easily a finish like excluding you end up excluding the people and we were very careful in the script and the work that we did that we wouldn't do anything that we were consciously aware of that would offend believe me gene well Richard was working with the Braille Institute people where were you study in the New York League for the heart of hearing they were tremendous help to me I don't know how I could have done any of this without because it you have to separate fact from fiction and you know if someone as my character recently lost his hearing I wouldn't be signing that all the people I knew in life would be people who speak in here so and especially if I'm denying that I have lost my hearing there's lots of tricky stuff there and so I went there I took speech reading classes lip-reading and I would talk to the people in the classes how do you feel when someone says what are you effing deaf and all that what do you think and what goes through your heart of your mind and and they they love to talk about it and they love the fact that Richard and I were going to do a comedy where the two leading characters had these two disabilities and we were very conscious of the fact that we're doing a film about people with disability and we worked very diligently and not offending people we didn't want to do anything that offended just us by doing it so we felt safe in the fact that when you see it you don't feel it uncomfortableness Gina drama it would be easier because they say oh this is serious but we're doing an out-and-out wild fallout farce a comedy but we take the disabilities very seriously which in my opinion in our opinion makes it even funnier but gene when Richard was working with the Braille Institute people and the first time Richard was blindfolded and told to make his room way through a room from the furniture he had a blindfold off what did you do they made a special apparatus for me to put in my ear so I could walk through the streets of New York and it can't cut out a hundred percent but it cut out about 65 percent of sound and then I would take little plugs and put them in my ears and go to restaurants and talk to waiters and see if I could get what they were saying because I knew the subject matter just from reading their lips and even if I couldn't I understood the emotions of trying and how frustrating and if you're if you can't hear and and you're watching the lips and someone's got a moustache on you can't see half of your signing of the signal if there is slurping soup in and talking you can't read their lips if they put their hand up like that what are you supposed to do it there was a lady who was a champion lip reader in the United States I said you mean this Oh like she's don't do that don't do that I can't die I can't she couldn't understand anything just by going like that I have to make an observation about the two of you and see no evil hear no evil gene has told me in the past about comic inspiration and how on occasion he hears the voice when he's not there at Mel Brooks or the voice of God because on occasion it's the same voice he can be confused and when I think of what Laurel and Hardy and Jerry Lewis meant to you and how I was a kid you come out of a movie theater and do Jerry Lewis where everybody's standing in line yes I have to point out that there is a wonderful endearing feeling of Laurel and Hardy in this movie with the two of you that it makes June I have a need of you had to get fat for it no we didn't we've always had that thing in common about a love of Laurel and Hardy not about fat and thin but about some silliness of their work of their work or innocence and vulnerable innocence purity and silly funny things and it's been there all the time we don't do what they do but there's a spirit of what they do that's the same I thank you both thank you how you're saying you again thank you thank you thank you gentlemen

Channel: ReelinInTheYears66

Views: 640,442

Rating: 4.9050555 out of 5

Keywords: Silver Streak, Blazing Saddles

Id: vRy7VMh_vO8

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018