Gene Wilder

this is going to be such an exciting day the Jean is a well trained dedicated professional actor monkey I mean Kimmie's born funny that that's for sure Gina's really smart thing about her is that he's a really good actor he's very much this generation is Chaplin oh not a madness uninhibited silliness I don't find that amusing his face and his eyes are very lovable and endearing and vulnerable this man is different than anybody else I've seen he's not like a movie star he's one of those people who is genuinely funny there's always some sense of he's out there give my creation with a career that has spanned five decades and two legendary partnerships one with director Mel Brooks the other with comedian Richard Pryor gene Wilder has become an icon of American film comedy recently after a battle with cancer gene returned to live theater after 35 years away from the American stage in an evening of one-act farces at the Westport country Playhouse in Connecticut thank you on stage while the call on his comic skills he'd honed throughout his career his success one critic wrote has always depended on the tension between the two sides of his nature between the soulful sensitivity and the energetic mania gene is wonderful because when he's asking if he's doing comedy it's always serious you look at Young Frankenstein he is completely enthralled in whatever the character is thinking and doing in one thing that's all he's thinking about he is so sensitive he's like a sensitivity machine no one has genes pauses and then explosions gene is two men and one is this quiet gentle Jewish boy and the other one is a person who's just angry did you do me yeah there's like a modulation in what he does where it's like it's very very under the surface it's very held back and then it just explodes out the really working material is the actors emotional cachet was what's going on in your life that you've experienced the roots of Wilders comedy can be traced to his childhood I was seven or eight years old in Milwaukee Wisconsin and my mother had her second heart attack and the doctor samuel Rosenthal was his name big heavyset fella who sweated a lot and he said two things that changed my life first was don't ever get angry with your mother because you might kill her and the second thing was try to make her laugh she was always under a doctor's care she took medication she was in and out of sanitariums but she'd be she'd seemed to be fairly well sometimes and lead of a so-called normal life I wasn't doing anything funny before seven years old but from that time on I tried consciously to make her laugh and I did and when she peed in their pants then I knew it was a great success because she said Oh Jerry cuz that was my name then Jerry Oh Jerry now look what you've made me do and you know when you make your mother peanut pants from laughing it gives you a certain confidence it isn't that we felt deserted but it we did we probably felt that there was a lot of things we just had to handle ourselves more than anything else what young Jerry had to handle was his anger I got angry with my mother once a year it's like a tea kettle it's boiling you know if it doesn't have a little hole at the top the kettle will explode open this goddamn door kick you right in the head yeah mommy you know a lot of people who can express the rage and anger and just be scary and you don't want to watch them or be near them but if you can be funny and do that you know that's that's an incredible outlet about once a year I'd explode I'd be crying and yelling and run outside and then she'd come and forgive me forgive me forgive me and she'd be crying we all want to be loved don't we you learned about humor by trying to keep his mother alive his job was to keep her laughing and out of that came a a sense of how to do comedy how to be funny we just shut your mouth I'm having a heart attack but um the other side the innocence and the wide-eyed sweetness that's my dad there's no question about that those were the two sides of my nature my father's very innocent very naive and my mother very artistic temperamental very loving but oh so volatile both are in whether it came from his mother's instability or his father's innocence young Jerome's Silberman developed a passion for acting that never left him in the late 1950s after a stint in the army he moved to New York in the hope of becoming a professional actor it was to take nearly 10 years before young Jerome's Silberman got his first break I made the same sacrifices that most actors have made we're so dumb and innocent they're eating ketchup sandwiches they're on unemployment till it runs out an actor's life is rejection a soul there is Jerome Silberman faced another potential hurdle looking Jewish you know I have a friend Charles Grodin he used to tell me when we were both on unemployment and going to acting school don't get your heart set on being a movie star because you'll never make it because of your nose Dustin Hoffman wasn't known yet what's your name well my name is Jim but most people call me Jim at the time that I became Gene Wilder from Jerry Silberman you know actors were they had beautiful names I said we better pick your name now my sister and brother-in-law had a friend who could talk faster than anyone I'd ever met and he started rattling off name starting with a he went through the alphabet nothing nothing nothing nothing then he got to W and he said Wilder I said well it's interesting that Wilder chose the last name that he did as if by going from being Silberman to Wilder he was becoming Wilder he was letting loose overcoming his shyness and his reticence and his kind of good boy persona and I thought about Thomas Wolfe look homeward angel Eugene everyone called him Jean I said Gene Wilder yep that's what I want Jean and from then on I was gene Wilder I was an analysis and my analyst said why'd you take the name gene and I told her the same story and she's mm-hmm by the way what was your mother's name I said Jean je a and n e Jean it isn't that interesting that's all she said in his recent return to the stage Wilder had to compete with the public's image of him an image he'd created over 35 years beginning with his breakthrough performance in Mel Brooks film the producers actors spend their whole careers searching for that one role that will establish them in the mind of the public as a star for Marlon Brando it was his performance in the wild one for Marilyn Monroe her star turn in the seven-year itch but for Ben Stiller when Jim Marla has that hysterical scene and the producers it's one of the great peaks of comedy I mean it it ranks with with Chaplin being Hitler dancing with the world and it ranks with Laurel and Hardy and the piano scene all the direction I ever did was this I would say take it down a little so it wouldn't be the same orange color you know blue orange blue we did it about three times and he was getting pretty tired see Jeannie look a little spent so no no no I just didn't I don't know chocolate bar something's and night I screamed get a chocolate bar I'm awake I'm hysterical and when I'm in pain and that was the tank I think was take three or four and that was the magical take and I'm where the role changed Wilders life and ever since he's been associated with its creator I would have thought a watershed in your career came when you met Mel Brooks did you see it as an important meeting right away what's so funny when God spoke to Moses the first time if you asked him was that significant in your life that movie would have been a very good comedy with Zero Mostel and another comic another guy you know another actor would have been a very good cut but Gene Wilder made it a classic Gene Wilder's performance as Leo bloom earned him an Academy Award nomination but with success came an unexpected problem so many times after producers directors would ask me to do that thing you know when you get angry and you get all excited and you get I said yeah I I know what you mean but I don't do that as a comedy act you know if it happens it happens because of the situation unfortunately it's so typical and so expected and it's so true is that people typecast you as an actor I think if you have a desire to do different kinds of roles or just not be typecast with you you kind of are forced to have to take roles that are different than what people expect the struggle against typecasting was wearing in 1971 at the age of 39 Gene Wilder began work on a film adaptation of a well-known children's book a role that remains one of his most popular no surprise around every corner but nothing dangerous don't be long when I saw him walk in the room I knew he was really walk I no doubt that was really walking nobody was gonna do really were okay he had the I guess the madness that I always associated with a hacker which direction we are go there was one part where gene came up with the brilliant idea we were worried about his entrance when you first see me and I come out of the door I want to be crippled and when I have a cane well and the cheering crowd suddenly sees me in the old quiet quiet quiet and I I hobble slowly towards the front gate and then my King gets stuck in a brick panic comes on my face and I start to fall and I roll over and I do a forward somersault and I jump up tadam and they all applauded Mel Stuart said all you want to do that I said because no one will know from that point on whether I'm lying or telling the truth is this a joke or is he serious and I wanted something to set that off the first time you see me cuz otherwise I wouldn't have known how to act it gene louder would be a good one to study for an actor too to see what he does while does technique comes from training in both the classical and method acting traditions you don't have to have one right technique the technique is just what you give yourself to concentrate on when I was dealing with Zero Mostel in the producers when I'm afraid he's gonna pounce on me you're gonna jump on me I know you're gonna jump on me I was thinking about when I first met zero and Mel introduced me to him and and zero pulled me and kissed me on the lips well I knew that zero probably wasn't gonna kiss me on the lips again but there was no reason why I shouldn't use that little bit of fear that maybe zero was gonna do something else to me now you can easily say but this is this isn't real life why am I taking this so seriously there's got to be so specific but if the magic if well what if it were so then what would you do Gene Wilder's acting theory was to be put to an outrageous test which began when he received an unexpected phone call they said it's Woody Allen calling you and he should hygiene hi hi hi um I want either you or Laurence Olivier to play this part but in the leading female role I'm gonna use a sheep one of my favorite moments of his on screen is the reaction that he has to the to the shepherd when the shepherd tells him that he's in love with the Sheep I am in love with a sheep oh I see I don't know if you've timed that reaction it's a 23 second take he wanted someone who would play it straight you know get seduced by this good-looking sheep how he knew that I would do it I don't know but when I read it hi I said that's my stuff darling I know this must all seem very strange to you you from the hills of Armenia and me from Jackson Heights and yet I think it could work fall in love with a sheep for real and I did it was a cute sheep more than just an actor Gene Wilder has been painting since he was 15 years old it's a little like meditation that you get completely absorbed in it and your mind is just focused on one thing for an hour two hours three hours something magical happens in the paint and the water mixed together it's a wonderful feeling creating beauty I mean if if art isn't about creating beauty I don't know why I do it by the early 70s despite his success gene was becoming Restless with the uncertainty of an actor's life to ensure roles as good as the one Woody Allen had created he realized he would have to write them himself as is the case with most actors I didn't think I'd ever be working again and I was in West Hampton Beach Long Island feeling lonely sorry wondering if I'd ever find anything wonderful again to play would anyone ask me to play in something and I remember I went up to my bedroom this middle of the afternoon two o'clock I took a blue felt pen and a yellow legal pad and I wrote at the top Young Frankenstein I wrote two pages whatever and I called I called Mel whom I didn't know all that well and he said cute cute that was it when Mel Brooks agreed to direct Young Frankenstein Wilder and Brooks began rewriting the script together for a lower-middle-class portering a poor kid from Milwaukee he had very exquisite in a regal uptown habits so I would get there and he would always have a box of an open box of wheat biscuits from England digestives they were called to my jesting he took a sledgehammer and knocked he said we knock every pillar of construction of structure in the script everything about him if you notice his dress his jacket says shoes if it holds up we keep it if it folds we replace it even a great mortgage that hadn't been for Mel if we shot the film that I the Columbia bought and accepted my first draft it would have been a failure I think I don't think he characterizes it right I think it was even Stephen I get a lot out of him yes I think we could all use a good laugh before the script of Young Frankenstein was finished Brooks asked Wilder to help him out on another film he rode a blazing said originally Brooks had asked him to play Hedley Lamarr Harvey Corman's role in the finished film but Wilder turned him down only at the last minute did while to step in and play the Waco kid Jean did not look in my mind like the Waco kid 232 young too Jewish she taught me a great lesson typecasting stinks just go for a good actor then it was back to work on a Young Frankenstein I'd write all day then he'd come over read what I'd written and yeah yeah yeah yeah good no no never never no then we talk about that I go rewrite all the next day this guy means business do I have anything to say about Young Frankenstein it's okay you know everybody will quote a line from it my grandfather's work was do do you wholly all hey I walked onto this giant soundstage hand me that candle will you just in time to see the metal whirring around what the candle what the candle back don't put the candle back what a brain what's funny minds what funny sensibilities and you won't be angry I will not be angry my favorite scene in Young Frankenstein was after the monster has nearly choked me to death and I've sent everyone else out of the room and I've kept Marty there are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long 54 inch wide now you could say if you are a psychoanalyst my trying to keep the lid on which is what's funny in the scene I might have its roots in dr. Rosenthal's telling me don't get angry with your mother cuz you might kill her there isn't the Vesuvius of molten lava that does spew forth they're saying that he gets more excited than I is that what you're telling me that he gets more excited tonight my brother gets more excited than I do is that's what you're trying to tell me you want to see excitement I'll show you excitement if that's what you want to see but the anger is there yeah god knows what he does with it I've never seen gene angry as a person I've never seen it this such a wonderful touching childish quality about him yeah I think I want to have a funny little French mustache because I'm funny little Frenchman little split mustache I think it's just to give me an idea of what I will look like to the audience I don't want to use a real mustache I want it to be brown pencil I could do that quickly because I don't have that much time to change in hmm maybe I'd wear a little hand for this Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein were released in 1974 and both were huge successes Brooks um well two began work on what they thought would be their next collaboration another film for melted direct and for Jean to star in Jekyll and Hyde is a comedy we were watching old films John Barrymore's and Frederick marches and spencer tracy's ah dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde but a wonderful thing for him to do you know cuz because we all know the Gene Wilder is subdued and also hysterical me I would be the the doctor in the back I feel that these are fit sir having in a real sense gene is two men and one is this quiet gentle Jewish boy and the other one is a person who's just angry if Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder had made Jekyll and Hyde it could even outdone Young Frankenstein because the theme in a way that is always part of Wilders personality that the two sides that's what Jekyll and Hyde is about I don't find that amusing while they're on a rampage scaring people and roaming the streets of Victorian London of course it never happened there was an article in The Hollywood Reporter of the Daily Variety John Cleese going to do dr. Jekyll and mrs. Hyde so I could play the mother I have the dress and Mel was shooting silent movie at the time and I came to the set and I said look did you see this he says well maybe it's a good thing I don't know maybe it's a good thing I like this acting and writing and directing business I like it that's the best part of the picture right damn crazy about that guy Mel wanted to be a movie star at a certain point I love him I can't get enough of him we fit together the right way I mean the producers Blazing Saddles Young Frankenstein those were three glorious experiences for both of us with the partnership at an end while des moved on to writing and directing his own films I don't know if it was a good thing that I went into director I wasn't a bad director but I would never be a great great I was trying too much to make you laugh laugh laugh and then put an arrow through the heart if I dropped the arrow through the heart part I would be much better off I look at it now I see what what did I go for all that schmaltz for the milk sappy stuff or what I think I was gonna do Chaplin often went for heart and I think Jane revered him I try not to go for heart it sneaks in but if I can find it I kill it like a cockroach as one critic noted just as Brooks's films without wilder suffered from too little soul the films while the directed may have had too much the end of the partnership meant no more classics from the stable of their combined talents that's one of the you know one of the many great movies that that was that was never made it was what I knew that Richard Pryor was going to be played Grover my pal and film that I knew that it would be okay because he teaches me to be black and I'm not supposed to be that good at it at the beginning that's gonna be tough you know not to be good I am very good everything I do Hector specially at 6:30 in the morning in 1976 44 year old Gene Wilder embarked on his next legendary collaboration together with comedian Richard Pryor he produced some of the most memorable comic moments of the late 70s and early 80s I can't pass for black you tell I didn't say I was gonna make You black ascetism did you on the train now we've got to make them cops Thank You black Al Jolson made a million bucks looking like that was Richard it was chemical really the strange thing on George come on loosen up isn't it be twenty people do can't you feel it tell Maggie right here yeah I'll try don't you feel like you worked with one actor new I don't think a lot of work it's okay nothing special you work with another actor and fireworks go off I learned how to improvise I don't think we'll make it fight the cop will make it faster cops I just hope we don't see no Muslim for a young boy growing up in New York City that kind of epitomized like what I thought was cool I want it to be them may I speak this is crazy it'll never work but it did work wilder and Pryor established themselves as a powerhouse of comedy turning out a string of hits when you watch Richard Pryor and NGM Wilder working at their best together you get the feeling that what you're seeing could not have been scripted it's like jazz improvisation that's right that's right we're bad so many comedy teams you have the straight man and the funny man no these are both comedians together again in stir crazy have you got the right case there is an analogy to sex in this wedding it didn't mean making love it meant there was something going on that neither one of us knew about really didn't try to define didn't want to understand that made it work together us together in the same way that you meet a girl and you don't know why but that one girl sets your heart on fire the gene Wilder that girl was television comedian Gilda Radner how I met Gilda accidents of fate you might say about seven other actresses had turned down the part Columbia Pictures presents Gene Wilder I like this guy that's done and Gilda Radner that's not so dumb in I keep a one compliment now something funny's going on here on the first night of shooting she got out of a car and said hello hello an hour and she told me about a year later that she cried all the way in to Manhattan from her home in Connecticut I said why were you nervous she said no I know I fall in love and get married to you Wilder and Radner became inseparable with his first marriage having ended in divorce gene was reluctant to marry but finally in 1984 in the South of France Wilder and Radner tied the knot gene Wilder I know we've virtually dragged you away from the love of your life whom you've only just married that great comedy actress Gilda Radner yes I am ten days ago she said I'm here for a purpose and that's to get you to wake up and smell the coffee not be off in the cloud someplace but to be here with me and when you feel anger or you feel something on your mind you say so right now here and now I'm not a perfect woman that you've been searching for all your life I'm just little imperfect Gilda and if that's what you want a real love I'm your best bet and that's are you a romantic soul you would normally think of casting Jean in a romantic role and yet there is something romantically appealing about all mostly nonfiction gardening how to do it books it's very interesting you married divorce so that you can have him playing romantic roles always be nasty to nasturtiums Pauline Kael was writing for The New Yorker and she wrote something very perceptive which was I hope mr. Wilder realizes that he can be a funny leading man he doesn't have to be a funny romantic leading man woman in red was interesting because that was taken from the French film I had the real film to look at and say that would be funny that would be funny I didn't fall into the same traps even when I was with Kelly LeBrock and doing romantic I was still funny doing them I didn't feel the stupid burden of saying now they'll be romantic if your true self as a little kid is not being recognized and then one day you're five years old six years old you sing a song you tell the joke you do a dance and your mom or your aunt says oh my god Harry come in here do that again honey do that for for daddy and you do it again and they they start this business and you say Who now I'm getting what I wanted actors usually can't separate the love from the art sure I wanted the same things as other actors hold me touch me and love me watch me maybe if you're very lucky you realize that what you wanted was real love and if you can find that then you're a lucky person in May 1989 after a two and a half year battle with ovarian cancer Gilda Radner died they'd been married less than five years she was 42 years old he never believed that it was going to be fatal he really believed that it would be okay and it was the best thing that he really believed it because she really believed it because he did but it was a very you know a terrible time for Jeanne it's a very hard thing it's a very unfair thing when someone who we associated with comedy goes through such a terrible experience you feel almost that's almost indecent to to laugh at what they're doing we have the shooter scene in which his wife played by Christine Lahti was leaving him gene dug into some very personal resources and come up with it was very touching very touching moment perhaps it was because Gilda had died the year before and I hadn't really had a chance to say goodbye to her and all of a sudden the dams burst and I couldn't stop crying I just was saying goodbye I was trying to maintain a light mood actually and I couldn't stop crying and after Leonard said cut I couldn't stop crying when I acted at the Westport country Playhouse 35 years ago it was with Walter Pidgeon and Martha Scott in Graham Greene's the complacent lover now I'm back I've made some adaptations of Chekhov and fade oh and George Bernard Shaw so now all these years later walking into that theater it's it's the same I mean they've changed some of the upholstery but the walls are the same the posters are still there I said I wanted to come back and now I have I feel like I'm out there playing and Mel Brooks would say without a net you know but I mean I'm not doing this on Broadway I'm doing this at the Westport country Playhouse if I'm not gonna have the guts to try something here then we're in the late 80s with his star on the wane and still recovering from Gilders loss Wilder took another chance one that revived both his professional and personal fortunes I had received a script called see no evil hear no evil I thought it was a brilliant idea and a really script and I turned it down because they didn't know what they were talking about with the blind with the deaf cheap jokes but the idea was great Joe left what o'clock good twelve well five two three oh I got mixed up and they said we agree with you and they want to know if I would write it for Richard Pryor and myself to acting's and now I've got to find out more about the hearing-impaired I had my secretary make an appointment at the New York League for the hard of hearing with a Miss Webb I said hold god my luck I'm gonna have an old New England Biddy I was gonna say you see you're making fun of the of the death I was a clinical supervisor at an aural rehabilitation program at a not-for-profit agency called and lead for the heart of here outcomes this vision in lavender and pink in 1991 wild a married Karen and with the success of see no evil hear no evil he focused his attention on a new arena he started Gilda's clubs and spoke out for cancer awareness testifying before congress and raising millions for cancer research professionally Jean continued his diverse creative life television films even the London stage where he starred in an acclaimed revival of Neil Simon's laughter on the 23rd floor now there's an audience sitting out there and you're in a comedy and you want to get those laughs what do you do for me it's when I get emotional that I get funny and if you say it's coming out too bland then you increase the emotional risks involved and he tried to actor tooth five a little piece of land belongs to me and your wife was bald and has bad breath I can't see my hair but you have to understand that it only works with certain kinds of people weak willed people it would never work on coming like me I think of Jeanne in terms of close-ups of his eyes he's just gone through a lot of stuff in his life and he can make the pain funny when I was a kid I was quite inhibited in life in real life but not on stage now I'm not afraid of anything since since having cancer I'm not afraid of hardly anything over the years in performance after performance gene Wilder has brought pleasure to millions to make people laugh that's a beautiful thing that's like painting flowers when people come up to me on the street and say I was so sad I had such a hard day and then we went to see whichever the movie was Young Frankenstein er Silver Streak er stir-crazy oh and you made me laugh and I forgot my troubles that's creating beauty that's a great compliment he communicates a sense of decency and compassion which is less about skill less about being an artist more about what resides in one's soul he's a great person and a treasure and a pleasure and we should anointed for sainthood she's great it was the last day of shooting he said could we write another scene and just shoot another couple of days another wig I said what would the reason be said the reason would be I wanted to home he wanted to stay there it was the best place on earth for Jay Marley we were walking down the street together and the Marquis said you know gene Wilder and my dad was so moved and of course his first reaction was if the two bad mama wasn't here to sickness comedy I love comedy I think comedies folks are dying is easy comedy at hard oh excuse me it's a badger ha that's crazy mr. Christian casting me adrift it's best not to think about it too much miss Hoover is there isn't any more ham so thick that you could cut it with a knife stick out your hands push out your church may be hard for the audience to understand ha ha ha ha ham bacon pork galore yep I think comedies great blow to

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Length: 44min 9sec (2649 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2013