I think what made Gene Wilder so popular with a lot of young people especially with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was how there was a childish quality about him. There was a gullible niavete early in his career that made him likeable and even empathetic even though he wasn’t a Hollywood leading man style. Can you picture Paul Newman or Steve McQueen as the younger accountant who gets roped into a scam to defraud elderly women of their money?
Of course not. You’d hate them because they’re ripping people off. Leo Bloom, the character Wilder played in that movie along with Zero Mostel as the older Max Bialystock, had a child-like quality to him in which you can see him getting easily roped into Bialystock’s scheme. Also, it helps that Bloom thinks it up as a hypothetical task that they shouldn’t pursue even though it piques Bialystock’s interest because he’s already into scheming older women.
When the two meet in the movie, Bloom walks in while Bialystock is with another woman and acts embarrassed like finding his parents being intimate. With his curly hair and boyish grin, Wilder was in his early 30s when cast in The Producers. Mel Brooks, who wrote and directed the movie, says in the documentary Remembering Gene Wilder the financiers didn’t want Wilder and wanted a more attractive man to play Bloom, which Brooks agreed to. But instead, he kept filming with Wilder in the role until it was too late financially to hire another actor and conduct reshoots.
Even though Willy Wonka might be a psychotic, Wilder has that quality that makes him forgivable as he teaches rotten children and their parents a lesson. That’s the one thing that Johnny Depp nor Timothee Chalamet couldn’t bring to the role. Willy Wonka acted like he was in a state of arrested development but there was a clever madness behind it all. Sometimes what an actor brings to a role makes all the difference.
The Producers was released in 1967 the same year as Bonnie and Clyde which was released a few months earlier. In that movie, he had a supporting role as Eugene Grizzard, who ends up becoming friendly with the gang after they steal his car. Screaming in that maniacal tone he was famous for, there’s something very comical to the sequence that wasn’t intended. The foolishness of someone like Eugene screaming threats at the gang and then realizing they’re not too bad only to later argue with Michael J. Pollard’s character for accidentally taking his hamburger added some much needed humor.
The movie was very violent for the time frame in which it was released. And real-life law enforcement hated the light-hearted tone that director Arthur Penn and producer Warren Beatty took with the movie. But it gave the movie the edge it needed. In real life, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were lauded as heroes by those affected by the Great Depression. And during the time in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement and the onslaught of the Vietnam War and anti-war protests, it was seen as a sign of rebellion. But it wasn’t preaching as directly. Wilder’s performance clearly is telling us to relax.
Which is something odd to say because Wilder often brought a wild outrageousness to every role it seemed. You could almost be expecting him to suddenly freak out during a pivotal scene in a movie. But he did it in such a way it made us laugh and cheer him on because you could understand his pain. Tom Hanks used to do movies like that in the 1980s before he switched gears in the 1990s and began to do more serious movies.
Part of the reason he acted this way was when he was a child, Wilder’s mother suffered a heart attack. To make sure she didn’t have any further health issues, a doctor took Wilder aside and don’t him not to get his mother upset. Imagine a young child being told by a person in authority they could never make their mother upset. Sometimes, young kids need to vent. And even worse as his grew into adolescence, he had to further enhance his calm. Whether this was really the case or not, acting and the stage was perfect. Wilder could vent his frustration through a role.
Wilder, who was born Jerome Silberman, would lose his mother to ovarian cancer when he was 23. Sadly, it would be the same affliction that would take the life of his third wife, Gilda Radner. Their marriage is touched on here but not as much as in the documentary Love, Gilda. It’s possible it was because Wilder ended up a larger part of Radner’s life than Radner did as his. Considering all the circumstances, you had to wonder if Wilder believed he was cursed or just unlucky with women.
Wilder and Radner met on the set of Hanky Panky, a spy action comedy where his character is named Michael Jordan. They would get married in 1984, the same year of the release of The Woman in Red, which Wilder directed and Radner had co-starred in. There was a running gag of Wilder’s character mistaking Radner’s for Kelly LeBrock’s leading to date set ups that end with Radner’s character getting stood up and going after Wilder’s. The movie didn’t get good reviews despite its Oscar-winning Best Original Song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder.
They’d appear in another movie, Haunted Honeymoon, which Wilder also directed. It also received bad reviews and bombed. But during the production in 1985, she would get pregnant but suffer an ectopic pregnancy and then she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. As Alan Zweibel says, “God says ‘Ha.'” In the 1980s, it appeared Wilder began to try to grow up with his movies as The Women in Red and Hanky Panky are different in tone than his movies during the 1970s.
To get Young Frankenstein made, it was through an arrangement with Brooks to appear in Blazing Saddles as a last-minute replacement for Gig Young, who was struggling with alcoholism. As The Waco Kid, Wilder does a wonderful job as he did with Young Frankenstein. And hearing people recount the production are some of the highlights of the documentary.
But the documentary by Ron Frank follows the same format of focusing a lot on Wilder’s early life and career and not much after the 1980s. Granted, Wilder’s career wasn’t always the best. His partnership with Richard Pryor is recounted through the latter’s daughter, Rain. Stir Crazy, their most famous collaboration, would be their biggest box office winner.
The title has double meaning as it is about friends, family and co-stars remembering Wilder but also a reference to how Wilder himself suffered from Alzheimer’s. Thankfully, the documentary doesn’t dwell on that toward exploitation. There’s an interview where Wilder can’t remember the name of Stir Crazy. And his widowed wife Karen Boyer recalls some of last moments with a poignant sentiment most notably the last time he wanted to take a swim in the pool mere days before he passed away.
Wilder retreated into more of a private the last 10 years he was alive. He won an Emmy for his guest-starring role on Will & Grace, which actor Eric McCormack recalls with happiness. Sadly, most of his costars and fellow actors have passed away or in bad health as well, which is the case with Teri Garr. Fans of his will like seeing Peter Ostrum who played Charlie Bucket recall their time together on Willy Wonka or Burton Gilliam brining up past memories on the set of Blazing Saddles.
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Zane Says 