Gene Wilder

This is a fan developed site. Not Gene Wilder. I Just wanted to honor such a genius and great human being. -Katherine
So shines a good man in a dark world. Gene Wilder has illuminated the human mysteries for four decades, and rolling. He is a graceful genius. I hope you enjoy the site, even a fraction as much as I have. His life and work have been compared to 'cloud watching'. Whether it's his tousled golden curls framing a cherub face or his soulful eyes that see into your heart, or his twin persona that alternate between truth/lies, sarcasm/tenderness, hysteria/peacefulness, deceptive/ truthful. He seems to think in halves, ingenious really. or perhaps his tremendous ability to love, or his hunger to continue a romantic tradition, for his unique and beautiful sense of aesthetics. Gene Wilder is deliciously enjoyable. Feast!
Gene Wilder is named one of Connecticut's Artistic Luminaries
by MaryEllen Fillo April 11, 2008
The stars were elbow to elbow at the Legislative Office Building on Wednesday and we are not talking about any of the politicians usually hanging in the halls trying to drum up some media attention.

Nope, these were real celebs: actor Gene Wilder, with his even wilder hair, chatting with Hartford Stage's oh-so-dapper artistic director Michael Wilson, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Joan D.Hedrick making small talk with Litchfield Performing Arts executive director and jazz aficionado Vita West Muir. 

Though all were in the limelight as recipients of the Governor's Award for Excellence in Culture & Tourism, Wilder commanded the most attention — and the loyalty of one 6-year-old who knows, even at her age, that it's not what you know but whom you know when working those hallowed hallways.

Lily Senich loves the 1971 version of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," which starred Wilder as Wonka. And since Senich's mother, Karen Senich, the new executive director for the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, was running the show, Lily not only had a great seat, but also the opportunity to talk candy with Wonka, er, Wilder.

"I am totally out of everlasting gobstoppers," Wilder told the youngster, referring to the one of the featured candies in the film.


"I'm surprised at this award," said the soft-spoken Wilder, who explained that his private persona is nothing like the wild, funny guy he has played in films.

"I'm not ever sure why I was chosen for it," said the Stamford resident, who is also an author and artist.


While the state celebrated its success at attracting film companies to Connecticut thanks to tax breaks that make it financially advantageous to shoot films here, Wilder was less than enthusiastic.

"I just hope it doesn't ruin the nature of the area," said Wilder, who is hoping to catch up with a former co-star, Alan Arkin, who is currently in Danbury shooting a film. "I'd hate to see Stamford turn into a movie city.
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The View interview about The Woman Who Wouldn't
A book signing video
This is a beautiful interview from the early 80's. Thanks Angela, of the Marty Feldman Tribute page:
Gene Wilder Interview
by Saklas
In October he was reading at the Sarasota Reading Festival and signing autographs and loving his fans just a lttle bit. Here is a photo of Gene and Karen. Sensational!
he gave the Barack Obama for President Campaign $2300 in March. Now that we know who to vote for, we can watch old GW movies instead of listening to the debates. Just Kindding folks, we all need to be paying attention!!
The other thing is that his house in Bel Air did sell for an undisclosed amount. So here it is, notice how REAL! The place looks like it would be prone to enjoyable living. It just looks perfect for a couple or family who just wants to enjoy their sweet little life in a cozy, house with lots of light and round archetecture, natural building materials. Beautiful woods with rich stains, and sophisticated textures. Life, not glitze, this house has the richest essentials - Water Air Earth and Fire. The house has a complex collage of textures, but it flows with its curvilinear architecture and organic composites. Nutral patterns, a hint of New England, and lots of light and transparency, but with privacy with thick hedges and earth berms. the house has loads of privacy on only .79 acres. So here are the photos:
This a letter from a fan about this house: Hi,I totally agree with you, we all should buy his house : )I too hate the thought of someone purchasing his home and turning it into a 'bling-bling" monstrosity.I was in his fan club back when he bought this house. One of the founders of his fan club was invited over to his home for an interview. She described how he had decorated it (in fact when she came over Gene was working on his kitchen sink !). It was really neat to read what his home looked like, what his tastes were, etc. The thing is Gene obviously has great taste in decorating, unlike so many in the biz who seemingly show off.Kayte
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Gene Wilder does not live there anymore, He lives in Stamford, CT with his wife Karen. His place is lovely. Very private, large estate size lot with a pool and tennis courts. He and Karen love the gardens that surround the house. I think Karen takes a pretty active role in the outdoor landscape. -Katherine
This is an arial view of the Stamford home.
Westport Journal 6/2007
The first thing you notice about Gene Wilder are his eyes. Blue and limpid, they radiate a serenity one does not immediately associate with this most antic of comic screen actors, taking you in with a gaze at once hard, searching and kind. On occasion, they light up like braziers in a Transylvanian night.
Gene lives in the backcountry of Stamford with his wife Karen, a former speech therapist he met in 1988 while working on the film See No Evil, Hear No Evil. It was the third of four films teaming Wilder with Richard Pryor. Gene was playing a deaf man in the movie, and he was seeking professional advice on how to assay his role in a convincing, noninsulting manner. He and Karen immediately hit it off. The Wilders have been married for fifteen years now, and their affection appears as total as that of a pair of smitten teens. Just what kind of Hollywood marriage is this?
“No matter how one answers that question, it comes out corny and trite,” Gene says. “What are the secrets of love? I’d put that in a book, not two sentences.”
“Maybe it’s the house,” offers Karen, trying to help out. “It just brings love.”
“No, it’s not the house,” her husband replies with a chuckle. “The house is nice, but it’s not the house.”
The house is warm and comfy, bespeaking an interest in matters other than Gene’s film work, which still defines his public image since his last big-screen appearance, in 1991’s Another You. In fact, once you get past the inclination to search the walls for revolving bookcases (“Put zee candle back!”) or snozzberry-flavored wallpaper, you have a good sense of where the movie star’s head has been since forsaking Hollywood for Fairfield County.
In the living room is a vast canvas depicting two men in a field playing cards. The trees in the background are impressionistic, but the figures in the foreground are vividly portrayed. Gene calls attention to the reserved expression of one player and the joy of the other as he is about to lay down his trump.
“You can see the twinkle of his eye even though he’s in profile, which the painter suggests with just a single dot of white,” he says. “Details like that fascinate me.”Gene has been busy the last few years with paintings of his own, some of which line the walls of the house. Portraits all, including a self-portrait that captures Gene’s famously unruly flaxen mop with a few deft, broad swipes of maize. The canvases are done in watercolor, of people young and old, male and female, the shapes and colors striking in their abstract way of capturing a personality, a mood. In each, the eyes are the strongest feature, looking at the viewer as if establishing a silent connection.
“He is intensely interested in exploring the psychology of the people he knows best,” says Douglas Hyland, director of the New Britain Museum of American Art, which hosted the first-ever exhibition of Gene’s portraits in 2005. The show drew more than 600 people its first day. Hyland says that many people were impressed by the boldly immersing nature of the pieces on display: “You had this unusual situation of a person who is a creative, amazingly talented actor who turns his sights on other people.”
Gene, who has been painting since the 1980s, declaims any opening night jitters in New Britain: “No, because I’m not a painter, I’m an actor,” he says. “And I’m not an actor, I’m a writer. I can always pass it off as something else.”
The Write Turn
Writing has actually defined Gene’s career of late. Last year saw the publication of his bestselling memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, a startlingly frank, beguilingly episodic account of his acting career, his private life and their various points of intersection, recently out in paperback. Now the seventy-three-year-old is following that success by launching his latest artistic incarnation, as a novelist, with My French Whore, a romance set in World War I. It hit bookstores on Valentine’s Day.
Gene explains the plot: “A young soldier from Milwaukee, Wisconsin [Gene’s own birthplace], in 1918, very unhappily married. He enlists and goes to France, in the trenches, and then most of the story takes place in Germany when he’s assuming another character, a spy, pretending to be, to save his life.”
It is emphatically not a comedy. His editor at St. Martin’s Press, Elizabeth Beier, recalls surprise when the manuscript landed on her desk. “It’s a pretty rich book,” she says. “He’s a very beautiful, clean, clear, wistful writer. That comes through in both his fiction and nonfiction. He has a very romantic way of looking at things. You can see that in Kiss Me Like a Stranger, in the way he wrote about the relationships he had in his own life.”
My French Whore began as an idea in 1969 while Gene was in Paris filming Start the Revolution Without Me with Donald Sutherland. For a time he tinkered with a screenplay version that he called Hesitation Waltz. Gene liked the idea, “an impossible love affair that never actually happened,” but it needed work. “The idea was good, but not the screenplay,” he says.
Thus stalled on Hesitation, Gene wrote other screenplays. “The next one was Tough Guy, better, still no good. It was a good concept. A B-picture actor who plays this tough guy, he’s really not a gangster, then he gets in trouble with real gangsters in Paris. The idea was okay, the script wasn’t. The studio was right, it didn’t want to do it, but the third one … ”
The third one was Young Frankenstein, a classic scare comedy released in 1974, which became a career moment for Gene, earning him an Oscar nomination for writing (he previously was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Producers). Gene credits Mel Brooks, co-screenwriter and director on Young Frankenstein, for much of the script’s success.
“The idea, of course, was very good,” Gene explains. “When Mel started working on it, after I wrote the first draft, he would say: ‘This scene stinks. You’ve got to have a villain. Remember Lionel Atwill in Son of Frankenstein? Yeah, okay, make it.’
“I’d write all day, he’d come in after his dinner, say ‘Yeah, okay’ and move on. ‘Now this next scene, there’s a big hole here … ’
“I’d go away, write all day the next day, show it to him that night. That’s how we did it. If it had been anyone but Mel, I would have had a hard time.”
A Wild Ride
Wilder’s past has re-emerged with a vengeance of late. There was the smash musical remake of 1968’s The Producers on Broadway, made into a movie last year. Also last year came a remake of the 1971 cult classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Wilder was openly disappointed with the latter remake, but it served to remind people what made the original special. Then two late-1970s features starring and directed by Gene came out on DVD, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (one of Karen’s favorite Gene films) and The World’s Greatest Lover, each with director’s commentaries.
Also last year, in a widely publicized ranking of the 100 greatest film performances of all time, Premiere magazine listed Gene’s performance in Young Frankenstein in ninth place, just above Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. “It’s a comic performance that borders on the cosmic,” Premiere opined.
Gene bursts out laughing when told of the ranking. Incredibly, he claims not to have heard about this before. “I should have asked for more money,” he deadpans.
Pat Collins, a film and theater critic and a longtime friend of the Wilders, is not surprised by Gene’s enduring popularity. “He is an original,” she explains. “There was no one on screen like him before The Producers, and no one like him since, no one who has been talked about as the next Gene Wilder.”
That has a lot to do with his unique approach to comedy acting on screen, she says. “There’s a lot of heart in Gene’s comedy. He’s an irony-free zone. His comedy doesn’t come from devaluing others or depreciating others,” she adds. “It comes from the day-to-day experience of putting your heart out there and hoping no one tramples on it.”
Of course, Gene has had his share of heartbreaks, on screen and off, much of which he details in Kiss Me Like a Stranger. None were more public than, or as deeply felt as, the death from cancer in 1989 of his third wife, the comedienne Gilda Radner, a much-beloved original in her own right and the woman who introduced Gene to Stamford. The farmhouse he and Karen share was originally Gilda’s and willed to Gene. For years, Gene worked with other friends of Gilda’s to create a series of support centers, called Gilda’s Clubs, while picking up the pieces of his own life with considerable assistance from Karen.
Two Become One
Theirs is a partnership of kindred spirits, something Gene realized the first time he visited Karen’s Manhattan apartment and spied a tin of his favorite tea, Twinings Earl Grey, in her kitchen. “I went: ‘Uh-oh, something’s going on here,’ ” he recalls.
“They have the same sort of personality,” notes Sheila May, a friend of the Wilders and co-owner of Therese Saint Clair in Greenwich. “They both are very well-spoken, gentle people.
“Karen is bubbly,” Sheila continues. “Gene is more reflective, shy actually. You always read that people play their opposite personalities. Gene has a wonderful sense of humor, but he’s quiet.”
“When I met Karen, I thought she was an excellent, excellent choice,” Pat Collins says. “Because after Gilda, I don’t think any actress could possibly have made that marriage work. They would have been competing with a beloved ghost, not only with Gene but also with his friends and everyone else in the mix. Karen, on the other hand, is so genuine, so comfortable in her own skin. She’s not dazzled by the superficiality of Hollywood glamour and fame. I knew she was the right person for him.”
While Gene paints or writes in his study, Karen can be found in the couple’s extensive gardens, where she spends hours tending beds of annuals and perennials. Or else she’s at the Bartlett Arboretum, a North Stamford tree preserve and horticulture education center where she serves on the board. This past winter she was cochairman of its gala fundraiser.
“She has a very strong belief in providing for the legacy of our future, keeping this ninety-one-acre site as a place where people of all ages can enjoy and learn about trees, plants and the environment,” says Scott Neff, the Bartlett’s development director.
For Karen, the Bartlett is both a resource and a cause. “I’m a conservationist at heart,” she says. “I don’t like the United States becoming a parking lot. I believe the garden is a wonderful place to live. It’s a paradise here, and if I could do something for a not-for-profit organization, picking something close to my home and close to my heart is important. So I picked the Bartlett.”
Another Stamford resource both Wilders enjoy is the Avon Theatre, a downtown movie house for sixty years, which reopened in 2004 to show the old movies and independent films the couple prefers to mainstream Hollywood fare.
“They definitely have a great affinity for movies new and old, be it outstanding classics that need revisiting or the edgy new foreign or art picture,” says the Avon’s programming director Adam Birnbaum. “They are both backward and forward in their love of cinema.”
“He still sees loads of films,” says Bob Donnalley, an arts patron and friend of Gene and Karen’s from Greenwich. “He is a voter for the Oscars, and he takes that seriously.” (“The Illusionist is about the best picture I’ve seen in four years,” says Gene.)
Gene has also been working with the Avon on a series of screenings called “Gene’s Picks.” “I’m devoting it to films people have heard of, probably, but that most haven’t seen, like The Merry Widow and Topper Takes a Trip,” he says.
Gene spoke at Avon screenings for Willy Wonka and The Producers and will do it again for the last of “Gene’s Picks,” Young Frankenstein, chosen after some discussion about going with the less-known Start the Revolution Without Me, which, like Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), is a less-heralded Wilder film Gene feels merits a second look.
Before making it in movies, Gene honed his acting chops on a number of short-lived Broadway productions, the last of which, 1966’s Luv, was ironically seen by future friends Bob and Cory Donnalley during their honeymoon. When Gene next acted on stage, thirty years later, the Donnalleys traveled to London to see him in Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor.
Gene acted again much closer to home in 2001, starring in a performance of classic one-act plays at the Westport Country Playhouse, where he previously appeared “below the title” in the early 1960s. This time, as both the star and adapter for modern audiences, Gene chose a pair of plays by his favorite author, Anton Chekhov, The Proposal and The Dangers of Tobacco, and a goofy farce by Georges Feydeau, Caught with His Trance Down. A fourth play, George Bernard Shaw’s The Music Cure, featured members of the cast other than Gene.
The production reunited Gene with Carol Kane, his costar in The World’s Greatest Lover, and was directed by Gene Saks. It was most memorable, perhaps, for Wilder’s one-man performance of The Dangers of Tobacco, the only non-comic offering. The play is a harrowing examination of suffering from ill health that Gene knew all too well from his then-recent brush with cancer, overcome with aggressive stem-cell therapy. His adaptation of Chekhov’s work personalized the experience to his own.
“The thing about Gene on stage is he plays the truth,” says Anne Keefe, associate artistic director at the playhouse. “The other actors, especially the young ones, were ‘going to school’ with him.”
But the truth hurt where Tobacco was concerned. “It was so true to life, they thought first of all he was having difficulty with it, reading notes as he was talking,” Karen recalls. “It was supposed to be like that. But it was so real — that he was having a breakdown — you felt like ‘Get off the stage!’ ”
The audience was so sobered by Tobacco they couldn’t relax and enjoy what followed, the larkish Caught with His Trance Down. “They hardly laughed,” Gene remembers. “So we cut Tobacco and started with The Proposal and ended with Trance. Everyone laughed up a storm.”
Keefe says Gene remains a friend of the playhouse, a member of its advisory committee and someone she hopes to have back in front of the footlights. “In a heartbeat,” she affirms.
The Real Golden Ticket
Gene doesn’t rule out a return to acting, either on stage or film, but the prospect isn’t that alluring. The business of show business is all-consuming, one reason he prefers making his home in north Stamford rather than in southern California.
“I’m offered a lot of stuff,” he says. “If it’s not junk, then it’s explosions and special effects and violence. I’d rather write.”
Ironically, writing could be Wilder’s golden ticket back to the silver screen. When he was working on My French Whore, he got a call from his agent asking if he could the concept to filmmakers. Wilder said he could, but only to Alan Ladd Jr., an independent producer who, years before as head of 20th Century Fox, stepped in to finance Young Frankenstein at a critical juncture. Ladd liked what he read enough to say he wanted to make the movie, but only if Wilder wrote the script.
“So when I was working on the third draft of My French Whore, I also wrote the screenplay,” Gene says. “The screenplay sometimes helps the book — because I put scenes in the screenplay that weren’t in the book before, then used them in the book.”
While a film version of My French Whore remains tantalizing, Wilder isn’t interested in acting in it or directing it. Instead, he has already finished his next novel, The Woman Who Wouldn’t.
Kiss Me Like a Stranger … My French Whore … The Woman Who Wouldn’t. What’s up with these titles? “But you don’t know what ‘she wouldn’t!’ ” Gene responds.
“Let me tell you,” Karen explains. “A common conversation in this house is whenever someone says something, he says … ” “That would be a good title!” Gene cuts in, as if on cue. “I want it to be interesting, so someone will say ‘Oooh!’ ”
Gene not only credits Karen as his idea filter but also as his overall source of inspiration. She is his partner in determining what charities to get involved in. Connecticut-based food drives attract their support, as does the Produce A Cure Fund, an anticancer initiative started by one of Gene’s oncologists. When Turner Classic Movies interviews Gene about his career for an upcoming special, he plans to donate his fee to Produce A Cure.
Other screen legends may cloister themselves and screen past glories à la Norma Desmond or else submit to what Pat Collins calls “Hollywood Squares Syndrome,” doing whatever they can to stay in the public eye. Gene seems uninterested in his fame, except perhaps when it comes in the form of answering the doorbell on Halloween and hearing trick-or-treaters cry out: “Willy Wonka!” His creative drive, in the form of his books and paintings, is fueled by forces closer to home.
“Finding Karen was the biggest motivation, of course,” Gene says. “And having the stem-cell transplant. That was probably the second biggest. At that point, I didn’t know how much time I had left; I wanted to make it as beautiful and real as I could. Being here now with Karen and looking out the window, this is the best of life now. It’s not another movie.”brWest Port Journal 6/2007
These are the latest clips go to:
www.channel4.com/more4/personalities/gene_wilder.html
This much I know
Gene Wilder
The Novel will become a Movie!
GENE WILDER is preparing to make a Hollywood comeback - his debut novel is being turned into a movie. The comedy star retired from the silver screen after appearing in 1981 film Another You - the last of his legendary collaborations with late funnyman Richard Pryor. Wilder has since taken up writing, releasing an autobiography in 2005. His first fictional effort My French Whore is due for release this month (May07) and film rights have already been snapped up by movie giants 20th Century Fox. Wilder says, "After I finished the book, my agent said, 'It would make a very good movie'. He asked if he could show it to someone, and I said 'only one person - my old boss at 20th Century Fox Alan Ladd Jr'. "Alan Ladd Jr then called me up and said, 'I'd like to do this, but only if you write the script.' So as I was writing the second draft of the book, I was writing the first draft of the screenplay. And now it's being made into a movie." But Wilder insists his name will only appear on the credits as the writer: "If they can make a good movie I'll be very happy. But I don't want to be co-executive producer. I don't want to go to Prague or Budapest for seven months."
Interview by Gaby Wood Sunday May 6, 2007 The ObserverWhen I was young, my mother was very ill, and the doctor said to me: 'Don't ever get angry with your mother, because you might kill her.' The only other thing he said was: 'Try to make her laugh.' So he did an evil thing and a good thing with just one breath. I get nervous at the strangest times. Why? I don't know, except that when I was 10 or 11, my mother had a heart attack - her second - and when she came back she said to her friends after dinner: 'And now, my son will entertain you.' My heart was racing. I thought: 'What am I supposed to do?' So I sat down at the piano, as if I were about to play, which I couldn't. I said: 'I will now give my imitation of a little boy going to bed.' And I walked out as fast as I could.Article continuesIf there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail? I went to military academy at 13. When I came home for Christmas and my mother saw all the bruises where I'd been beaten up, she started to cry. So I went back to my old school.Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was.In 1956 I was drafted to the peacetime army. At my request I was sent to Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania. I chose the neuropsychiatric hospital, because I thought: that's the closest thing to acting. I had to help administer electro-shock therapy there. I'd see the patients watching Amos 'n' Andy every morning - one boy would stand right in front of the television set, blocking the view, kneel down and start to pray. I said: 'Now, that boy is sick. But not that much sicker than I am.'I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.Sex? I thought about it, but not when my mother was alive. When she died I was 23. It was both terrible and liberating. I thought: 'I'm free to act normally.' And I became more normal.I didn't know what love was - I knew what falling in love was, but lust is not loving, it's falling.I first met Mel Brooks one night after a performance of Brecht's Mother Courage, a play I was doing on Broadway with Mel's girlfriend, Anne Bancroft. He had on a beautiful black Russian marine pea jacket. He said: 'They used to call it a "urine jacket", but they didn't sell.' I thought: 'Oh, God, this is the guy for me!' He read me the first 30 pages of a new movie he was writing, and he said: 'Do you want to play Leo Bloom?' And that's how The Producers happened.What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it.People think I'm a Francophile, but I'm not: I'm an Englishphile. I like cream teas, I like the Tate Gallery, I like the theatre. I think London taxis are the best in the world.I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I had a stem cell transplant seven years ago. I asked my doctor recently: 'What if people say, "How are you doing, Gene?" Apart from "swell", what do I tell them?' He said: 'Say you're in complete remission.' I said, 'What if they don't understand that? Can I say I'm cured?' He said: 'Just tell them that if you outlive your doctor, you're cured.' I thought the best way to secure that would be to get a gun and shoot my doctor. But I love my doctor, so I can live with complete remission.· Gene Wilder's debut novel, My French Whore, is published by Old Street at £11.99
This next article is by: RACHEL KRAMER BUSSELFebruary 25, 2007 -- Gene Wilder’s novella “My French Whore,” which arrives next week from St. Martins Press, takes readers far from the comedic roles the “Blazing Saddles” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” star is known for. For his fiction debut, Wilder, now 74, gives us Paul Peachy, whose friends have been killed during World War I while he lives the high life in France, passing himself off as infamous German spy Harry Stroller. In straightforward prose, Peachy recounts his adventures, most notably how he falls for Annie Breton, the prostitute of the title, who works not for money, but for revenge on the stepfather who raped her. Wilder started the story decades ago as a screenplay called “Hesitation Waltz,” but put it aside. Only recently did it speak to him again.Wilder, also the author of the memoir “Kiss Me Like a Stranger,” has clearly been bitten by the writing bug. He’s just completed another novel, and has no plans to return to acting. Instead, he’s content to spend his days writing at his Connecticut home, with breaks for a “quick kiss” from his wife Karen, painting watercolors and waiting for the muse to strike.Q: Why were you able to write this story now and not years ago?A: I grew up. I learned the difference between love and infatuation, and love and lust. I was very influenced - not in content but in style - by the simplicity of Ernest Hemingway. He wrote that he might take several hours to think of one honest, truthful sentence. I was lucky to have met [French director and author] Jean Renoir. He made a huge impression on me. His writing was simple and yet deep. He didn’t have to fill it up with lots of junk.Q:Why do you call the book a love story?A:I was very influenced by my own life and how long it took me to find Karen, my wife, when I didn’t think after Gilda [Radner] died I would ever marry or have a serious relationship with a woman again. I don’t believe in fate, but it’s very hard not to. Karen and I have been married for 15 years, and she was part of the inspiration for the writing of the book now.Q: Was it easy to write?A: The story was there in my heart and, when I sat down to write, it just seemed to flow. I don’t think it would’ve if I’d tried to write it as a book 37 years ago. It certainly wouldn’t have been good.Q: You’ve written many screenplays. How was the novella writing process different?Writing a book is quite different because you can go into the person’s thoughts and feelings that are not expressed to another person. You can say what the dresses look like, what the sun is doing at a particular time. In a screenplay, I just concentrate on what’s happening to whom, when and where.Q: Is there any of you in Paul Peachy?A: It’s easy to say the character is not me, but of course it is. You have to make a connection so you use your own feelings. When I’m writing about Paul Peachy in the bedroom, it’s my feelings - I was like that. I called it virginal because he’s almost a virgin. I was a virgin until quite late, and then very naive.Q: Why did you set it during World War I?A: This is the hardest part to explain. In all the screenplays I’ve written, except when working with Richard Pryor on “See No Evil, Hear No Evil,” I’ve always felt more comfortable writing in the past than the present.I don’t want to be accountable to modernday language and authenticity. I don’t want swearing for the sake of swearing because “that’s what people do.” I’m so tired of going to movies and hearing “that motherf - - -er.” How much of it can you take? That’s not the way I want to have people talk and when writing about 1918, they didn’t talk that way. Is it really authentic? Well, who’s to say no? I’ve read enough books and seen enough movies to know I’m on safe ground.Q: How do you feel after you’ve finished?A: I feel as if something was on my heart that I wasn’t sure was there, and then it got out and it feels good. It’s not quite the same thing as when you do a movie. Writing the book is the important thing. It’s nice when it does well, but I got what I wanted by [just] writing the book and seeing it published. It hurts more in the movies. You’ve worked for a year writing and directing, and then someone makes fun of it. Your ego is more involved.Q: In terms of acting versus writing, are the creative impulses similar?A: I started painting watercolors about 12 years ago, but I found I can’t paint and act. I [also] can’t act and write [or] write and paint. The artistic reservoir is the same, it’s coming from the same source, but you’re putting it in three different places.Q: Do you miss acting?A: No. I’ve been acting since I was 13. I have an agent and I do get offers. If something really wonderful comes along, and you send it to me and a bell goes off, I’ll always listen to the bell. But no bell has gone off in the last three or four years.People say, “But I wrote this with you in mind.” I don’t know what they think I am. Maybe they think “He’ll bring it to life.” Well, I can’t. I only know one person who can, and that’s Dom DeLouise. You could give him a dictionary to read, and he’ll make you laugh. I’m not like that. When the fire is lit, then I can do it, but not just reading anything.
GW Sightings of late:
This is serious fan at the March 7th Book signing. She has a great story on her site, go the "kiss me like a Stranger" profile and read her blog.
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She took this great shot of his chin, so angelic! Nice Skin, he is most likely pretty pampered, has been taking care of business, but nonchalant attitude about teeth color. He is not that uptight. Good for Gene Wilder, He has a bit of Englishman. who wants to be French, but fortunate enough to be an American, for us, as we do need an Ambassador to those countries. He has many European Fans. Really a cultural icon. I hear they have a special film festival in Denmark. has anyone ever been to the event, or know of it/ Please drop in a comment or message.
A new Pilot that starts with Alec Baldwin Idolizing , Yes, Gene Wilder! Doesn't HE wish! Well at least he has good taste!
Directed by Robert Trachtenberg, IDOLS is a new pilot program for Turner Classic. To separate IDOLS from other celebrity interview programs, Trachtenberg, an accomplished photographer and documentary director in Los Angeles chose to shoot the new one hour program in 24p HD, so we can see him really well. (I may have to get cable for a month so I can check this out!!) He assembled the crew and equipment for the shoot in the countryside of Connecticut. In this episode, Alec Baldwin interviewed Gene Wilder on his long successful career in the film industry. This episode was shot at Waveny Mansion in New Canaan, CT, a massive old manor style home which is now used for film, commercial and photography shoots. Although a date has not been set for air, TCM plans on a 2007 launch for the new series.
Biography
The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Wilder was born Jerome "Jerry" Silberman in Milwaukee, WI. Wilder's Mother, Jeanne, had a heart condition that made him fearful for her health, he had a very close relationship with her and he admired her very much. His father was a warm and caring man who loved his family. Wilder began studying drama when he was only 11. He continued at the University of Iowa, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity. He worked in summer stock while studying at the University of Iowa and he graduated in 1955 . He later attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK where he learned to master fencing and horseback riding with great skill. He served in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958, serving as a Medic in the Psychiatry ward at Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania. He discovered that he was only a little more sane than some of the patients. His kindness and sincerity was a great comfort to the patients. After the army, Wilder supported himself by teaching fencing. At other times, he also drove a limo and sold toys. After gaining experience off-Broadway in the early '60s, Wilder joined the Actors Studio. This led to several successful Broadway appearances. In 1961 with the plays "The Complaisant Lover" and "Roots" he received the Clarence Derwent Award. It was several years later when casting for Mother Courage and Her Children in 1964 with actress Anne Bancroft when his career received an even greater boost; comedian Mel Brooks, whom Bancroft was dating at the time, recognized his unusual genius and promised to cast him in his next project, The Producers.
With his wild curly hair, large expressive blue eyes, slight lisp, and nervous mannerism, Gene Wilder seems on the surface the epitome of the mild-mannered bookkeeper type, but a close look reveals a volatile energy lying beneath the milquetoast, a mad spark in the eye, and a tendency to explode into discombobulated manic hilarity, usually as a result of being unable to handle the chaos that surrounds his characters.
Wilder made his feature film debut playing a small but memorable role as a timid undertaker who is kidnapped by the protagonists of Arthur Penn's violent Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The following year Wilder worked with Mel Brooks for the first time, co-starring opposite Zero Mostel in the screamingly funny Producers (1968). His role as the neurotic accountant Leo Bloom who is seduced into a mad scheme by a once powerful Broadway producer into a crazy money-making scheme. Wilder's performance earned him an Oscar nomination. In his next film, Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), Wilder demonstrated his fencing prowess while playing one of two pairs of twins separated at birth during the years of the French Revolution. During the 1970s, Wilder starred in some of the decade's most popular comedies such Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles which have all become modern American classics, and coincidentally deal with cultural hypocrisy. He demonstrated a more dramatic side in the underrated romantic comedy/drama Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970). The following year, Wilder starred in what many fondly remember as one of his best roles, that of the mad chocolatier Willy Wonka in the darkly comic musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder did not become a major star until Young Frankenstein (1974), a loving and uproarious send-up of universal horror movies for which he and Brooks wrote the script.
Following the tremendous success of Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974), Wilder struck out on his own, making his solo screenwriting and directorial debut with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) which co-starred fellow Brooks alumni Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman. The smash hit Silver Streak (1976) was as much of a romantic action-adventure as it was a comedy, it would be the first of three successful pairings of Wilder and comedian Richard Pryor. Their second movie together, Stir Crazy (1980), was also a hit. The third and fourth pairings in See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1990) were not big hits but the pair still had a remarkable repertoire.
He was also the director and star of The Woman in Red (1984).
While appearing in Hanky Panky, Wilder met and married Gilda Radner. They were married from 1984 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1989. They had a wonderful relationship, but Gilda became sick a few years after they married, and once again, Wilder was in the shroud of illness in a woman he loved. When she passed away in 1989 from cancer, Wilder was reputedly devastated. He stopped making and appearing in films after 1991; he did, however, try his hand at situation comedy in the short-lived Something Wilder (1994-1995).Since then he has remained active in promoting cancer awareness and treatment. Wilder himself was hospitalized with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1999 and made a full recovery in 2000.
Perhaps two of his best known roles from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Young Frankenstein. Both have wonderful hugs in them, and every scene has a quote that lives on in our daily lives.
In the late 1970s and 1980s he appeared in a number of movies with Richard Pryor, making them the most prolific inter-racial comedy double act in movies during the period.
In 1979 Wilder starred alongside Harrison Ford in the comedy The Frisco Kid. His memorable role as the Rabbi has been heralded by fans, and regularly shown to Jewish youth groups everywhere.
He wrote and directed a precious romantic comedy called "The World's Greatest Lover showing us a clever twist to an old tale.
He also wrote and starred in "Murder in a Small Town" and its sequel, "The Lady in Question" as a theater producer turned amateur detective Larry "Cash Carter". Wilder manages to work some lovely romantic songs and dances into these murder mysteries. Delightful!
Gene Wilder with wife Karen
Wilder has been married to speech therapist Karen Boyer Webb since 1991.
On March 1, 2005, Wilder released his highly-personal memoir Kiss Me Like A Stranger, an account of his life covering everything from his childhood, when his mother died of heart disease, his marriages, career, through Radner's death, his own illness, and his second chance at life again with his beloved wife, Karen, who he seems to be magically and eternally in love.
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