Remembering Gene Wilder
                       
Director: Ron Frank
Year: 2023
Rating: 6.0
What a sweet documentary about a sweet man. Or so I think. This film was made to honor Gene Wilder and that lets you know what to expect. It is all positive. He was married twice before Gilda Radner and those marriages are not even mentioned. Any warts or weevils that he may have had are not mentioned. And in truth, I am glad of that. I have nothing but respect and admiration for this man and if there were any dark pockets in his personality, I don't need to know about them. This leads us through his life - often using his audio reading of his autobiography as the narrator - along with interviews from Mel Brooks, Carol Kane and others. It is very touching and funny at times - when it gets to Radner it is very sad and then his Alzheimer is a blow. But the earlier times are great fun.

 

As a young boy, his mother had a heart-attack and the doctor told him, never argue with your mother and make her laugh. He claims that was his start in comedy. Much of life for all of us is happenstance. For him it was getting a small part in a theatrical production on Broadway that was starring Anne Bancroft. The play didn't last long but when her husband Mel Brooks was writing The Producers, she told him that the perfect actor for the innocent accountant, Leo Bloom, was a guy who was in the play with her. Gene Wilder. So, Brooks met him and told him the part was his. But it took a few years before it was ready to go with backers and Wilder had to get the thumbs up from his co-star the much more famous Zero Mostel. They hit it off like gravy and mash potatoes.  Before that Wilder had a small part in Bonnie and Clyde. "I'm an undertaker".

 

Next up was Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory which was a complete . . . bomb. Mothers thought it wasn't right for their children. He had his affair with a sheep in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex - and then as the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles. He got that role because the actor slated for it started getting the dt's and had to be hospitalized. Brooks called Wilder and said I need you tomorrow. We start filming. And Wilder was there. Young Frankenstein came from Wilder. He began writing the script and had Brooks come aboard. The documentary also spends some time - though I would have wanted more - on his films and relationship with Richard Pryor. They were never friends really till Pryor was battling MS during the filming of See No Evil, Hear No Evil.  Then he met Gilda on Hanky Panky and they fell in love. From that point the film gets quite sad. I realize that there are a number of his films I have never seen - Willie Wonka, The World's Greatest Lover, Frisco Kid, The Woman in Red, Hanky Panky - perhaps for good reasons - and ones I have not seen in decades - the Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor films. Time to catch up on a few of those.