Remembering Gene Wilder: Portrait of an Actor as a Saint
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
There’s a continuum in biography, from warts-and-all to hagiography.
Gene Wilder was by most accounts a good actor, a funny comedian, and a decent guy, so the spread between those two extremes won’t be a wide one. Nevertheless, the new documentary Remembering Gene Wilder does seem intent on showing the performer’s best side as much as possible.
For instance, we are told of his two high-profile and romantic marriages, one to fellow creative Gilda Radner (it ended after just five years in her death from cancer) and one to lip-reading coach and educator Karen Webb, which ended in 2016 in his death from Alzheimer’s. But the movie, directed by Ron Frank, makes no mention of Wilder’s first two marriages, both of which concluded in divorce.
Similarly, it seems to glide past the awkward relationship he had with frequent co-star Richard Pryor. The two made four movies together — Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Another You —and they were apparently an improvisational force of nature on set. But when the cameras stopped rolling, they had little to do with one another. (This is chalked up briefly to Pryor’s drug use.)
This is not to say the doc does a disservice to Wilder, or that he had some horrible secrets to hide. But the man who was born Jerome Silberman in 1933 — there’s a great quote where he tells an interviewer that he “wanted to be Wilder” — gets a selected series of highlights over the film’s 93 minutes.
One omission: anything not to do with Wilder the movie star. We find out little about his childhood, aside from an oft-repeated anecdote that, when his mother had a heart attack when he was a kid, her doctor told him that to argue with her might kill her, and he’d better make her laugh.
We may also come away thinking that his career started with a starring role in The Producers, directed by Anne Bancroft’s then-boyfriend Mel Brooks. Wilder met them when he and Bancroft starred in Mother Courage and Her Children on Broadway in 1963. But in fact, Wilder had already been a theatre actor for a dozen years at that point.
Still, it’s fun to watch his greatest hits, including Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (that entrance!), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask) — a small but memorable role opposite a sheep — Blazing Saddles, The World’s Greatest Lover (which he also directed), The Frisco Kid and, saving the best for last, Young Frankenstein.
What shines through in all these performances — and in recollections by Wilder himself and others — was a man dedicated to his craft and excited about the creative process. In later years he wrote novels and painted, and he was grateful for it all. Several times he mentions in interviews how a chance meeting made all the difference between fame and obscurity.
His gratitude could at times border on the sublime. Going to work on Young Frankenstein with his cowriter and director Brooks, and a cast that included Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr, he said, was “like taking a small breath of heaven each day.” It’s a perfect turn of phrase.
And so, I don’t begrudge Remembering Gene Wilder its occasional lapses into hero worship. We should all be remembered so well.
Remembering Gene Wilder. Directed by Ron Frank. With Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda, Ben Mankiewicz, Rain Pryor, and Karen Boyer Wilder. Opens April 5 in Toronto at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.