Gene Wilder Quotes
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I had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
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To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.
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So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.
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[Gilda Radner] was in the in vitro fertilization program, and it nearly, nearly drove us apart, too. She wanted that baby, so badly, and it didn't work. Oddly enough, when we were doing "Haunted Honeymoon" in London, she did become pregnant for about 10 days, but then she lost it. But, anyway, my odyssey with Gilda was wonderful, funny, torturous, painful and sad. It was - it went the full gamut.
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My agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, before he became a movie mogul, called me up and said, how about a movie with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman? And I said, well, what makes you think of that? He said because I now handle you and Peter Marty.
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Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.
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My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
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I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.
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There wasn't a funeral per se. I buried [Gilda Radner] 3 miles from her house that she had bought just shortly before we met. It was an old house, old colonial house, 1734. And there were just a few friends at the funeral, a nonsectarian cemetery. And an old friend of hers from junior high school or high school was the rabbi in town, and he performed the service.
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Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple
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Woody makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic, or political.
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Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.
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Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.
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Anyway, when I got out of the Army, I went to see a therapist. And she said, what seems to be the trouble? And I said I want to give all my money away. And she said, how much do you have? And I said, I owe $300. She stared at me for several seconds, and she said, I see. Well, let's get to work. And maybe by the time you do have some money, you'll be wise enough to know what to do with it.
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I want to be an actor, maybe a comic actor but a real actor.
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I met [Gilda Radner] on the first night of filming ... Hanky Panky that Sidney Poitier was directing. And it's funny, I was in costume and makeup - my tuxedo and makeup because I'd done a few shots before she arrived, and she told me later that she cried all the way in, in the car, because she knew that she was going to fall in love with me and want to get married.
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I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.
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And in 'Frisco Kid' and in 'The Woman in Red' I had to ride badly. Then you have to really ride well in order to ride badly.
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I was miscast in that production [of Mother Courage and Her Children] ... but it was with Anne Bancroft, whose boyfriend at the time was Mel Brooks, and that made my - I can't say my day, it made my life, in a way.
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I'm not very funny in real life. I used to want to be a comedian when I was 13, 14, 15, till I saw "Death Of A Salesman" with Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock.
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[ Zero Mostel] would tell anyone anything, not to be impolite, but he'd show that he wasn't at all afraid of however much money that person [had] or whatever title they had in a company. It didn't scare him. Mel [Brooks] was very much the same way.
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I came home [after funerals] and I thought if I go back to California, where I had a small house, I don't think I'll ever come east again. So I decided to stay and go through the halls and stairways, talk to Gilda Radner, holler, express some of my anger and make sure there were no ghosts in the hallways that I should ever be afraid of.And then I found out - it sounds strange, but I found out she had left me the house. We never talked about her dying and what she was going to leave me or I would ever leave her. We just didn't talk about those things.
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I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.
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For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius!
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I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.
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I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.
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The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way.
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Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.
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Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
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