Gene Wilder offers his quieter side
The comedy star, 74, talks with Alec Baldwin on TCM about his personal life, career highlights and more recent successes in writing.
Dear Gene Wilder,
Please come back to the movies. We miss the crazy antics we fell in love with in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and in the classic Mel Brooks comedies "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles." We miss your romanticism. And we miss your expressive face, unruly hair and bright blue eyes.
Please come back.
Alas, the prospects of that happening are slim. So Wilder fans will have to settle for a taste of the 74-year-old comic genius on Turner Classic Movies' "Role Model," which airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday. He sits for an affectionate one-hour conversation with one of his biggest fans, Alec Baldwin.
Shot at the expansive Waveny House in New Canaan, Conn., near Wilder's home, the two chat about his brief marriage to Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer in 1989; his current wife of 16 years, Karen; the night he and Brooks met; working on his first screenplay for 1974's "Young Frankenstein," which was nominated for an Oscar; and his complex relationship with frequent co-star Richard Pryor.
TCM also will screen three of Wilder's best: 1968's "The Producers," 1974's "Blazing Saddles" and 1970's "Start the Revolution Without Me."
Just don't hold your breath about seeing him in a film again.
Wilder confesses in the program that he doubts he'll ever act again. He reiterated the belief in a telephone interview.
He offered the caveat that he might be persuaded if he got a script where "the bell goes off and you say, 'I have to do this.' If it did, I would. But I don't expect that it ever will."
And for a good reason. He doesn't like contemporary comedies that stress profanity over humor -- "the things they think are going to make it commercial -- and, tragically, sometimes they are right," he explains. "Even if the plot sounds interesting, the script is terrible. That's why I'm not doing movies."
Wilder, who reports that he is in complete remission from the non-Hodgkin lymphoma with which he was diagnosed in 1999, hasn't made a movie since 1991. Except for a short-lived TV series for NBC in the mid-'90s and a few guest shots on "Will & Grace," he has left Hollywood behind.
He lives in Connecticut, where he writes books, including his best-selling autobiography, "Kiss Me Like a Stranger."
