Gene Wilder Interview (HARDtalk Extra 2005) - BBC News

gene

Wilder welcome to our bonus talk kills a big part of your life reads a bit like the classic sad funny guy or sad funny guy, doesn't it? You've managed to combine both somehow, well, that was my life, um, I guess it was. mostly funny happy in the last half um there was a lot of sadness in the first half but they're still mixed it's like you know what they call it homogenized milk oh that when they mix the cream and the milk and you can' I don't notice the difference with I'm very happy today but I had some difficult times before I was crazy I was a little crazy I don't want to say psychotic but I was quite neurotic when I was 17 18 19 20 21 30 I have a lot of help and now I'm sane.

One thing that really stood out to me throughout the book was how you managed to somehow compartmentalize, for example, when you're when you're white, Gilda Radner was dying of cancer, yeah, you were breastfeeding her and writing funny things at the same time. I find it very difficult to understand how you could do that. I do it too, but she saved me because while she was upstairs in our room, upstairs, reacting to the chemo and pulling. upstairs and having a toilet next to the bed and suffering a lot, I would go downstairs and write for about 25 minutes and 30 minutes on see no evil, hear no evil, which I was writing for Richard Pryor and myself, then I would go upstairs to see how was. and then going up and down was a strange thing but trying to be funny you would say it's impossible or it's a great relief and it was a great relief for me and to escape, yes, yes, from the fact that you could make people laugh while enduring so much sadness in your personal life I was also struck by her

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ordinary she always liked to laugh she always wanted me to believe you know I'm a funny guy Mel Brooks has no humor at all I'm that funny in real life I can be but don't try if It just happens spontaneously I am, but that's an expectation that people have, I mean, I don't know you, why don't you tell jokes?

Why not? Yes, some jokes over time, well, it's the difference. between a comedian and a comic actor and well, comedians can also be sad, but I'm not sad now, but I don't like having to act. Actually, I don't want to surprise your audience, but no. I don't care about show business I like show business I don't like business so I'm in Connecticut, near the woods and not in Hollywood. I spent about nine years there at one point in my life and I liked it, it was a big change for me, but I don't want to be there all the time and out there they're waiting for you, well, everyone's waiting for a funny man they've seen in the movies, you see the producers, Blazing Saddles, young Frankenstein and the silver madman.

Well, why tell us a joke or why aren't you funny or one, but I'm not, I'm not like that unless it happens spontaneously you were born Jerome Silverman Brian Milwaukee Wisconsin Jerome Silverman yeah, that's right, isn't that the name you saw? in the lights clearly, otherwise she wouldn't have changed it, everyone called me Jerry and I couldn't, I couldn't see Jerry or Jerome Silverman in Macbeth or because I have aspirations at the time to do Hamlet Macbeth or whatever there is done for a long time. a little Shakespeare and at first not as a professional but at university, but it was something serious.

I mean, blow oh oh yeah, right, right, I mean the only difference between me and another actor who you could say is a really funny movie actor. is that the route I took was through Stanislavski, the Actors Studio. The first order of business is to create the life of a human being. The second order is to make decisions that are funny and that the audience likes, not the other way around, while the first order of a comedian. Business makes you laugh, you know, when I studied for a total of 18 years, I mean, I started at 13, but the hard core of what I use today, the technique that I have is really from the active studio Lee Strasberg in the studio asset from your own childhood. although he was marred by your mother's illness, yes, heart disease and this terrible burden that it placed on you, I mean, tell the story of what the doctor told you when you were eight years old.

I was seven or eight. I forgot it. I guess eight. In the book. it says eight in the book it says well, it must be eight and the book doesn't lie my mother had her first big heart attack her first heart attack when I was eight years old and the doctor brought her home from the hospital with my father and saw for her comfort in the bed and so on, he came out to see me and took my arm, he was a big guy, it was summer and the sweat was dripping from his face to my face and he pulled me, he leaned over and he said never argue with your mother because you could kill her while I was trying to digest that lightning bolt he said try to make her laugh and if he hadn't said those two sentences I don't know if we would be here Speaking now, I could have worked with used car salesmen or something or a concert violinist or maybe a painter , so he was this doctor in these terrible circumstances, it's actually in a way, in a way, but he said it triggered something terrible in me because never argue with your mother when you're eight when I was eight it inhibited me from getting angry. with anyone and repress it and that is poison if a child, if someone has to repress themselves. anger, it has big repercussions, I mean the rotten Russians, what you don't know what's going to happen, it's like a teapot, you're boiling water to make tea, but if there wasn't a little hole, that teapot would explode and when I was about to explode several times, I mean several times, I mean, for about 15 years I was in a lot of trouble and when I went to UM I was in the military in peacetime.

I went to a neuropsychiatric hospital which was my duty and they gave me the option of working in the tuberculosis ward. Oh, I said no thanks and have General Hospital clean and make beds and clean up vomit and manage equipment sterilization or a locked room at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital and I said that because I thought it would be the closest thing to acting that would help me later and it certainly did, but when I saw those patients come in with straitjackets because they all had, they were all going through psychotic Skype phases and I saw their behavior, one boy in particular remembers it every morning while everyone was watching to Amos and Andy on the TV around 10:30 11:00 he came down in the middle of the TV blocking the view of all the other patients and started praying to the TV and I said, well, he's psychotic. but he's not much more extreme than my compulsions right now and that's when I decided to get help when I got out of the military and I did and I found the right person Sarah Kay yeah you've had the compulsion to pray pray yeah like Well, can you explain that?

Because in the book you explain it, but it is very difficult to understand. I'm sure it is. I'm sure. And when all this starts, never argue with your mother because you could kill. she and the other she suffered all the time but I didn't put two and two making four until after seven and a half years of therapy but when I was 18 in the spring almost the first day of March when I was in my first year in college I had this compulsion to pray for what I didn't know but to ask God for forgiveness, so I prayed for 15 minutes.

I thought now it was done the next day. It was twenty-five thirty minutes. Not every day, but every two, every three for several years, except when I was on stage when I felt safe, but I mean, they couldn't tell me who they were, I don't know, I think you know, but you had to pray anyway, what I felt, this, I can't say necessity and as if I no longer considered it holy I thought it was difficult it had nothing to do with God but I had to do it and I said what a horrible sin I have committed that requires me to beg for forgiveness from God for something I have done and I don't know what the thing is after seven and a half years of therapy my therapist could have told me on the first day but I had to tell myself to find out why and it was that what right did I have to to have happiness, sexual pleasure with the hormones were taking effect on that, I was quite young and um, when my mother suffered every day of her life and you could say yes, but that wasn't your fault, well, I couldn't say it, someone could tell him.

I, but I couldn't say it, I knew it wasn't my fault she had a heart attack and yet I thought, do I really have the right to enjoy, laugh and have fun if she is sick and suffering all the time? day at this stage of your life you meet Lee Strasberg, respect is one of the best acting teachers of all time, yes, how do you get from such a constant walk to that point? He was 11 years old. I saw my sister Corrine in a what. It was called a Maupassant ghee dramatic recital the necklace that I had memorized there was an audience of about 200 people and they were chattering and then the light started to dim and then it got dark and a spotlight illuminated the center of the stage and out came my sister with this aquamarine dress and for 20 minutes you could hear a pin drop and the audience just looked at her and listened to her and I thought that must be the closest to being God that you could get as a human being and I asked her teacher afterwards, Your acting teacher, could I study with you?

He said how old are you and I said 11. He said if you still want when you're 13, come see me, so the day after my 13th birthday I wanted to see. him and then I started studying and studying there and then you know, when you can, you do well in high school and then at university, you're thinking more and more that maybe I could do this professionally and then I went to the Bristol Old Vic and then to Buta. Hagen was a very famous teacher and actress and Herbert Berghof was her husband and then Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio and that was the studio that helped me the most in what I consciously do.

Now there are parts of the book where you say you were acting. you are acting something and suddenly something clicks and you are no longer acting, of course you are acting, but you are the person you are supposed to be, you are actually that person, how did you get to that point? about that in an actor prepares Stanislavski and is touching the subconscious you are not the real one you are shamelessly not the character and you are not yourself you say that if I were doing Hamlet it is because I am Jean Hamlet your half In your case, you are using the character, you are using the lines that the author wrote, but you borrow from those experiences in your life, those emotional memories that you have and you lend them to the character, those that fit, those that don't fit. you don't use, so it's kind of a combination between you and Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, whoever it is, it's a fusion of the two together, how did you do the translation to Hollywood and the funny man that everyone thinks is are you? that's what we see in a Hollywood version, you know, yeah, and I was, you know, in West Gary Graham Greene, Bertolt Brecht, Shakespeare, we've talked about your much more serious side, which I think a lot of people don't I was familiar when I was. in the first play I did on Broadway was Graham Greene's Complacent Lover with Sir Michael Redgrave in the Sticky Cross and Richard Johnson um, it was a comedy performance and I was good and I won an award for it and then I did Mother Courage with Anne Bancroft. whose boyfriend was Mel Brooks, who might never have met him, and Anne said, "I'd like you to meet my boyfriend." Mel and I came backstage after the performance one night and there he was in this beautiful urine jacket, as they used to call it, black Merchant Navy. thick jacket keeps you warm it was pretty cold outside and he was wearing that and I said oh how nice to meet you and well you look so handsome in that jacket P he said yeah they used to call them pee jackets but they didn't sell so I started laughing and then he saw me act in that play Mother Courage so many times and he said, would you like to come to Fire Island, which is a little island off Long Island, for a weekend and I wrote a script? and I will read you the first thirty pages.

It's called spring for Hitler. I said, well, I'd really like that, so I went one weekend and we had a nice dinner that Anne cooked and then Mel read the first 30 pages and they. They're almost the same as the script is as it is in the movie, the producers now and he said, would you like to play Leo Bloom in the movie? I said, well, it would be fine, well, in the fall, don't drink anything. on Broadway until you ask me, so in September at the end of September I was offered One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, not the movie but the play with Kirk Douglas and I called Mel.

I said I feel a little silly but you said. I said yes, yes, yes. Can you get a two-week leave from your contract? I said Oh Mel, I'm not a star, they're not going to give me two weeks off, maybe if I went for four weeks, maybe I can, okay, we'll have to do it. live with it he said three years passed I never heard from him I didn't get a phone call I didn't get a telegram nothing and I was doing a play by a girl from Mauritius called love Lu V and after a matinee I was taking I took off my makeup and I knocked on the door.

I opened the door and there was Mel with a tall gentleman behind him. I said Mel, he said, "Don't think I forgot about you," and he said, "Now I have the money to make spring for Hitler." and this is our producer Sidney Glazier, the only thing is that Zero Mostel has approval on whoever plays Leo Bloom, soyou'll have to read I Love You, but Zero has to see you and say yes, so I went the next day. The heart was pounding. I thought you could hear it throughout the room. I knocked on the door and Mel opened the door and I saw Zero Mostel in the back and I walked in and he said gen, this is Z Z.

This is Gene and I extended my hand to shake Zero Mostel's hand and he pulled me close to his chest and He kissed me on the lips, a big, long kiss and all the nervousness disappeared from my body and I think it was gone. trying to be funny he was trying to help me and it worked a blue Leo you play a neurotic yes yes it's that easy easy where the Stanislavski school could you draw an experience yes yes I have if you want to take an

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hour or two. I will be happy to tell you how, if we can, let's talk a little about Europe.

His own battle against the disease. A few years ago you were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and, as we said, the diseases affected you and people important to you for a long time. a long time how hard the fight was how difficult it was when I found out I had it and well um I had several chemotherapies at home where I live oh and the doctor was so happy with everything that he reduced it from nine he said: I know I'm only going to give six chemotherapies. This was the hematologic oncologist, and I called my friend in Los Angeles, Edward Feldman, who was a gastroenterologist, to tell him the good

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, and he said, "I'm so happy." You, Jean, but I'm not happy until you see Carol Portlock in Manhattan sloan-kettering and make a date.

I saw her and she told me that you are very healthy, sir. Wilder and Kimo are very receptive but she's coming back and I was speechless and said when she was six months old she had tissue samples and everything and um I said well what do I do? She said stem cell transplant, she is not an embryonic mother. cells the great controversy without that concerned her, it would have been a moral decision if she had been an embryonic stem, not at all, not at all, but it is for much of what it is for the Bush administration, not for any normal people.

No, of course, they are not sick of non-Hodgkin, yes, you were Christopher Reeve. Oh, he was waiting and waiting. I saw him about 3 or 4 weeks before he died at the US Open Tennis and I was waiting for the MV and the stem cell transplant with embryonic stem cells, yes I had what they call a toggle switch that came from my own blood, but I was in the hospital because they told me to count between five and six weeks. I was there for three weeks and five days and unlike the times when Gilda suffered from all the nausea, there is a wonder drug called zofran.

I was not sick for a day, not even a minute. I was. I had other things wrong, but I didn't feel nauseous at all. How are you now? Well, I told my doctor now that it's five and a half years I say I say you're in complete remission I said but what if you want to know what that means I'm cured it's well cured it has to do with actuarial tables the insurance indicates how long it's expected to last live if you didn't have it or just say, if you survive your doctor, you're cured, so I thought the best way to guarantee that I'm cured is to shoot my doctor. he's going to surprise maybe by the time you get back, but I'm so close to I mean they don't like to use the word cure, there's remission and there's complete remission.

I'm in complete remission, so I'm done with it. I wanted to ask you what the point of that is, however, when Gilda died you became an activist to raise awareness about ovarian cancer. Yes, now, given the controversy in the United States over embryonic stem cell research, do you feel any kind of duty to campaign on it? What against the prevailing current within the Bush administration do you think you should raise your voice not to campaign because there are so many people who are campaigning who have campaigned when at the Democratic convention Ronnie Reagan gave a beautiful speech that is the son of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan? and Christopher Reeve and then in California they voted as a state to allow embryonic stem cell research and in Connecticut Mike State voted to allow stem cell research so I don't have to campaign in most of the country and I think the most part of Congress is but until we get rid of Bush, it will be a while before it is allowed as a federal project, but as a state project, it can be Jean Martha, thank you very much.