BEFORE: I've delayed my review by one day, so I can give a rare DOUBLE Birthday SHOUT-OUT to both GIlda Radner (born June 28, 1946) AND Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926). Gilda carries over from "Belushi", and Mel Brooks turns 98 today. Don't mean to jinx it, but way to go, Mel!
I know, I said no more additions, but this one came to my attention, suggested by Netflix because clearly I've got a solid theme going, and of course I saw a way to work it in, because there's so much overlap in the Doc Block.
THE PLOT: A special tribute documentary honoring Gene Wilder's life and career.
AFTER: Well, at least I'm breaking the "Two big hits" theme, Chris Farley, Belushi, they each had two very successful movies, and Mary Tyler Moore had two very successful TV shows. Gene Wilder had a LOT of successful movies, even though apparently "Willy Wonka" was not the breakout hit he thought it would be, as America's mothers did not like the portrayal of kids being taught lessons via torture (or they were in denial about their own kids being brats, whichever). But then "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein", two mega-hit comedies, then he maybe had a few films that were less successful, it's only natural, but then struck gold again by teaming up with Richard Pryor for "Stir Crazy" and "Silver Streak". Even "The Woman in Red" was a solid hit, I think, though that one barely gets mentioned here.
Like many people of my generation, my entry point to the films of Gene Wilder was "Willy Wonka", but by the time I'd seen it, it had become sort of a classic children's film, although still kind of a twisted one. But then I wasn't allowed to watch "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein" because my parents shielded me from more "adult" humor, so that meant I wasn't allowed to watch "Stir Crazy", either. The next time I caught up with him was probably when I tracked down "The Producers" as a teenager. I knew Zero Mostel from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", and my mother told me he'd played in "Fiddler on the Roof", but only on stage, not in the movie version. Still, I knew the song "Springtime for Hitler" from listening to the Dr. Demento show, and I think listening to an episode where Dr. D. interviewed Mel Brooks.maybe around the time that "History of the World: Part I" was coming out (nope, wasn't allowed to watch that either, thanks Mom).
Look, I got around to the adult humor soon enough, I got to a point where I could buy any movie I wanted on VHS (then DVD) so eventually I got to see everything I wanted. Well, OK, that's not true, honestly it's still something of an ongoing process. But if you told 13-year-old me that one day I could watch any movie ever made, just by going to my computer or my phone and pressing a couple buttons, I would have thought that sounded like heaven. Now, of course, I'm an adult and I can watch "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein" any time I want, but the problem there is that I've seen each one too many times now. When I watch them it feels like each movie is about 10 minutes long, because I know every beat already. The saving grace here is that in maybe 20 years I may lose my cognition and my memory, and if I can remember to watch those films again, it might be like I'm seeing them for the first time. All the jokes will be fresh again!
I'm kidding, of course, and this really isn't something I should joke about. Gene Wilder lost his cognition when he was older and married again, to a hearing specialist, a doctor he met while researching his character for "See No Evil, Hear No Evil". He spent his later years married to Dr. Karin Wilder (nee Webb) and enjoyed being a step-grandfather to her grandchildren. He also did a lot of water color painting, they played golf together and he swam in the pool a lot at their house in Connecticut. Actually that was the house he shared with Gilda Radner before that, and he'd met her on the set of the movie "Hanky Panky" and then after they got married they shot "Haunted Honeymoon" together. It must be nice to be a famous comic actor, you don't really have to get out there and date, you can just start a relationship with one of your romantic co-stars and then you're never really sure if life is imitating art or it's the other way around.
But that's two doc subjects this week that married their doctors, Mary Tyler Moore started a relationship with a younger heart doctor, Robert Levine, after she divorced Grant Tinker and moved back to New York, he made a house call and said she could call him again as needed, then she asked if he could treat "acute loneliness". Adorable, but yeah, maybe also a little cringey. Anyway, whatever gets you through the night, despite age differences or different careers, it's all right, it's all right.
Gene Wilder had previously been "married", creatively anyway, to Mel Brooks and then Richard Pryor. He met Mel after appearing on stage in "Mother Courage" with Anne Bancroft, and Anne suggested to her husband Mel that her co-star Gene would be perfect for the role of Leo Bloom in his planned movie "The Producers", and darn it if she wasn't right. Mel later called upon Gene to replace Gig Young as The Waco Kid in "Blazing Saddles" after he was too sick to continue filming. But then it was Gene Wilder who started writing "Young Frankenstein" in the hopes that Mel Brooks could direct it and he could star. In both of those films, which parodied the Western and the classic horror films, they really had to know what they were doing, you can't just parody a genre like that without being an expert in that genre. Like you have to know the "Frankenstein" movies inside and out, backwards and forwards, in order to properly make fun of them.
Gene Wilder later went back to poke fun at Westerns again with "The Frisco Kid", where he played a rabbi character in the old West, and also parodied the Sherlock Holmes movies and the old silent films with Rudolph Valentino. And then some people would say he and Richard Pryor really brought back the buddy slapstick movies in the 1970's, with "Stir Crazy", and it's not too far of a stretch to trace that humor back to the films of Laurel and Hardy. Wilder was also a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, something about the innocent way that Chaplin approached the world and the characters around him came through in some of Gene Wilder's roles, for sure.
It sure sounds like they got Gene Wilder to narrate this film, but that's impossible since it was made after he died in 2016. No, they didn't use a sound-alike as the "Belushi" film did, and the proper AI that can replicate someone's voice hadn't been perfected yet, so what they did was use narration from the audio-book version of Wilder's autobiography, "Kiss Me LIke a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art". Very clever, and it's only cheating if you choose to look at it that way.
Anyway, he made it to age 83, but still it feels like he left way too soon. I still see some of those kids from the "Willy Wonka" movie appearing at comic-cons, that's something that makes 1971 still feel like it wasn't THAT long ago.
Also starring Alan Alda (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Mel Brooks (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Harry Connick Jr. (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Burton Gilliam (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Michael Gruskoff, Carol Kane (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), Ben Mankiewicz, Eric McCormack, Mike Medavoy, Peter Ostrum, Rain Pryor (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Alan Zweibel (also carrying over from "Belushi"),
with archive footage of Jack Albertson (last seen in "Days of Wine and Roses"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Sly"), Anne Bancroft (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Michael Bollner, Peter Boyle (last seen in "Species II"), Sid Caesar (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Joel Grey (ditto), Danny Kaye (ditto), Cloris Leachman (ditto), Donald Sutherland (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Sr."), Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "The Half of It"), Nora Denney, Julie Dawn Cole, Faye Dunaway (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Roger Ebert (last seen in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Evans Evans, Marty Feldman (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Carrie Fisher (also carrying over from "Belushi"), Harrison Ford (last seen in "De Palma"), Gene Hackman (ditto), Teri Garr (last seen in "Mel Brooks: Unwrapped"), Margaret Hamilton, Mark Hamill (last seen in "The Machine"), Oliver Hardy (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Stan Laurel (ditto), William Hickey (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Madeline Kahn (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), Boris Karloff (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Roy Kinnear (last seen in "Taste the Blood of Dracula"), Alan Ladd Jr., David Letterman (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Jerry Lewis (also last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Cleavon Little (last seen in "Once Bitten"), Kenneth Mars (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Zero Mostel (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Megan Mullally (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Denise Nickerson, Slim Pickens (last seen in "Filmworker"), Sidney Poitier (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Michael J. Pollard (last seen in "Melvin and Howard"), Richard Pryor, (also carrying over from "Belushi"), Ursula Reit, Garry Shandling (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Leonard Stone, Mel Stuart, Paris Themmen, Rudolph Valentino, John Wayne (also last seen in "Sly"), Gene Wilder (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Gig Young
RATING: 7 out of 10 appearances at the Westport Country Playhouse
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