Review: 'Remembering Gene Wilder' is a documentary that's not half as inventive as the man himself
Gene Wilder probably wouldn’t complain about the shabbiness of the documentary made about him, “Remembering Gene Wilder,” because — as everyone in the movie tells us — he was a wonderfully kind and gentle soul.
But Wilder is also, as the clips director Ron Frank assembles show us, one of the funniest and most manic performers the movies have ever produced — and he deserves a better tribute than this Wikipedia entry of a documentary.
Frank starts with the coincidence that launched his career, when he was, in his words, miscast in a 1963 revival of Bertolt Brecht’s play “Mother Courage and Her Children.” The show’s star was Anne Bancroft, fresh off her Oscar win for “The Miracle Worker” — but that didn’t keep the show from closing within three months of opening. Bancroft liked Wilder, though, and thought he would be perfect for a part in a screenplay her then-boyfriend was writing.
The boyfriend was, and is, Mel Brooks. The screenplay had the working title “Springtime for Hitler,” which was eventually changed to “The Producers.” The part was Leo Bloom, the naive accountant who has the brainstorm that a flop could make more money than a hit play — an idea that inspires the unscrupulous Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) to stage a musical glorifying the Nazis.
The casting was genius — Wilder was a perfect mix of innocence and hysteria — but it didn’t happen right away. Wiider was in another play three years later, when Brooks visited him backstage and said, “You didn’t think I forgot about you, did you?” They started filming “The Producers” a few weeks later, but not before Wilder flew down to Texas to film a small part in what would be his first movie, “Bonnie & Clyde.”
As Wilder himself says (in the audiobook of his 2005 memoir, which is deployed frequently here), director Arthur Penn said he never would have thought of having Wilder’s character, the nervous kidnap victim Eugene, laugh — but Wilder did, adding a layer to a side performance that elevated the movie.
The people interviewed here include Brooks, Carol Kane (the female lead in the Wilder-directed “The World’s Greatest Lover”), Burton Gilliam (who was Slim Pickens’ henchman in “Blazing Saddles”), Peter Ostrom (who played Charlie Bucket in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”), Eric McCormack (recalling Wilder’s guest spot on “Will & Grace”), Rain Pryor (recalling her father Richard Pryor’s partnership with Wilder), as well as friends Harry Connick Jr. and Alan Alda. All give fond remembrances of Wilder, both for his onscreen talents and his offscreen charm.
(My favorite anecdote here, and there are plenty of good ones, is that Wilder was a last-minute replacement to play The Waco Kid, the alcoholic gunslinger in “Blazing Saddles,” after the original choice, Gig Young, dropped out for a pretty tragic reason.)
What’s missing is any serious appraisal of Wilder’s work as a performer, writer and director. The closest thing to a critic here is Ben Mankiewicz, but he’s allowed less time to talk about Wilder than he does introducing a movie on TCM.
There’s lots one could discuss critically about Wilder’s comedy. It would have been fascinating to have someone dissect the balance of quiet and loud Wilder could bring to a character like Victor Frankenstein in “Young Frankenstein,” or the choices he made to bring Willy Wonka to life — or how he could be a part of such a perfect satire of racism in “Blazing Saddles” and, just two years later, perform a blackface scene (alongside Pryor, no less) in “Silver Streak.”
“Remembering Gene Wilder” feels like the sort of safe, sanitized accounting of Wilder’s life and work that one would see playing in a museum exhibit of the man’s work. It leaves the impression that Wilder himself would be a little embarrassed by the adulation, and would want something with a little more edge.
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‘Remembering Gene Wilder’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, March 29, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some mature content and language. Running time: 93 minutes.