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.
Gene WilderWhen you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.
Gene WilderI 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.
Gene WilderWhen your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.She made me believe that I could make someone laugh.
Gene WilderAnd 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.
Gene WilderI'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.
Gene WilderAnd Mel [Brooks] - you have to understand this important point - he had done "The Producers" for $50,000 over two years, and he didn't make a penny from it. And then he did "The Twelve Chairs" - $50,000 for two more years and didn't make a penny from it. That's four years of work. And then they offered him quite a bit of money to direct "Young Frankenstein," and he took it.
Gene WilderWoody 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.
Gene WilderHer business manager said, you know, Gilda [Radner] left you that house. That's when I decided to stay and test it out. And after about a month, the roots grew, and I didn't ever want to live anywhere else for the rest of my life - travel, yes, but not to live anywhere else.
Gene WilderMy humor is - was quite different. Mine was "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother" and "The World's Greatest Lover" and "Haunted Honeymoon," "The Woman In Red," things - "See No Evil, Hear No Evil." But his was much broader, and I think much funnier, too.
Gene WilderI never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony.
Gene Wilder[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.
Gene WilderAt the time, I didn't know why, but I know now that when I was a little boy, I was scared to death of the Frankenstein films ... and in all these years later, I wanted it to come out with a happy ending, and I think it was my fear of the Frankenstein movies when I was 8 and 9 and 10 years old that made me want to write that story [Young Frankenstein].
Gene WilderYou say the character [of Leo Bloom] was meek and insecure, and you could've been describing me as well. I was a very shy person in those days, and working with Zero [Mostel], who was bigger than life, helped me grow. Zero was a strong influence on me.
Gene WilderA lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.
Gene WilderZero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.
Gene WilderI found a very diabolical way of making myself suffer - not in the same way [my mother ] was suffering but to prevent me from enjoying my own life.
Gene WilderI 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.
Gene WilderI was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right.
Gene WilderI'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.
Gene WilderGene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.
Gene WilderI met Mel [Brooks] backstage in Anne's [Bancroft] dressing room. He was wearing one of those pea coats, pea jackets that were made famous by the Merchant Marines, and I admired it and he said, "You know, they used to call this a urine jacket, but it didn't sell."
Gene WilderWhich one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?
Gene WilderI had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
Gene WilderInvention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple
Gene WilderGene Wilder characters wanted to be calm, but to the great delight of audiences, they rarely succeeded.
Gene WilderI met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.
Gene WilderI 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.
Gene WilderBut the acting process - create a human being - was real, not only to the audience, but real to me.
Gene WilderI love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism.
Gene WilderOn screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, "The Producers."
Gene WilderWhat did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny?' 'Make yourself at home?' 'Marry my daughter?' You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.
Gene Wilder[Gilda Radner] died in '89, and I got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000. I've just passed the five-year mark and I'm now what you call - well, it's called complete remission, but I'm cured. I'm fine.
Gene WilderSo 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.
Gene WilderI 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.
Gene WilderI never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
Gene WilderMy favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
Gene WilderWith Mel [Brooks], only one time and that was later on during "Young Frankenstein" - never with Zero [Mostel] and never with Mel except I was writing every day, and then Mel would come to the house and read what I'd written. And then he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, yeah, OK. But we need a villain or we need whatever it was.
Gene WilderI wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.
Gene WilderAnyway, 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.
Gene Wilder