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ac9b5f4
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Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?
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Gene Wilder |
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6959b88
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If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier
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Gene Wilder |
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5cb14de
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Climbing hills was never one of my great ambitions. Perhaps I was just lazy, but I admit--now that I've been climbing a hill every other day--that it's very difficult to think about the stresses in your life while you're trying to avoid falling backwards when a goat with large horns is chasing you because you came too close to the little patch of grass he was planning to eat for breakfast.
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truth
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Gene Wilder |
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9f58bf5
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It's difficult to continue loving someone who shits on you.
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respect
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Gene Wilder |
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44b4f22
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When I was eight years old, my mother had her first heart attack. After my father brought her home from the hospital, her fat heart specialist came to see how she was doing. He visited with her for about ten minutes, and then, on his way out of the house, he grabbed my right arm, leaned his sweaty face against my cheek, and whispered in my ear, "Don't ever argue with your mother--you might kill her." I didn't know what to make of that, exce..
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Gene Wilder |
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d7dbb06
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I think to be believed--onstage or on-screen--is the one hope that all actors share. Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?
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Gene Wilder |
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1d1f1ac
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I put my chin on my chest. I was afraid to look at any of the people who were watching us. My lips kept moving without making sounds: Please stop, please stop, everyone's watching. . . . But at the same time I was thinking, Good for you, Mama, good for you. What courage--to scream in front of the whole restaurant. Poor Daddy. Good for you, Mama.
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Gene Wilder |
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12b73ec
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There is one strange irony that I haven't told you. One April afternoon, three weeks before she died, Gilda walked up to me in our living room and said, "I have a title for you, 'Kiss Me Like a Stranger' . . . maybe you can use it some day." I had no idea why she said it or what the title meant; I just thanked her."
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Gene Wilder |
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edda1fc
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When I walked out of the movie theater I started thinking about my second-grade teacher, Miss Bernard, who used to put up paintings from almost all of the other boys and girls in my class on the classroom walls--paintings that she considered worthy--but she never put up one of mine. She never told me why or gave me an encouraging word, but I got the message: "You're no good at art, Jerry."
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Gene Wilder |
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c46e0f9
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Maybe the Demon forced his way in because it was this particular play. As I waited for my cue, I kept thinking that I could shut him out in plenty of time . . . but I couldn't; the fear of not praying overpowered me, even though it was a matter of seconds before my entrance. I saw both the play and my brain falling apart. Then, somehow, the obligation to the audience and Arthur Miller and my memory of Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock became ..
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Gene Wilder |
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cd555f2
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How could she not be frightened? I was frightened too. I put my arms around her and hugged her for the longest time. "Don't worry, don't worry--you're not alone. We'll figure it out, don't worry." "I don't know how it happened. My gynecologist said that it only happens with this new IUD maybe once every 100,000 times." "Well, that's a consolation." She laughed. I pulled down the cover and fluffed up the pillows. Then we both got into bed, a..
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Gene Wilder |
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6412928
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We went to Arizona to film the interiors of Stir Crazy in an actual prison. From Tucson, where we all stayed, it was an hour-and-a-half drive to the Arizona State Penitentiary. Sidney used real prisoners as extras. They had all been cleared by the prison authorities to work with us, and each prisoner was paid for every day he worked.
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Gene Wilder |
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569da72
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If Columbia Pictures had not succumbed to Richard's demands, and if I were a cocky, son-of-a-bitch movie star, and if Sidney Poitier had not held in his rage, there would have been no Stir Crazy. For the sake of my psychological health, I should have let out my anger at the time that I was angry. From the point of view of getting the picture made--I'm glad I didn't. The picture was a great success.
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Gene Wilder |
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de82ad6
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Gilda, you're talking like this is a fairy tale, and you're going to meet Prince Charming, and everything's going to be all right, and we'll both live happily ever after." "So what's wrong with that?"
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Gene Wilder |
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26e0410
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Gilda, if your marriage is so bad why don't you get out of it?" "I'm afraid to be alone."
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Gene Wilder |
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b590415
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then I took out a notepad and wrote my first poem. Across three thousand miles of sea and through strange England's smiling, and into a wee Scots Highland town there is a lad who's crying. Oh fool the world, he could, he could, a man at twenty years . . . but all alone in that Highland town there is a boy in tears.
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Gene Wilder |
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cdb8c68
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MARGIE: You want to know if she'll survive? She'll survive! Living with someone who doesn't want to be there would do more harm.
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Gene Wilder |
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bd5a977
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When we got back to my room, Gilda gave the dog a bowl of water and set some newspaper down in the bathroom for her to pee on. After that was taken care of, I ordered the cheesecake and coffee that Gilda said she has a yen for, and then we continues talking. Sparkle didn't make a sound -- no barking or winning or heaving breathing -- she just sat on the floor and looked at the two of us. It must have been strange for her. She was a year old..
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dog
heartwarming
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Gene Wilder |
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762e38e
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When we saw the ascension scene--where I rise with the Creature on an elevated platform and cry, "LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME? GIVE MY CREATION LIFE!," my heart sank. I thought this was going to be one of the highlights of the film, and instead it was a boring blob. I put my head down. Mel didn't vomit. Instead, he got up and started banging his head against the wall. He hit it three times, hard. Then turned his face to the rest of us and said, "L..
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Gene Wilder |
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c407581
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I'm not a disciplinarian. I understand the need for discipline, of course, but I'm just not good at it. I'm not talking about hitting--I don't think any parent should ever hit a child--but about setting the rules and sticking by them. How to punish without taking away love--that's the great art. I wished that I could do it, but I was trapped by the most ironic dichotomy: I was afraid that if I set rules and drew lines and enforced disciplin..
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Gene Wilder |
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742bf42
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When I make my first entrance, I'd like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk towards the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees that Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk towards them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by itself . . . but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fa..
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Gene Wilder |
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ed88167
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If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it. . . . Just be real, and it will be funnier.
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Gene Wilder |
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f519d4a
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I held my father's hand on the ride home that night. After about half an hour of cheerful bantering back and forth, he got quiet. Then he said, "I always told you not to put all your eggs in one basket. Since you were a little boy, I warned you not to put all your eggs in one basket. Now I'm glad you did." What I didn't have the heart to tell him was that Start the Revolution Without Me and Quackser Fortune had both failed at the box office..
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Gene Wilder |
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880fb30
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After I had my drink with them and said good night to James Baldwin and was kissed by Simone Signoret on both cheeks, I went outside, walked close to my car, and threw up on the street. It wasn't about the food. I may act brave and sometimes outrageous--on screen--but in real life I get terribly nervous when I meet the great talents whom I've admired for years from afar.
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Gene Wilder |
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ba5346d
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Struggling to be a genius is endemic to young artists who are starting their careers, but after being bloodied a few times, they just hope that they won't be ridiculed in the press or on television by those few who have the power to coronate them or tear them down.
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Gene Wilder |
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0fb97ea
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Making Young Frankenstein was the happiest I'd ever been on a film.
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Gene Wilder |
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39c7897
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When the sun finally went down, the cameras started rolling, and I started running around the edge of the Lincoln Center fountain, shouting for all I was worth, "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!" And the fountain was turned on, in the film and in my life."
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Gene Wilder |
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d7d35c9
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The pictures in the magazines almost put me off my job completely. I've always hated those color photographs of naked women in those stupid positions that are supposed to turn men on. I never felt that there was anything sexy about them.
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Gene Wilder |
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f370673
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After ten months of no diagnoses or incorrect diagnoses--with her tummy distended as if she were hiding a small balloon under her dress--she finally heard it: "You have stage four ovarian cancer." Gilda grabbed my face in her hands and sobbed, "No more bad news, no more bad news. I don't want any more bad news."
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Gene Wilder |
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60ba8f0
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What I didn't know was that I don't need to act. I might want to act--just for the love of acting--but not because I need to earn the right to feel loved by God. I've got something much better. . . . I feel loved by the person I love.
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Gene Wilder |