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Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

Gene Wilder

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Gene Wilder
Age: 83 †
Born: 1933
Born: June 11
Died: 2016
Died: August 29
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Jerome Silberman
Part
Influenced
Zero
Authority
Afraid
Wasn
Form

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I 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.
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As they say in Corsica... Goodbye!
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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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I 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.
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A 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.
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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.
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[ Zero Mostel] would tell anyone anything, not to be impolite, but he'd show that he wasn't at all afraid of however much money that person [had] or whatever title they had in a company. It didn't scare him. Mel [Brooks] was very much the same way.
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My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.
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I 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.
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So 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.
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I had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
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I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.
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I put out my hand to shake hands with Zero Mostel, and he took my hand [and] he pulled me up to his face, and he gave me a kiss on the lips. And all my nervousness went out the window.
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I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that.
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When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about New York Jewish humor, I'd say I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.
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