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I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.

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
First
Richard
Time
Modest
Meeting
Canada
Meetings
Mets
Quiet
Firsts
Calgary

More quotes by Gene Wilder

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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.
Gene Wilder
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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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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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I 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.
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Gene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.
Gene Wilder
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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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Her 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 Wilder
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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.
Gene Wilder
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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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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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On 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 Wilder
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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.
Gene Wilder
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Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
Gene Wilder
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If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
Gene Wilder
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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.
Gene Wilder
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I 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 Wilder
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With 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 Wilder
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My 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 Wilder
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Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.
Gene Wilder
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I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.
Gene Wilder