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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
Firsts
Calgary
First
Richard
Time
Modest
Meeting
Canada
Meetings
Mets
Quiet

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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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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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I want to be an actor, maybe a comic actor but a real actor.
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When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.
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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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We gave each other a hug, [Richard Pryor] said how much he admired me, I said how much I admired him, and we started working the next morning, and we hit it off really well, and he taught me how to improvise on camera.
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I 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.
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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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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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[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.
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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.
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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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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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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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Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.
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Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
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On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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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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For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius!
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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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